Online commerce is currently one of the largest industries globally, where startups to large-scale enterprises are adopting digital commerce platforms as one of their core channels for carrying out business. While there exist several platforms to get started with eCommerce, when it comes to online marketplaces there is no bigger name than Amazon. Through Amazon Seller Central, Amazon provides a digital interface for brands and vendors to directly market and sell their products to the wider customer base shopping through Amazon. With over 220 million unique visitors on Amazon, the platform offers wider exposure to merchants expanding their operations into online marketplaces. However, the platform alone cannot manage the operations of a company. Amazon Seller Central integration with other line-of-business applications thus becomes prudent to ensure automation and faster business processing. Let us take a deep dive into what Amazon Seller Central is and how its integration can unlock previously untapped business potential!
Table of Contents
What is Amazon Seller Central and What are its Benefits
Amazon Seller Central is an online platform provided by Amazon to brands and retailers to directly market and sell globally through their website. Sellers directly list their products with the respective item descriptions, prices, etc., and through the Seller Central dashboard monitor and manage inventory, pricing, and advertising. The platform also provides sellers with options on how to manage the logistics for their order fulfillment. Through Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA), the inventory stocking and the order delivery process is managed by Amazon, while with Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) the vendor manages the order fulfillment.
Advantages of Amazon Seller Central for Businesses
Go-to eCommerce platform for customers
Amazon is a globally trusted platform and is the go-to website for customers to search for a product. With Amazon.com garnering over 2 billion combined desktop and mobile visits every month, companies selling through Amazon drastically increase the likelihood of their products getting discovered. Selling through Amazon also helps build trust for the buyers, increasing the chances of purchase.
Access to a worldwide market
With Amazon, the seller is not limited to marketing and selling their goods to the limited region of their locality. Amazon’s logistics network for worldwide delivery enables a seller to not only sell on a national level but to expand their operations to a global scale as well.
Flexibility in order fulfillment
As we have previously discussed, Amazon offers flexible options for vendors to deliver their orders. The option to either ship through Amazon or have the merchant make the order fulfillment themselves allows the seller to choose the delivery option that is best suited for the order. Through self-delivery, the merchant uses their own delivery service or contracts a third-party delivery service for the shipping. Fulfilled by Amazon, on the other hand, takes care of the entire logistics process from inventory storage to shipping and upon order delivery, transfers the payment to the seller’s registered bank account.
Easier scalability for businesses
With the option provided by Amazon for managing the storage of inventory and shipment, businesses do not have to focus on spending resources to increase their inventory space, workforce, and other logistics, as all of it gets managed by Amazon. This allows for easier scalability and expansion of operations.
Targeted marketing to customers
Having a targeted marketing strategy for a product is necessary for increasing sales. Amazon’s marketing algorithm directs relevant advertisements to customers who are searching for such products and are interested in buying them, making the marketing process more targeted and optimizing the ROI (Return on Investment).
In the following sections, we will discuss how the integration of Amazon Seller Central with the back-end ERP solution can enable companies to streamline their operations and achieve automation of their business processes.
Achieving Business Process Automation Through ERP and Amazon Seller Central Integration
With the vast volume of data generated while operating through Amazon Seller Central, ensuring workflow agility and flexibility is impossible without automation. Automation through integration eliminates data redundancies and input errors, streamlines all eCommerce processes, removes the need for a bigger workforce to manage bulk processes, and increases time-to-market speeds. Amazon Seller Central integration with an ERP application brings in the advantages of automation needed to gain a competitive edge. Integration of an ERP with Amazon Seller Central enables streamlining of business workflows across the entire software stack and makes them work in synchronization.
If you are using Amazon Seller Central to run online your business and want to seamlessly connect it with your entire software stack under a single, intelligent, and secure platform to automate your business processes, implement APPSeCONNECT’s robust Amazon SC integration connectors and achieve exponential growth in your business.
The advantages offered by Amazon Seller Central and ERP integration include:
Reduced Cost of Manual Workflow
The back-end ERP solution needs to keep track of all the transactions taking place through the webstore to store, manage and communicate the customer data to other applications in the system to complete the order. Without automation that can systematically transfer all the relevant information, the order data must be transferred manually across the applications. For a smaller volume of orders, manual management without errors is possible, however with escalating numbers of orders ensuring speed of data transfer while ensuring its accuracy becomes unmanageable without increasing the workforce of the organization. Amazon Seller Central integration with an ERP automates the data entry process and reduces the workforce needed.
Improved Time to Market
Manual data listing item data to the Amazon webstore and then updating to the ERP platform is a time taking process. Multiple parameters such as product description, price list, inventory levels, etc. Valuable time lost in manually updating those data can slow down time to market, preventing businesses from capitalizing on fast-changing consumer trends. With an automated Amazon Seller Central integration with the ERP system, all data gets updated instantaneously which causes negligible delays and increases faster time to market for businesses.
Elimination of Data Redundancies
Having a human element in the bulk repetitive process of transferring data across multiple systems also increases the risk of errors in data entry. Any manual errors entered in the network get perpetuated across all systems making it extremely difficult and time consuming to identify the error source and rectify it. By offloading the data synchronization to automation and removing the human element from the process, any scenario of data redundancy gets removed.
Improved Analytics
Selling to a global market through Amazon generates vast volumes of data regarding purchasing trends based on demographics and geographical locations. The data accumulated from in-demand products, products that are in inventory, customer demographic, customer feedback, orders placed, orders shipped, orders delivered, transactions completed, etc., can provide several actionable insights if it is converted into proper analytics. With an integrated system, all this raw data is processed and updated instantaneously, providing ready access to analytics for data-driven strategic business decision-making.
Increased Sales Conversation
The primary goal of any vendor is to convert customers visiting their Amazon webstore into buyers purchasing their products. Through integration between an ERP platform and Amazon Seller Central, the process of converting prospective customers into buyers can be more streamlined and focused. This is achieved by recording and processing data regarding the webstore visitors through the ERP platform and then uploading the data to CRM software to enable respective teams to focus coordination on converting these potential leads into actual customers. The targeted marketing approach focused on support and effective communications brought on by data integration provides increased customer satisfaction and increases revenue through repeated returning customers.
Amazon Seller Central Integration with ERP Use Case – SAP ECC and Amazon Seller Central Integration
When it comes to ERP platforms, SAP ECC is one of the leading ERP solutions in the market. It was one of the pioneers of ERP solutions and has grown to become the technological backbone for enterprises across the globe. The solution provides increased scalability and mobility in the core back-end business processes of an organization such as cutting costs through end-to-end procurement and logistics processing, automating financial operations and regulatory compliance, and many more. Through the Amazon Seller Central integration with SAP ECC, the functionalities of both platforms can be expanded and optimized to increase the productivity of a company’s eCommerce operations. Through the integration between the applications, data from the following parameters get synchronized:
Customers
The SAP ECC ERP and Amazon Seller Central integration assists with several customer-associated functionalities, which can be chosen as a combination based on the specific requirements and nature of the business.
A core feature brought on by the integration is the synchronization of Amazon Seller central customer Data from Order Information to SAP ECC as a standalone customer having PII Information for FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) with a contact number while for FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is done without a contact number while the Address Details gets synchronized within the SAP ECC for every Order individually.
Items
The integration also allows users to manage the entire structure and the product listing for the Amazon Seller Central webstore directly within SAP ECC. Some of the parameters that can be directly managed through SAP ECC for Amazon Seller Central include:
- Product Listing
Product details like pricing, weight, descriptions and other specifications get automatically synchronized and listed under Amazon Seller Central categories and subcategories as they are stored within the SAP ECC database. The prices for the products get updated by simulating the pricing process established inside the SAP ECC implementation. The integration also allows the maintenance of the relationship between Simple and Variant products. - Price Update
Bi-directional data sync through the integration allows for instantaneous updates of item pricing from SAP ECC to the Amazon Seller Central front end. The updated pricing is retrieved by stimulating as it would have been created within SAP ECC. This is enabled by a feature where the price is simulated by using a pricing procedure pre-defined within the ERP, which then updates the price accordingly. This allows for exclusive discounts based on seasons or order volume to be calculated inside SAP ECC and simultaneously be shown to the customer at Amazon Seller Central’s front end. - Product Images
Product images that are stored inside SAP ECC get automatically synchronized to the Amazon Seller Central webstore. Custom URLs for products maintained in SAP also get embedded into the Amazon product information page.
Inventory
Integration offers streamlined management of inventory data between SAP ECC and Amazon Seller Central for both FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant) and FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). For FBM, inventory availability is maintained by the merchant regardless of whether they are selling through Amazon’s website or through other retail channels while for FBA, Amazon Seller Central will be automatically updated with the latest stock value from SAP ECC. The inventory is taken as an unrestricted quantity available in the configured plant and storage location within SAP ECC corresponding to the Amazon Seller Central store.
Orders
Through SAP ECC and Amazon Seller Central integrations orders placed on Amazon Seller Central get automatically synchronized to SAP ECC. They are transmitted to SAP from Amazon Seller Central in a periodic manner. If the integration is done through a smart iPaaS platform the following aspects will also be calculated before getting inserted into the SAP ECC database:
- Determine the Order Status.
- Determine the Shipping Status of the Order
- Determining the order’s Create Date, Update Date, and Shipping Date
- Check if the order is from Prime or Non-prime members.
- Determine if any discounts in Amazon Seller Central must be passed to SAP ECC
- Identify the Amazon Seller Central order number in the Purchase Order field of the SAP order.
The data integration also synchronizes several parameters for customers, order, and item information such as:
- Item quantity
- Total order cost
- Customer payment method
- Tax information.
- Order total calculation
- Web order status update
Exact value mapping of tax and shipping methods are ensured for proper order total calculation while converting web orders into SAP ECC sales orders. For the case of offline payments, the Invoice will be generated within SAP ECC and will be synchronized to Amazon Seller Central through IDOCs/PO/PI.
Order Fulfillment
Information regarding both FBM and FBA order shipment is streamlined, where order fulfillment for FBM can be done through SAP ECC which gets synced to Amazon Seller Central through the Tracking Number and Carrier information while for FBA, the Shipping Labels get printed the FBA fee and Inventory Reports are synchronized from Amazon directly into SAP ECC after the shipment reaches the Amazon Seller Central warehouse. Shipment notifications can be automated to be triggered and can be selected to be shown once a day or every three, eight, or twelve hours based on requirements. Whenever these triggers run, any shipment reports generated for FBA will be transferred to SAP ECC and the tracking details will be applied to those orders.
Payments and Refunds
Automation through SAP ECC and Amazon Seller Central integration also helps in the management of payments and reconciliation of individual payments with the Financial Events and Transactions being fetched from Amazon Seller Central synchronized to SAP ECC based on the requirements of the business to streamline the accounting and tax documentation to be maintained accurately.
Management of charges for the reconciliation of payments is a major part of operating with Amazon Seller Central. Through SAP ECC integration, flexible mapping of charges can be implemented for Amazon Seller Central to improve the reconciliation of charges.
Alongside SAP ECC, SAP Business One is another ERP solution used widely across the industry by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for managing their enterprise workflows. Deploying a pre-configured integration between the two applications through an Amazon Seller Central and SAP Business One connector can offer similar above-mentioned advantages to smaller enterprises as well.
If you are using Amazon Seller Central to run online your business and want to seamlessly connect it with your entire software stack under a single, intelligent, and secure platform to automate your business processes, implement APPSeCONNECT’s robust Amazon SC integration connectors and achieve exponential growth in your business.
The All-New Amazon SP API and How it Affects Amazon Seller Central Integration with Third-Party Applications
What is Amazon SP API?
The Amazon Seller Partner (SP) API is the new Amazon API infrastructure that replaces the existing outdated Amazon MWS and AFS API. The new REST-based Amazon SP API brings an updated approach for business automation, third-party application integration, analytics, and actionable insights. With the new API, vendors conducting business through Amazon will be able to gain a significant boost to their selling efficiency and data security with the modernized REST API protocols. The features of REST-compliant resources, implementation of OAuth 2.0, the ability for developers to create multiple applications with varying levels of access and a dedicated sandbox testing environment will allow improved flexibility of operation and deployment of integrations.
The Importance of SP API for Amazon Seller Central Integration
With the new Amazon SP API operating with standard REST protocols, Amazon Seller Central integration of third-party applications will become more streamlined and allow automated bidirectional data transfer across all connected applications. The API will allow developers to create integration packages for both sellers and vendors, which was not previously supported by the MWS API. With the older API architecture, Amazon vendors had a complex workflow to access their business data, which has been now streamlined through the SP API. The key advantages of streamlined integration that the new Amazon SP API brings include:
- The REST-compliant system allows easier data access and modification through standard HTTP methods.
- Implementation of OAuth 2.0 eliminates the need for manual exchange of auth tokens.
- The API allows developers to create multiple applications with varying levels of access to selling partner data.
- Finer control over data access, where selling partners can grant permissions at the API section, operation, or data resource level to the developer.
- Allows direct procurement and management of authentication credentials using AWS (Amazon Web Services) Identity and Access Management (IAM).
The above new functionalities render the older API obsolete and Amazon shutting down support for it from September 31st, 2022, sellers and vendors need to rapidly shift to an integration platform that offers in-depth robust support for the new Amazon SP API. Having an intelligent low-code integration platform that is compliant with the new API, allows faster, seamless and streamlined integration for Amazon and is a must-have to drive rapid scalable growth
Conclusion
With vendors looking to tap into the highly profitable digital marketplace of Amazon, they are also facing newer challenges in carrying out their operations. Increasing competition, managing vast data volumes, maintaining regional compliances when selling to different geographical clusters, and adjusting to changing fee types, all of them introduce challenges to a business that requires additional resources, infrastructure, and workforce for smooth operations. Through a system that integrates Amazon Seller Central with a back-end ERP solution, companies can achieve flexibility of operation and deliver to market faster, without the need for additional overhead expenditures to accomplish it. With business process automation being the future of the industry, Amazon Seller Central integration is the need of the hour for every vendor running their businesses through it.
Seamlessly connect your entire software stack under a single, intelligent, and secure platform to automate your business processes – implement APPSeCONNECT’s robust Amazon SC integration connectors and achieve exponential growth in your business.
