Recommendations to scale up store with TB?? ERP, WMS...

[rubben1985]

Hi,

We are close to finally launch our products and there are a lot of possibilities that we will need to scale up really fast. My intention is to be prepared for that moment before it arrives.

Any recommendations to scale up TB? For example what ERP do you recommend? Paying tons of money it is possible to integrate a lot of services but doing it correctly and creating an efficient network is not the same. For customer service ticket support we are actually using freshdesk, as CRM freshsales that integrates with freshdesk. For managing the catalogue I am using PS store manager. But, what about:

• Stock management, products tracking, ?

• automated marketing (thinking about sending blue or mautic, even actually using mailchimp)

• Orders management? The interface is ok for very small volume but it will be not good for big volumes (or I ignore a good workflow). ASM is there but is full of bugs and do not have enough tracking (for example, in what orders was sold and specific combination)

• accounting?

The key point here is to create an ""affordable"" well-integrated system (not huge superexpensive complex software for each task). We want to be efficient and not to have a daily frustrations because of a lack of integration.

BTW I am using multistores

Any advice will be really appreciated if someone has experience in medium-big companies using PS-TB environment

[Smile]

Its a kind of difficult to make a choice I did not jet find a good fit for a small ecommerce store with just a few employees and more than 40> orders a day. But still a few leads to go. Will update you when i do find a good fit.

[Gotabor]

Hello @rubben1985 ,

For an ERP I would recommend one that already has compatibility with Prestashop 1.6 since it will cost you less to adapt a plugin to TB that way. And more companies will know the tech. With the company I'm currently working with (around 20 people in it) we are using the ERP SAGE 100C which has plugins compatible with Prestashop 1.6. Since both use MySQL database the data can be cleanly imported from one to another. Well that's the theory at least... Linking those two software is impossible for us because the ERP was there before Prestashop and it's just not written correctly. If we wanted to establish a link at my company that would basically mean recreate either the shop or the ERP from scratch...

So well even if it doesn't directly answer your question I can at least give you a few hints about what you need to be aware of, and what kind of mistakes you need to avoid. Also I never used stock managment or advanced stock managment. So some things I will point might be only relevant for people like me who don't use those features :

1) For the stock always count in bundle EG : If you are selling a box with 100 tennis balls count the stock as 1 box instead of counting 100 balls. And sell them as a single box as well. It's one of the main disagreement I have with our ERP since sometimes products are counted as units and sometimes as a package... Counting by unit can also lead to a customer to buy 150 of them and leave you with 50 balls you don't know what to do with in your stocks... And you can always display the unit price on TB so there is really no reason not to do it.

2) If you are selling custom products Stock management of custom products is kind of messy since you can't possibly have one already in stock. So well just be aware of it and ask the peoples you will hire to have that in mind. Maybe they'll have a good answer for this.

3) For product data (images, description, features) Most ERP should handle the shipping data, the long description and one or maybe more images. But you should be careful if you have combinations and features data. I'm not sure how/if those can be synced.

4) Combinations : If you have them, a headhache is awaiting you EG : You have a provider called Superhat ; this company sell you beautiful caps in green red and blue. In TB your product will probably be a single one with 3 combinations. But on your ERP it might be 3 separated products since your provider will have 3 references for them. Then again maybe advanced stock managment can handle this, but since we never used it...

5) Shipping There is two ways to have a fluent shipping process ; either you have a module for your favorite transport company on TB and print the adresses from there. In which case you'll need to transfer the data from TB to the ERP. Or the opposite, your shipping company is compatible with the ERP so you deal with printing on it and then develop a feature to update the order status on TB and link the shipping number to your customer.

6) For customers account most ERP are using client codes. It's a good practice and a good thing to sync data beetween ERP and shop since there cannot be the same code twice. We are using the private comment ("note" field in the database) to register the code in prestashop. Also you can add this field to the order list of the shop pretty easily. You could also use the ID client generated by TB, but that would mean gaps in ID if a customer register on your website but do not buy anything.

7) Data input in the ERP If you sync the data especially for product or customer, please make sure that the people inputting the data don't have the cap lock activated all day on their keyboard... It's my case and well do you really want to import 10000 products with all of them having a title written in capitals and half of them with product data like height and weight in the title ? Well I don't... And customers will probably run if they see this anyway...

That's all I can think of now, I'll edit my post if I remember anything more about this project. Hope this will help you.

[rubben1985]

Thanks @Gotabor for the elaborate explanation! I will take your advice into account :) Anyone knows a good ERP compatible with PS/TB? The solutions I have found seems quite limited, almost like very big modules or they use connectors that a lot of people have problems with.

[Smile]

Did anyone consider an open source WMS? Or has experience?