Besides manufacturing products, you had to set up a warehouse to store your inventory. You’d need to buy trucks. Then you’d have to hire reliable staff to drive them.

This was all before figuring out how to ship products across multiple countries and currencies.

Then came dropshipping. What is it? For many people, dropshipping is a business model that has made online entrepreneurship possible for the first time.

Dropshipping: what it is and how it works

Dropshipping means you’re outsourcing key areas of fulfilling eCommerce orders. This includes procuring products, storing and shipping them to customers.

How to dropship depends on the partners and providers you use. In the most common scenarios, your focus as a seller is on marketing and attracting customers to your online storefront or marketplace. Then, as orders get placed, sellers confirm them to customers, pass the order information to their dropshipping service partners who fulfill them.

For sellers who master how dropshipping works, eCommerce becomes highly efficient. Instead of making their own products, for instance, they can sell goods from other vendors and take a cut. As long as they can ensure a good customer experience across the entire eCommerce journey, it can be a profitable business model.

Researchers estimate dropshipping will grow on a global level by nearly 24% between now and 2032, becoming a market worth more than $1.9 billion.

That said, sellers shouldn’t be fooled by images of sitting by the beach running an eCommerce business with little more than a laptop. Dropshipping has become highly competitive. You have to keep a close eye on profit margins and other key data points. Supply chain disruptions can grind your business to a halt. There are also a number of legal issues and liability risks to consider.

This post will not only answer the question, ‘Dropshipping: what is it?” We’ll also walk through the essential areas you need to know. We’ll not only cover what dropshipping is, but the differences of dropshipping on Amazon and other marketplaces.  We’ll also look at the technologies you need you have in place for dropshipping and how to get started.

Dropshipping without a VAT number: Is it possible?

Dropshipping allows you to begin thinking about growing your business on an international scale from the moment you launch. While digital channels have made it easier to market and sell to customers in almost any geography, you also have to take into consideration legislation that governs these processes. The United Kingdom’s value-added tax (VAT) is a good example. Read before you try dropshipping without a VAT number.

Having a VAT number is a standard practice for many businesses, but the requirements from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) differ depending on where you operate. This is true for those using dropshipping suppliers as well. If you’re based in the U.K., for example, you’ll only need to register for a VAT number if your turnover exceeds more than £85,000 a year.

For those selling from outside the U.K., however, dropshipping without a VAT number is impossible if your target market includes U.K. customers. This includes those based in Italy or many other countries.

Fortunately, HMRC has simplified the process by offering VAT number registration through its website. Remember to talk to your accountant about whether expenses associated with VAT registration and import fees can be written off as part of filing your business taxes.

ATECO code for dropshipping

One of the most critical steps in getting your VAT number is using the correct ATECO code. First introduced by the Italian National Institute of Statistics in 2008, ATECO codes are a combination of letters and numbers that classify businesses according to the scope of their economic activity. This informs your business in terms of tax rates and social security contributions.

In this case, the ATECO code for eCommerce businesses, including those that use dropshipping services, is 47.91.10. It applies to both online stores that operate as a single brand as well as marketplace entities such as eBay, Amazon and Zalando.

Once you’ve submitted your ATECO code as part of the VAT registration process, you’ll also need to register your business with INPS to determine how much you’ll pay in contributions based on your business revenue. There are also fees you’ll need to pay to the Chamber of Commerce and municipality in which you’re operating. These range from €53.00 to a maximum of € 128.00. Always do your research to check for any changes to these requirements and consult a taxation or accounting expert to field any other questions.

Dropshipping suppliers: Which are the most reliable?

Although dropshipping takes away many of the headaches associated with selling online, you’ll only succeed based on the quality of your partners.

When you’re looking at manufacturers, for example, you may want to order samples to ensure your customers will get quality items. There should be consistency between what they see on your web site and what arrives at their doorstep, for example. It should work or fit as customers expect.

You also can’t afford to sell products that arrive damaged or incomplete. Items should be properly packaged and in a reasonable timeframe. For some product categories, pricing can be highly competitive, and you don’t want to opt for a manufacturer whose prices will cut in too heavily to your profit margin.

Apply the same attention to detail when you seek out dropshipping suppliers who will handle other stages of your customer experience. Depending on your target market, you’ll want to work with those who have warehouses in reasonable proximity to your customers to save on shipping costs. Suppliers should also be able to demonstrate speed and efficiency in every stage of fulfillment and delivery.

Take the time to discuss critical processes that will have an impact on customer satisfaction and your overall reputation. Things can always go wrong with e-commerce orders, whether it’s sending the wrong size or the customer simply changes their mind. Choose suppliers with reasonable return policies and refund policies. Check to see that they have adequate insurance to cover off any unfortunate errors.

Some sellers launch their business by having a network of several different suppliers that handle each aspect of manufacturing, order management and fulfillment. Another option is to work through an online marketplace. These sites may already have the visitor traffic you need to entice the kind of customers you want.

Better yet, marketplaces often operate a range of dropshipping services that make the process far more streamlined. Here are some of the most common examples:

Amazon dropshipping

Amazon is one of the best-known marketplaces in the world, especially in North America. That means there are likely a lot of potential customers browsing for their next purchase, which could include what you’re trying to sell.

Amazon dropshipping rules include making sure you’re the seller of record. This means you’re not only registered to let consumers make purchases, but that you’re setting prices and taking responsibility for returns. Even if you have other dropshipping suppliers shipping orders, you’re accountable to collecting sales tax and recording your revenue.

eBay dropshipping

It may have started as an online auction house, but eBay has become another giant in eCommerce and sees nearly 740 million visitors a month.

The biggest consideration for eBay dropshipping is to ensure you own the product you’re selling. For example, eBay does not allow you to take orders for a product from a listing you’ve posted and then purchase from another party that is also selling on eBay.

As long as you have a dropshipping supplier who can store your products on your behalf – or if you have a wholesale agreement – you can drop ship on eBay, which it also calls “product sourcing.” Other standard eBay dropshipping policies include making sure your items arrive safely based on the timeframe your listing includes, and that you take ownership of customer satisfaction and service.

Zalando dropshipping

With a focus on selling clothing and accessories, Zalando has continued to become a huge player in the European eCommerce market. Its most recent reports showed the overall volume of active customers have grown by 6%, reaching a total of more than 51 million shoppers.

Dropshipping on Zalando can be done through its Partner Program, which provides sellers not only with access to its marketplace but resources such as Zalando Partner University and the ZDirect platform to manage your online presence. Zalando governs dropshipping and other sales approaches based on its customer experience model (CXM), a set of key performance indicators it monitors to ensure it has the right members in its partner program.

What to sell through dropshipping? Discover the most searched products

The dropshipping model works for almost any physical product. You can find sellers who have been successful creating eCommerce businesses around everything from air fryers and camping gear to interior décor and pet toys. Fashion, however, represents one of the most promising dropshipping niches.

In a study that compared categories such as electronics, toys, furniture and food, fashion emerged as the top dropshipping segment. The same research has forecast fashion dropshipping to reach a compound annual growth rate of nearly 25% by 2030.

Signature clothing and apparel is a natural choice for dropshipping sellers. The products are always in-demand among online shoppers and easy to advertise through digital channels such as social media. Luxury fashion and style products also present considerable upsell and cross-selling opportunities, given that footwear and accessories can often complement existing purchases.

A category like fashion also provides a good reminder of choosing the right supplier. Signature clothing may be more prone to competition and returns, which means sellers should aim for providing an experience that is as easy and seamless as possible. Customers will expect to find the items they want quickly, and feel confident they’re ordering what is already in stock.

How much can you earn through dropshipping?

The revenue you’ll generate by operating your eCommerce brand with dropshipping services can be difficult to predict. Research the following areas to inform your calculations:

• Google trending searches: Use keywords that represent your niche and its products and get a sense of how often consumers are using them as they browse online. This can give an indication of current and future demand.
• Average order value: Explore retail industry analyst studies that show how much consumers tend to spend on the kind of products you’ll be selling.
• Average monthly visitors: Estimate the traffic you could achieve through online advertising and other marketing tactics. Alternatively, look at visits to popular online marketplaces where you could feature your brand.

With these data points in place, you can develop a conservative estimate based on a conversion rate of 1.01% and 1.04% and apply it to your expected average monthly visitors based on the average order value.

Successful sellers spend a lot of time in this area, factoring in macroeconomic conditions, tracking regional online shopping trends and ongoing analysis of the top competitors in their respective niche.

Dropshipping and invoices: Step-by-step operation

Managing stock, order fulfillment and other areas bring a lot of value to busy eCommerce sellers, and your suppliers deserve to be paid consistently and on time.

Invoicing for dropshipping services works a little differently than in a traditional physical retail environment, where a customer pays a merchant directly for a product it manufactured itself. The process usually looks something like this:

Step 1

A consumer browses the seller’s virtual store, which is fed with product catalog data connected to all key suppliers.

Step 2

Consumers place orders which are sent by the seller to the dropshipping suppliers, who then fulfill the orders.

Step 3

Suppliers generate a purchase order and invoice the seller for each item. This is where special discounts, dropshipping service fees, returns allowances and other terms are applied.

Step 4

Sellers pay the invoices, often through a business credit card or payment portal.

Step 5

Suppliers sent a receipt to sellers confirming payment.

Sometimes sellers can work out agreements with suppliers to be invoiced on a weekly or monthly basis. Volume discounts may also be available for sellers who manage to achieve high conversions and orders.

While dropshipping and invoicing may look simple at a high level, there’s a lot that can go wrong behind the scenes. That’s because everything in the steps above is predicated upon using accurate and up-to-date data across both seller and supplier eCommerce platforms.

Invoices don’t just been to be dated properly, for instance. Each one needs to be associated with a PO number from the seller’s ordering system. Ship dates, tracking number, delivery method, handling fees, miscellaneous charges – these are all key pieces of the puzzle. The invoice status needs to be recognized too, as either “outstanding” or “paid.”

Besides ensuring all parties are clear on return policies and handling fees, sellers and dropshipping suppliers will need to negotiate whether batch invoicing is permitted. Advertising co-op dollars and rules around paying for single-item orders are just two examples of other variables to consider. When it’s done well, invoicing should be a simple formality that both dropshipping suppliers and sellers take for granted.

Advantages of dropshipping using Suvae.org

The potential upside of using dropshipping to power an eCommerce business brings a lot of new players into the market. When it comes time to find the right tools, however, you’ll want to work with solution providers with a proven track record that you can trust.

At Suvae.org, for example, we’ve created the technologies that can bring greater peace of mind and confidence to sellers who see dropshipping as the backbone of their business. Work with us because:

• Suvae.org is already the product feed management and marketplace integration services platform of choice for some of the world’s leading retailers.
• Our software ensures the product catalog data shown on a seller’s site or within an online marketplace is the most recent and accurate picture of what’s in stock
• We can not only assist with selling through a seller’s web site or marketplaces but through the most popular social media channels, including Instagram, TikTok and more.
• We work fast – many brands have gotten up and running on marketplaces like Amazon and Zalando in a matter of weeks.
• We’re a true partner – our team provides deep expertise in eCommerce to help guide your long-term marketing and sales strategy.
• Suvae.org is constantly evolving with new features and capabilities to keep pace with the expectations of eCommerce brands and their customers.

Ready to take advantage of dropshipping? Connect with our team to learn more about our solutions, and how we can help you move forward today.

The post Dropshipping Guide: How to sell online anywhere, anytime appeared first on Suvae.org.

The layout of the aisles may get reconfigured for easier browsing.

New displays and signage clarify where shoppers can find their favorite product categories.

Point-of-sale systems get moved and self-checkout kiosks are set up to streamline purchasing.

Even if they make major changes, though, brands are essentially working within the same three-dimensional space of four walls, a ceiling, and a floor.

An eCommerce renovation – even a minor one – is more complicated. That’s why the difference between composable commerce vs. headless approaches matters.

What is the difference between composable commerce vs. headless?

When brands set up their first eCommerce sites, they couldn’t have anticipated the way shoppers would not only browse on desktop PCs but also on their smartphones.

The same goes for social media platforms, which evolved from places to share content with friends and family to a showcase for all manner of fashion and luxury goods.

Who would have realized that brands could not only sell through their site but Amazon, Zalando, and even online marketplaces from the likes of Macy’s?

Every new digital channel that emerges represents a huge opportunity for brands. Think of each one as a new door that gets added to a physical store. In reality, however, adding those doors can prove daunting. Existing technology platforms can prove rigid or inflexible to integrate more channels.

If you’re weighing composable vs. headless options for the future of your eCommerce business, it’s probably because they each represent a more fluid and dynamic way to tackle these challenges. Here’s how to distinguish between the two:

Headless architecture

The design of an eCommerce site may vary largely among brands, but the underlying architecture is usually the same. There is a front end that customers see, usually based on a content management system (CMS) to display creative elements like images and text. There is also the back-end, which can handle everything from capturing and processing orders to feeding into a CRM and other systems.

The key characteristic of headless vs. composable commerce is that it essentially consists of decoupling or separating these two areas of functionality and using an API to facilitate communication from one to the other.

This allows the backend to continue running as it should while allowing brands to optimize the CMS to work with social media, wearables, and even VR/AR channels. It opens up the ability to create customer experiences based on particular personas, segments, or business models.

Composable commerce architecture

What sets composable commerce vs. headless, on the other hand, is an even greater ability to customize eCommerce experiences.

A composable commerce architecture uses microservices to treat functions as a series of modules.

When you migrate to composable commerce with the right partner solutions, for instance, it becomes far easier to orchestrate the connection between a brand’s product catalog, order management system, inventory management system, and ERP via that API.

Whether your business goal is to enhance ad retargeting, adopt a new social media service, or sell on an online marketplace, a composable commerce platform allows you to “compose” your tech stack without introducing performance or interoperability issues. Instead, those front-end customer touchpoints and back-end operations can be mixed and matched as required.

Just as fashionable consumers create a perfect ensemble by selecting the ideal top, shirt, shoes, and jewelry, a composable commerce architecture provides brands the freedom to curate the ideal tech stack.

What are composable commerce vs. headless pros and cons?

As you assess the potential headless and composable commerce benefits, keep in mind the following:

Headless architecture pros:

• Faster time to deploying new eCommerce experiences such as smart mirrors and progressive web applications (PWAs)
• More options in terms of the CMS used to adapt emerging digital channels
• The ability to make changes to the CMS or backend without one negatively impacting the other.

Headless architecture cons:

• Greater complexity and maintenance requirements based on potentially using more than one CMS
• Greater costs to build eCommerce experiences specific to each digital channel
• Platform limitations: Depending on your business needs there may not always be a large number of platforms that support headless commerce.
• Potential API rate limits and GET request limits based on fetching multiple product catalogs to support multiple markets

Composable commerce architecture pros:

• The greatest possible range of features and vendor integrations to build into an eCommerce experience
• Increased scalability of new features and channels as your business grows
• A utilization model based on business need, reducing the risk of over-investing in technology
• Increased speed to modify or make changes by substituting or upgrading specific modules without a negative impact on other modules or core systems

Composable commerce architecture cons:

• Potentially larger pool of vendor relationships to manage as additional microservices are added to the overall eCommerce experience
• Greater onus on orchestrating microservices and modules without jeopardizing performance and security
• Increased complexity in integrating with multiple online marketplaces in addition to a brand’s own eCommerce website.

Choosing between composable commerce vs. headless architecture

Resolving the debate over headless vs. composable commerce should begin, as with any critical business decision, by looking at your current and future customer needs.

Use existing data about customer behavior to indicate how their digital habits are changing, and whether providing the best possible experience will require adding more channels. Complement this with market research that helps validate the shifts in customer journeys you’ve perceived.

Next, consider the impact of your eCommerce evolution on your team. A composable commerce platform or headless CMS, for example, could provide greater uptime, faster upgrades, and more manageable growth. This is the thinking behind what is now known as MACH principles, where architecture is microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native, and headless.

Best practices in adopting either headless or composable commerce architecture

There is no uniform IT playbook that’s specific to composable commerce vs. headless architecture. In general, though, you’ll want to:

1. Plan based on reduced manual effort

Greater agility should not come at the expense of increased time and effort from internal resources. While a headless CMS and a composable commerce platform can bring a lot of efficiencies, there can still be considerable integration and orchestration work involved. Look for a trusted partner with the experience and solutions that will ease the transition and set you up for greater flexibility in the long term.

2. Expect a continued diversification of online shopping channels

With more consumers using their smartphones to shop than ever before, you’ll need an eCommerce platform able to support advanced sales and marketing tools such as Local Inventory Ads (LIAs). At the same time, more online marketplaces are being introduced every year to target specific geographies or niche interests. Determine how, if you migrate to composable commerce, you can keep ahead of these new needs and channels.

3. Keep your options open with APIs

Your preferred architectural approach will lead to a more bespoke strategy based on your data, your maturity in managing product catalogs, existing CMS, and many other details. What you can be sure of, however, is that the need to sync APIs transcends the headless vs. composable commerce debate.

Decoupling the front and back end of your eCommerce website and embracing APIs, for instance, could be a starting point to introducing greater composability throughout your tech stack.

4. Treat use cases as an opportunity to test and learn

Even if you have specific eCommerce outcomes you’re trying to achieve, you should migrate to composable commerce or headless commerce with care. It’s not like flipping a switch.

A pilot project based on adding a single new digital channel could provide insight into what you’ll need to change or do differently. These learnings will make it easier as you standardize on a headless or composable commerce architecture. You’ll also be able to set more ambitious targets to maximize the potential of specific use cases.

5. Think of continuous improvement as a metric

Brands always want to do better in terms of serving their customers, but they don’t always measure it.

If you migrate to composable commerce, you can use cost, time to execute, and degree of internal efforts as part of a more holistic continuous improvement metric. In other words, resolving the headless vs. composable commerce debate is really about overcoming the rigidity of traditional eCommerce architecture.

Why does composable commerce matter?

Online shopping is only going to get more competitive, just as customer expectations are only going to rise.

A composable commerce platform gives you a foundation to address both of those business issues at once, especially when you have help to get you there.

Suvae.org, for example, can play a pivotal role as you migrate to composable commerce or headless commerce. Our product feed management and social commerce solutions are designed to simplify integration with third-party marketplaces and digital channels.

On the other hand, the orchestration capabilities of Suvae.org can reduce the complexity of putting together different parts of a composable architecture instance.

In fact, Suvae.org can be classified as a vertical composable commerce platform because our solutions are wholly focused on commerce channels, rather than integrations pertaining to systems such as the PIM or ERP.

Let’s talk about how we can get your journey to headless or composable commerce started.

The post Composable commerce vs headless: Which to use and why appeared first on Suvae.org.

It’s that moment when you see customer expectations changing and you’re forced to look at the technology you have in place to serve them. In many cases, this will often include a collection of on-premise digital applications and various cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools.

Companies can often spend a long time trying to weave these technologies together on their own. As those efforts become more complex, the value and need for integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) becomes impossible to ignore.

What is the difference between iPaaS and SaaS?

Most likely you’ve been a SaaS user long before you’ve explored the benefits of iPaaS. If you use Google Docs, for instance, you’re using SaaS. The same goes for cloud-based versions of productivity tools such as Microsoft’s Office 365, storage systems like DropBox or even marketing automation platforms to send e-mail newsletters.

SaaS applications are popular because they’re typically easier to deploy than on-premise software, and instead of paying a fixed cost you can opt for a subscription that provides ongoing updates.

The phrase “integration platform-as-a-service” sounds similar to SaaS, but its purpose is to bring otherwise siloed applications and data together.

What is Integration Platform as a Service and how it works?

Companies use iPaaS to work with application programming interfaces (APIs) to either sync data that lives across multiple SaaS tools or to move data from between SaaS and on-premise tools.

Centralizing the way SaaS and on-premise applications and data are managed means companies can rely on a more consistent experience and share information with ease.

Think of all the tools you have in place as if they were spokes on a wheel, performing all the functions you need to keep your business running. Leveraging the power of iPaaS is like putting a hub in the middle of all those spokes, where the data and features can be orchestrated to ensure they work harmoniously and are available through the right system or device.

How can iPaaS benefit your organization

Moving to iPaaS means you’re going to free up any in-house resources, such as developers, who were responsible for trying to integrate disparate applications as your business grows. That means they’ll have more time to create a better customer-facing mobile app, company website, or other project.

Using iPaaS also means you’re less likely to experience errors in your business based on incomplete or out-of-date data that wasn’t shared properly across systems. This makes it easier to have anyone perform basic tasks (like contacting a customer), regardless of their department or role.

The efficiency of syncing on-premise and SaaS tools can also mean you’ll see a greater return on investment (ROI) from your existing technology stack. At the same time, it also means you’ll be in a better position to capitalize on innovative new services because you won’t be worried about how they’ll integrate with what’s already there.

3 categories of iPaaS providers

Finding a trusted provider of iPaaS requires recognizing the nature of your business, your team, and your biggest needs. The iPaaS companies that work in this area tend to tall into one of the following categories:

1. Enterprise iPaaS
   These are the companies with end-to-end solutions that can work with the largest companies, regardless of the complexity of their tech stack. They may offer highly bespoke or customized solutions depending on your desired workflows and the APIs that need to be created or leveraged. These are sometimes called “True iPaaS” providers.
2. DIY iPaaS
   These providers offer simple, easy-to-use tools that allow companies to manage many of their own integration needs. You might be able to simply use drag-and-drop features to connect systems and data, for example. In other cases setting up workflows is a matter of pointing and clicking.
3. Vertical iPaaS
   Also known as industry-specific iPaaS, these providers have deep domain expertise in specific markets and niches. Examples could include retail, manufacturing, or human capital management.

How do I choose an integration platform as a service?

Start your journey to iPaaS by taking an assessment of your existing tech stack and the degree of complexity you’re experiencing. Where are the areas where data or tools are disconnected? How does that impact the employee or customer experience?

Next, think through how you see your business evolving over the next 12 months and beyond. What new tools or capabilities are you likely to need or want to introduce? If you’re not sure, think of overall business goals such as revenue targets. How likely is it you’ll need additional technologies to reach those targets? The more you add to your list, the more important finding an iPaaS provider becomes.

Finally, reach out to prospective iPaaS companies and have them help you evaluate your business case for iPaaS. Ask about any case studies they can offer on similar projects they’ve done in your industry. Check into their track record in areas such as security and compliance.

Why choose Suvae.org as your iPaaS Provider?

As a SaaS provider of solutions in areas such as product feed management, digital marketing, and local inventory advertising, Suvae.org has learned directly from some of the world’s leading luxury and fashion brands about the importance of an integrated tech stack.

This is why we focus on providing iPaaS for Commerce, helping bring together solutions such as an organization’s eCommerce tools, product information management (PIM) solutions, order management, and more.

Brands come to Suvae.org because we can help with some of their most mission-critical challenges, such as integrating a marketplace with an order management cloud service, or eCommerce platforms with a PIM solution.

Perhaps even more importantly, companies trust Suvae.org to help them collect and merge partial feed data from cloud inventory systems such as Salesforce, prices from ERP systems, and catalogs from master data management (MDM) servers. The result is a unified product data stream to different SaaS tools to make their digital marketing efforts successful.

Providing a great customer experience is as important to us as it is to the brands we serve. That’s why we don’t require integration services to be installed on-premise, and we offer pre-packaged component adapters to facilitate robust and risk-free integrations. If you’re worried about the complexity of software integration, we also make it simple by managing orchestration via existing component adapters and script languages or templates.

We think of Highstreet’s iPaaS as taking an “assembly” approach to integration – building flexible, fast solutions on tested components rather than a costly or time-consuming approach that depends on switching software solutions.

iPaaS Solutions: Unlock your data to empower sales

Of course, the end result of moving to iPaaS should always stay top of mind. For most companies, that means driving more purchases and loyalty from customers. Once you have iPaaS in place, you can continue selling with greater confidence that you’re making the most of your technology investments.

Ready to get started? Connect with us to learn more about Suvae.org’s integration-as-a-service capabilities today.

The post How iPaaS Brings it all Together for eCommerce Growth appeared first on Suvae.org.

This is the next major evolution for many companies in their digital transformation. For decades, many brands run their applications on-premises, with all the maintenance and security issues that are entailed. The development of cloud computing changed that, opening up opportunities to reimagine the way they use applications through what’s become known as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Today, most major retailers and brands probably have many SaaS applications in place. This includes software that powers departments such as HR, finance, marketing, and sales.

What is a SaaS integration platform?

SaaS has brought a host of benefits to organizations, from more predictable costs to faster updates and reduced workloads for IT departments. To maximize the potential of SaaS, however, applications need to be able to connect and share data easily and seamlessly.

SaaS integration platforms were designed to address this issue and mitigate the risk that applications will function as a new form of business silo.

Imagine if your sales and marketing teams were never able to discuss their work with each other, for example. It would probably lead to duplication of effort, errors, and failure to meet the brand’s overall business objectives. SaaS applications need to “speak” to each other in much the same way.

While some organizations may look to deploy and manage SaaS integration platforms on their own, working with a SaaS integration partner can allow you to tap into the expertise of a trusted third party to unify applications faster and with greater reliability.

Here are some examples of popular SaaS tools that benefit from integration with other applications:

Salesforce

The concept of a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system was pioneered by Salesforce, and it has continued to innovate with tools such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Integrating Salesforce with other platforms ensures you have a holistic view of your customer experience and can better identify your most valuable customers while cutting back on repetitive tasks.

Shopify

Countless merchants depend on Shopify to provide the foundation for their eCommerce business. However, connecting Shopify to other applications allows for greater order processing and inventory management. Integrating Shopify with a CRM, ERP or other platforms can also reduce the manual re-entry of data from one system to another.

Magento

Sometimes known as Adobe Commerce, Magento allows you to build multi-channel experiences for both consumers and B2B customers. Integrating Magento with the rest of your SaaS tools will keep team members in other lines of business on the same page as you’re developing your growth strategy.

5 things to look for in a SaaS integration partner

When you’re sourcing the right company to assist with integrating your SaaS applications, make sure to consider:

How to develop an effective SaaS integration partnership

You might have different goals for each of the SaaS tools you’ve deployed – some might have been intended to extend your reach within your target market, for instance, while others were about driving more business within your existing base. The objectives for integrating these tools will be a little different, but will still tie to bottom-line benefits such as:

Accurate and updated inventories

Customers are shopping with you in “real-time,” and the information about the stock you have on hand should be real-time too. That’s only possible by integrating omnichannel SaaS inventory systems and ERP systems. This allows you to synchronize multiple sources of inventory data across digital marketing channels and marketplaces and give customers confidence when they’re browsing for potential purchases.

Flexible views of business data

You need to show compelling content about your product catalog to consumers via digital marketing channels on the front end. On the back end, you need to be able to drill down into data about pricing and inventory to make strategic business decisions about products you’re selling via online marketplaces. You get that kind of dynamic capability by integrating myriad SaaS product information management (PIM) solutions.

Enhanced efficiency across your ecosystem

The complexity involved in quickly integrating retail content with eCommerce websites can eat up valuable time your IT department could be spending in other areas of the business. Better to ask your integration partner to take the lead on synchronizing your PIMs and eCommerce solutions based on the business rules that align with your brand’s unique strategy.

SaaS integration is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be a chore. Contact Suvae.org to learn how we help leading fashion brands bring their applications together for greater success.

The post SaaS Integration Platforms: A Primer For Growing Brands appeared first on Suvae.org.

It begins when the customer is drawn to the brand through its marketing efforts — storytelling that convinces someone they’d look good in a cashmere sweater or a pair of designer shoes.

Once they’ve reached the point of completing their order, the conversation takes a different form. This is where the brand is expected to anticipate the customer’s expectations on getting the right product and having it delivered promptly.

For many online retailers, platforms such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud have become a powerful way to ensure a seamless shopping journey across their website, mobile and social channels. To truly grow their business and enhance customer experiences, however, they sometimes need more.

The Case For Adding Marketing Automation And Analytics to Commerce

According to a recent survey from market research firm Gartner, for example, 86% of marketing leaders believe digital commerce is becoming their most important sales channel. However, an even larger proportion (89%) said they need to evolve current digital business capabilities to produce more tangible results.

This includes marketing automation that can help them manage everything from digital ads to sending promotions via e-mail. The addition of predictive analytics capabilities opens up even greater opportunities to personalize e-commerce and get ahead of customer needs.

Salesforce offers solutions in both of these areas with Marketing Cloud and Einstein. With Marketing Cloud, Salesforce has developed capabilities to allow brands to segment and target their most valuable customers, manage content and build more cohesive journeys.

Einstein builds upon Marketing Cloud by using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine learning. This allows brands to pair customer profiles with algorithms that ensure they’re seeing the content that is most relevant based on their interests.

Recent research suggests brands who have already been using Salesforce Commerce Cloud to grow their e-commerce presence will soon be looking at how to layer Marketing Cloud and Einstein into their tech stack. A study from AllCloud, for example, found that 93% of organizations across all industries said they will adopt additional Salesforce products within the next year.

Technical Barriers (And How To Overcome Them)

Brands who take this route need to ensure they do so without introducing unnecessary complexity into their operations. This can be particularly difficult for brands that may lack the internal IT resources or expertise necessary to achieve their business goals with Salesforce technology.

While e-commerce represents a global opportunity for many luxury retailers, for instance, that means they need to provide rich catalog data to serve audiences across multiple countries.
This data is the basis for what brands will serve through marketing channels, but the feed formats required for use with Marketing Cloud and Einstein are highly complicated.

Highstreet’s feedless integration for Salesforce Commerce Cloud has already helped fashion companies and other online retailers simplify the way they manage catalog data, while also supporting business rules that respond to changes in customer demand.

The same integration can help companies as they add Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Einstein by re-aggregating standard feeds into multi-market feeds. This creates a single, horizontal feed that brings greater efficiency than a more vertical approach.

Overcoming the technical barriers to connecting Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Einstein will bring brands a step closer to fully scalable, frictionless eCommerce. That means the conversation between brands and customers will become richer and more dynamic than ever before.

Learn about how retailers like Browns are accelerating growth with HighStreet’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration.

The post Why Marketing And AI Make Commerce Cloud Even Stronger appeared first on Suvae.org.

Even as economies gradually reopen and COVID-19 is contained, the pandemic forced a shift to digital channels — and consumer shopping habits — that is here to stay.

In their 2021 Evolution of Stores report, for example, market researcher Retail Economics and legal firm Eversheds Sutherland found online sales of clothing rocketed by £2.7 billion over the past year in Europe alone. While e-commerce was originally forecast to overtake in-store purchases by 2025, the research suggested it could happen as early as next year.

The explosion in e-commerce activity is not confined to local customers, either. In a study of cross-border shopping activity based on a survey of 22,000 consumers in 11 countries 68% of consumers made e-commerce purchases outside of their home country in 2020. Total cross-border eCommerce is up 74% year-on-year from data reported in the first four months of 2021, which suggests buying behaviors that began amid the pandemic will continue.

Increased demand should be cause for optimism, but many fashion retailers are struggling to meet it and are pulling back instead. When consulting firm McKinsey and The Business of Fashion asked how brands are predicting what they’ll need to stock, 61% said they are planning to reduce the number of SKUs.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud Platform To Accelerate B2C Online Retail

A more viable strategy to expand sales worldwide is readily available through Salesforce Commerce Cloud — as long as brands have the plan to address the integration of their sales and marketing channels.

Much like its other products, Salesforce runs Commerce Cloud on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis, using technology it gained through the acquisition of Demandware in 2016.

With marquee brands such as Marks & Spencer and L’Oréal and Coca-Cola, Salesforce Commerce Cloud has a proven track record in helping unify buying experiences across websites, social channels, and mobile apps. Continuous updates also make Salesforce Commerce Cloud a way for retailers to stay on top of improvements they’ll need to add to their e-commerce capabilities.

That said, deploying Salesforce Commerce Cloud is not without its challenges, particularly for larger or more complex brands with international ambitions.

A major fashion retailer might need to be able to offer products in 25 different markets. That means taking the time and effort necessary to export rich product data sets to the appropriate channels. The information involved could range from:

• Images
• Descriptions
• Categories
• Pricing

Some products may also have very different taxonomies to map onto various channels, all of which have to be gathered from disparate sources and then merged to create a product record. All of this can take substantial time away from other activities that could help enhance operations or grow revenue.

Creating product records for Salesforce Commerce Cloud can also mean tailoring them based on business rules. Some products might be subject to frequent inventory refreshes (if they’re popular items, for example), while other catalog data might remain consistent for longer periods.

Product records will also be affected by sales and marketing tactics aimed at bringing value to the business, such as promotions or special sales. Any failure to keep this kind of data accurate could have a devastating effect on the customer experience and as a result the bottom line.

Salesforce has provided REST APIs for B2C Commerce services for many years through its Open Commerce API (OCAPI). However, the significant GET operations that would be involved could jeopardize the performance of the platform.

Traditional And Dynamic Ways To Approach Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration

This is where many brands look to trusted partners to provide Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration services.

The most traditional approach would involve developing a Salesforce Commerce Cloud cartridge to programmatically compute objects. These could include master catalogs, storefronts, price books, inventory, promotions, and more. These would be streamed out as an XML, CSV, or JSON feed. The trade-off with this strategy is the potential lack of flexibility in content formats and exported content, as well as the need to create new fields to extend the cartridge software as business needs change. It can also be a CPU-intensive process.

A more dynamic web services-based approach would involve using OCAPI or other custom-developed and product-oriented APIs to have client applications retrieve individual product data. This would only work for delta operations such as infrequent OCAPI calls. Commerce Cloud also lacks the notifications that would allow for delta feeds. Full feed exports, meanwhile, are generally discouraged based on the computational strain they could cause.

A More Efficient Way To Successfully Integrate With Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Fortunately, there’s a third option to integrate sales and marketing channels with Salesforce Commerce Cloud that will strike the right balance between a brand’s business needs and reconciling any legacy IT challenges. Rather than installing cartridges, for example, Highstreet has been able to offer a feed-less integration with Commerce Cloud by sharing only selected raw catalog data through FTP, SFT, or FTPS. This can be done by configuring an Export File Job on SFCC towards an SFCC internal folder or a Suvae.org configured FTP/STP/FTPS folder.

Once parsed, the master catalog object provides the flexibility that brands using Salesforce Commerce Cloud need. This includes supporting business rules around which products are being disabled and which are live based on customer demand. Any changes — such as inventory updates, new products, or product removals —will be automatically synchronized.

Some of the other benefits of this more efficient approach include:

• Providing an association between products on the website vs master catalog objects
• Carrying price lists for each supported country in which a brand operates via e-commerce.
• Offering full visibility into inventory, either based on a specific warehouse or at a country level. This meant not having to cut back on SKUs based on fears of overstocking.
• Fostering true omnichannel e-commerce by exporting SEO-oriented URLs directly from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to wherever a brand’s customers are.

Conclusion

In theory, e-commerce should allow a brand to sell to anything in the world. In practice, it’s easy for small details to get in the way of ensuring customers can buy in the most seamless manner possible. The efficient approach to Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration recognizes that even if you’re selling in multiple countries where people speak the same language, for example, the currencies may be entirely different. That means being able to refresh price books as often as business demands will not only meet customer expectations but give the brand greater agility during critical buying seasons like Black Friday.

Frequent inventory updates, meanwhile, make the efficient approach ideal to integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud with marketplaces that could propel a brand to the next level of growth by an order of magnitude.
Speed and agility will ultimately be the defining traits of brands that sustain a competitive advantage in an increasingly digital economy.

Having worked with more than 50 companies across Canada to integrate their sales and marketing channels with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, we’re excited to help even more organizations capitalize on the growth opportunity ahead of them. Reach out to our team and get started

The post How Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration Transforms Online Sales appeared first on Suvae.org.

Usually brands begin a search for marketplace solutions when they encounter some of the most common roadblocks in trying to create one on their own. While there can be huge opportunities in enhancing the customer experience by curating a range of online sellers, marketplaces require skill to develop and considerable efforts to manage.

Establishing a viable proprietary marketplace means having the ability to easily integrate with a wide range of other company’s product catalogs and data. Customer service expectations can be high, whether you’re providing products to consumers or other businesses. Disjointed order management and failure to keep up with shipping policies are just a few of the pitfalls marketplace owners can encounter.

The Mirakl marketplace platform solves for all of these potential challenges, and more.

What you should know about the Mirakl marketplace platform

Headquartered in Paris with offices in Boston and London, Mirakl describes itself as a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to manage eCommerce marketplaces and drop shipping businesses.

As of 2023, Mirakl powers more than 350 marketplaces around the world. Over the past year it has continued to invest in its platform and features, including the launch of retail media ad solutions, SEO tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and a globally compliant payout tool.

Overall, Mirakl estimates that approximately $6 billion was transacted across its marketplace and dropship solutions in 2022, an increase of more than 43% from the year before.

Deciding upon Mirakl as a marketplace platform solution is only the first step, of course. You also have to consider the fastest and simplest way to connect your product and inventory data, which is where Suvae.org comes in.

How Suvae.org Mirakl integration works

Depending on the number of sellers you’re working with, a proprietary marketplace could be offering consumers or B2B customers thousands of products. Each one of those items is surrounded by a sea of critical data, from product category and specifications to pricing. All of this data needs to be synchronized with a marketplace in “real time” – which can be defined by as little as half an hour or even every 15 minutes.

Suvae.org. can optimize product information in multiple formats through a SaaS data feed platform, coupled with highly technical integration services and a proven track record of experience with the Mirakl marketplace platform.

The process at a high level then looks like this:

1. A customer makes an order on your proprietary marketplace.
2. The seller receives the order through Suvae.org via an application programming interface (API) endpoint, which allows them to take action on the order. They download the order and accept or reject it.
3. Suvae.org synchronizes this information with the marketplace, along with any other subsequent actions such as fulfillment. This includes specific instructions, such as when a customer selects express shipping, for example.
4. If a product needs to be returned, the seller can apply a refund, at which point a request is sent to the marketplace, which processes the transaction with the seller’s customer.

Marketplaces running via Mirakl integration to date

Whether you’re selling luxury goods to fashionable consumers or enterprise products and services to corporate customers, the Mirakl marketplace platform can help further a variety of business objectives. These include not only web site traffic and increased brand awareness but an additional revenue stream that can scale based on demand. Access to insightful and valuable data.

Here are just a few of the consumer brands that have already shifted to a marketplace approach based on Mirakl integration:

• Yoox
• Globus
• Saks
• LaRinascente
• HarveyNichols
• Mango
• HBC

Mirakl B2B marketplaces, meanwhile, include Toyota Material Handling, which connects its customers to sellers of industrial equipment, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) and others.

Assess your Mirakl marketplace readiness

Once you’re ready to explore Mirakl integration, take the time to evaluate the existing technology and data you have in place today, as well as the talent that would be necessary to develop and maintain your marketplace. You’ll also want to weigh the capital investment that may be required, as well as the costs associated with logistics and supply chain management.

Consider some of the following factors as well:

• Are you serving one or more niches where a marketplace offering could stand out to your target audience?
• What kind of value-added services, if any, can you provide in addition to offering the marketplace itself?
• What kind of regulatory or legislative issues need to be addressed as part of your expansion?
• How will you measure the success of your marketplace and the vendors with whom you partner?

Finally, ensure your plan incorporates the power of automation, which not only streamlines operational processes and delivers a better customer experience, but can lower overhead. Opportunities to harness automation as part of a marketplace strategy include:

• Integrating with stock systems to ensure accurate and up to date availability of products
• Order management to reduce errors and maximize selling potential
• Synthesizing sales, tax, and shipping data to eliminate manual and time-intensive work.

If you want to super-charge your business growth today, don’t wait for a miracle. Contact us and reach millions of potential customers through Mirakl marketplace integration instead.

The post Mirakl Marketplace Integration Guide For Growing Brands appeared first on Suvae.org.

Our platform allows retailers, brands, and agencies to update, optimize and connect product data from Salesforce to popular platforms like Google Shopping, Facebook Dynamic Ads, Instagram Shoppable Posts, Affiliate Marketing Channels, Retargeting Services, and Comparison Shopping Feeds with Suvae.org.

Keep reading to discover the benefits of Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration and how Suvae.org can help you skyrocket sales by bringing your product’s information to the next level.

Benefits of Salesforce Commerce Cloud Integration for Product Advertising

Retailers using Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) benefit from Suvae.org’s ability to pull the most accurate product data from the platform and synchronize it quickly and effectively to use in online product marketing campaigns.

SFCC processing power is not affected

There are many ways to extract product data from SFCC to use for product advertising. Some integration partners use CPU-intensive processes that require massive calls to Salesforce internal APIs. Suvae.org’s unique integration approach will not affect your processing power. All complex processing and data manipulations occur within the Suvae.org platform.

Keep your campaign product inventory and pricing synchronized frequently

Our integration supports the delivery of product properties that change constantly such as inventory and prices. Our continual product synchronization with SFCC is an effective solution for retailers with highly volatile inventory or ongoing price change requirements (Black Friday or frequent sales).

Easily expand your shopping channels and markets globally

Rely on Suvae.org’s integration approach that supports multi-market product feeds for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Salesforce Predictive Marketing. Leverage our platform’s pre-packaged configurations that connect directly to the product data for each of your markets.

What can a well-configured Salesforce integration do for retailers?

With Suvae.org‘s Salesforce cartridge, retailers can seamlessly connect product feeds from their eCommerce platform to their Salesforce marketing automation solution and marketing channels. Suvae.org’s full-service product feed management and marketplace synchronization platform help clients maximize product visibility by streamlining the syndication of product data to digital marketing channels and online marketplaces. Find out more about how we can help integrate your Salesforce Commerce Cloud with effective shopping channels:

Reach out to our feed management and marketplace integration experts at info@Suvae.org.

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