A major consideration when creating an online store is connecting it to other applications required by your business. You may have a Quickbooks account that needs to be directly integrated with your Ecommerce store. Similarly, your Neatoscan inventory management software must be synced to the website for accurate stock levels. This may seem daunting, but fortunately Magento is more than ready to handle whatever integration challenge you may throw at it.
Off the shelf Magento integration
While WooCommerce may have many advantages over Magento in terms of cost and complexity, that same complexity becomes extremely useful when your business benefits from it. There are numerous third party applications that have pre-existing integrations with Magento ready for use, saving you significant time and development costs. A few of the more popular examples include the SalesForce customer relationship management (CRM) solution; Vertex tax management software; the SAP enterprise resource planner (ERP); and the Quickbooks accounting suite to name a few.
Custom Magento API integration
If your third party software does not offer a Magento integration solution, building one is relatively straightforward. Magento 2 has an extremely robust native method for updating most anything that you may need to update from an external data source. The Application Programming Interface (API) inherent to Magento contains a dizzying array of methods to connect the Magento site to whatever application you need. For example, if your third party software requires access to customer addresses to create a mailing list, the Magento API has a well-documented resource explaining exactly how to do so. A knowledgeable and experienced Magento developer can use the API to create connections that will suit your business needs perfectly.
Integrating Magento beyond APIs
There are occasions when your third party vendor cannot use Magento’s built in APIs directly. Perhaps they are required to send data via FTP files instead of direct API calls. Ingram’s massive collection of book publishing metadata is one such example of periodic FTP updates. If so, Magento can be extended to accommodate these export and import requests. We have developed a solution to integrate a Magento site with three simultaneous third party platforms for inventory management, product details, and shipment notifications all using CSV files and FTP. Solutions like this require a significant amount of development and testing, but Magento is powerful and flexible enough to accommodate almost any possible integration.
If you are in the process of standing up an Ecommerce site but are intimidated by the idea of connecting it to all of your third party services, drop us a line and we’ll help guide you through the process.