Order Management systems

[richfromessex]

We set up an ecommerce biz about 2 years ago and our T/O for year 2 is approacking £3m average order size £35. this means we process lots of orders. We also have 2 more sites going live in Jan that we expect similar volumes from.

We have been looking for 18 months for a decent order management system that will manage orders aqnd purchasing, refunds etc for these multiple channels. Including eBay.

Does anyone have any experiences they can share on this subject?

 

[mikewev]

In my experience when you get to your size you need to seriously think about a specialist order processing package as most ecommerce order processing functionallity tends to be fairly limited. You need a system that can fully integrate with your ecommerce front end and provide order management, purchasing, stock control etc etc. I have direct experience of using a product from Keystone Software called Khaos Control but there are several others. Whichever you chose be prepared for some major pain as transitioning to these packages can be a major job. I'd be happy to share may experiences with you, we made lots of mistakes so you need to do a lot of planning to make the transition a success. What are you using for your ecommerce front end ?

 

[richfromessex]

Thanks Mike

Just to clarify we are not looking at a cart solution for this, we are happy with with our tecg choice for cart system (Magento Enterprise).

We want a solution that scales with us.

There are a few US packages that would fit the bill but dont really integrate with UK payment providers.

We also need integration with eBay UK.

 

[smo]

I am in the process of geting our internal order handling systems replaced at the moment, we currently use a bespoke package and shall be moving over to another bespoke package, most likely written using filemaker.

I have looked at all sorts of mail order processing and handling systems but to make them work as we need to would cost just as amuch as a bespoke system which wouldnt be the result of an off-the shelf + bodge approach.

We take the majority of orders through the post, however about 35-40% is internet based and shall be integrating the new system directly with all 3 of our current websites with capacity to expand as we need.

 

[richfromessex]

Thanks for the replies

We have been looking at various ERP systems and the Magento integration is poor.

What we dont understand is how so many of the products out there handle integration so poorly.

If the cart front is managing the payments, at least initially. There has to be a synchronous process to check payment status before an order leaves the warehouse. Just in case a payment is disputed etc. Not one of the offerings we have seen does this.

 

[richfromessex]

Pod,

we can and do intercept packages in transit.

We dont have many but we dont want to send packages that the payment status has changed on.

I dont really want to go down the bespoke route, as it seems these issues are probably shared by most internet retailers. It stuns me that none of the offerings out there integrate to any reasonable degree.

None of the ERP systems i have seen have both Paypal and Sagepay API integration at the moment. And we would need both.

 

[GoAndPutTheKettleOn]

Why is a company with your supposed t/o even considering an off the shelf package? Get a developer in and make something bespoke.

 

[richfromessex]

Our supposed T/O?

I can give you a big list of reasons

1) Bespoke systems take a huge amount of resources from the designing/requirements and testing phases, far more than the direct cost implies.
2) Bespoke systems, dont have a community of any sort to share issues.
3) It hands a liability to a third party that is not manageable very easily - this is not the case with larger commercially availably products - at least to the same degree.


There are a bunch of other reasons too.

 

[GoAndPutTheKettleOn]

Yes you mentioned £3mill t/o (turnover). I was referring to that as "a company of your size/volume or orders".

I can guarantee you bespoke is t way forward if you are really serious about taking your business the full 9 yards. You think Amazon or Play.com use Magento? It's crap. It's just a heavily marketed software package with which they try to blind you with science into why it's so great. I had a slippery salesman from crearedesign trying to sell it too us.

Yes bespoke takes time and costs money but the results will FAR out weigh any off the shelf package.

I could package and sell our software which took 2 years to develop. But i wont because although it's probably better than anything out there, it's our USP and the back bone of our company. I imagine this is the same for a lot of other large web retail companies that have had bespoke software made.

You mentioned you have been looking around for 18 months? Isn’t this long enough to think that bespoke is the way forth? If you had started bespoke 18 months ago you would have a nice little system running by now.

 

[richfromessex]

GAPTKO

our requirements 18 months ago are knight and day different from what we are looking for now.

Id say confidently that you are incorrect about Magento. Its a great platform for a webstore, especially the fron end. Its the product we have chosen for that explicit purpose and in all the discussions about bespoking a cart solution we never got near the functionality EE gives us.

However we are not looking for a cart solution, but an OMS which is completely different.

 

[GoAndPutTheKettleOn]

Yeh maybe i am too harsh on Magento. If you want to run a nice little website then it's fine. But if you want to be multi platform, dealing with goods in, warehousing, picking, packing, returns, refunds, customer service, sales reporting, the list goes on...then you will need something a lot more than Magento.

I haven’t just come on here to spout off I’m talking from first hand experience. My company started 3 years ago on eBay and we are doing £8mil a year (between 2.5-3000 orders a day), a figure we expect to dwarf over the coming years. Using a bespoke system as the back end to run all our platforms and much more.

We met with companies such as Channel Advisor and E-Seller Pro and although they are ok, they just don’t cover enough.

And what on earth is GAPTKO?

 

[richfromessex]

GAPTKO, its your name !

Do you have a features list and an estimated cost (to you) of your systems?

 

[GoAndPutTheKettleOn]

Ahh my name of course!, sorry I'm a bit slow on the uptake lol

I do have a full spec list for our system yes, it took 2 years in total to develop using our own developer on 25k a year. So I guess you could say it's cost 50k, but now we have a system that does absolutely everything we need it to making our business very scalable. No holding back as it were...

The best thing about it, is that when a new idea pops up our developer just tweaks it and within a day or two we have that new functionality. Say for example when Facebook set up a proper market place we will be on there in a matter of weeks.

I know the thought of 2 years (if you need that much development) and all the wages to go with it are a lot, but you need to think long term.

 

[richfromessex]

Fancy sharing the spec?

We would outsource dev work rather than employing one in house.

I aslo agree with the fliexibility of having a resource. But if they are singular, what happens when they leave?

£25k for a decent dev is nothing and they would always move on at some point.

 

[GoAndPutTheKettleOn]

lol, very sorry but I cant share for obvious reasons.

With regards to outsourcing, we did this at the very start and decided it was much better to employ a developer ourselves and keep it in house.

If you outsource you will be paying a hell of a lot more. I seem to remember development companies charging 2k a week. Also if you put all of your money and ideas into an outsourced system then by rights the development company own the code they have built you and could actually package it up and begin selling it off the back of all your ideas.

I hated the idea of that which is why we pulled the plug on outsourced early on and employed ourselves. I agree 25k is cheap for a developer, I think we got lucky but the pay scale moves with the success of the company through development. Our guy is now on 30k but this will just go up and up.

With regards to them being singular it’s a very good point. We have just been honest with our developer and said to annotate the system code clearly so another developer could pick up from where our current one left off should the "hit by a bus" scenario ever appear. It would cause us some inconvenience for sure but what we have achieved far out weighs anything off the shelf, so it’s just kind of a risk vs reward situation really.

 

[kulture]

I use Linnworks. It is a very flexible order management system. It integrates to Magento, but currently the interface is poor. I am told that the next release will completely re-write this interface and will make it much better.

I cannot see how you can manage the number of orders you have in Magento. Its order management sucks.

 

[richfromessex]

We are moving to MAgento, our sites are still in dev.

We are using Cubecart at the moment with huge amounts of custom code.

However its not really any good for the volumes we do and is hampering our growth.

We have Linnworks installed for testing, and its because it doesnt half of what it should that we are looking at all options.

To recap and extra info..

We have a Stoneedge license but found it too clunky, lacks UK integration and realtime integration with Magento. And the UK based consultant we asked to look at it, took ou spec and vanished.

Linnworks again lack of full API integration with Magento and none with Payment solutions API's (aprat from some with PayPal for ebay auctions)

We have demo'd Orderwise, and the sales people just say yes to everything, but the integration just isnt there.
Mail Order Manager we demo'd v6 a year ago but intend to relook.

We have looked at ERP and getting integration developed by ourselves.

We have found a new product that is actually produced by a business associate of ours from Estonia that we will spend a few days looking at now.

But I cannot see how any of these systems have been developed without things we think would be mandatory for all of them.

 

[richfromessex]

Ooops forgot

Regarding outsourcing, I have a IT Consultancy business as well.. and manage varous outsourcing resources without any issues. But for this we are struggling with understanding why no one has really captured the needs of the UK market.

And I'm too lazy to write a million page spec

 

[OhSoCherished]

Hi richfromessex,

I am currently in the same position and at a loss as what to do. I have spent the last 8 months looking at different systems. It would be good to get your feedback on these following systems, you may have heard of them and had demo's. I have had a demo with NMP about 6 months ago, and I had a phone/website demo of the MICommerce system in November.

MNP
http://www.mnp-media.com

MICommerce
http://www.micommerce.com/


They were both very comprehensive but it would be good to get any feedback as you seem to be in the same situation. I have been also considering bespoke as our business is quite personalised.


Sarah

 

[edmondscommerce]

I'm also really looking into this subject but from the providers point of view, being commonly asked for this kind of thing (or lots of variations of it) from clients.

I agree Magento is an awesome ecommerce front end though the back end features are not really optimised for large volumes of sales, though there is an API so its ripe for integration with other systems (which is I am sure what they expect people to do anyway in this scenario).

I've been looking a lot into openERP

Like Magento it's open source, but is backed by a real company. It seems to be more widely accepted in Europe than here or the states though there are a few companies that specialise in it and we may well become another. Its also got a wide range of modules available and a very modular structure so it lends itself to all kinds of business models which is another feature of Magento.

There are is some Magento integration code available but I don't think its especially advanced though it would be a good starting point.

One of the things I like about openERP is it gives me the impression of being a good platform to invest in for current requirements and future growth - because of this modular structure and wide range of modules.

If its purely order management that is required though as opposed to ERP then it may well be possible to roll together some custom Magento modules that do what is required directly in Magento. This is an approach that some clients are taking.

That's the two choices really - build something into Magento (this part of the code will be pretty much bespoke, though based on Magento principles and so therefore understandable and workable by any Magento developer) - or alternatively - integrate with another package.

 

[richfromessex]

Thank the lordy we are not alone

Ed, no one seems to be offering full Magento API integration.

I'm happy to have a call with you guys.

 

[edmondscommerce]

rich can I ask you to drop me a note via our contact form?

 

[johndon68]

I've done some work with the Magento API currently downloading order details into Sage and I'm currently looking at writing stock quantities and prices back up again...

John

 

[contoreuk]

We use magento and find it great. We have an in house devs guy and graphic designer.

They both love working with magento and we have automated heaps of stuff including parcel entry etc. However one thing we have yet to find is a reliable solution to pull our orders in from amazon, ebay and play.com including multiple ebay accounts.

We have tried camiloo and it is full of bugs, does anyone have any other recommendation of something that works!!?

 

[MattCD]

Contore,

I can't post a link but google for 'm2epro'

Not used it personally but found it on the web the other day looking for much the same thing as you. It's a Magento extension for eBay.

 

[Lady Apollo]

We have just begun to look for a better "back end" system that can sync with magento. Has anyone any direct experience with Khaos Control - either as an end user or developer?
Thank you.

 

[mikewev]

Hi Lady Apollo,

I've implemented and used khaos control extrensively, overall it does a good job and has loads of functionality. The trick is to get the integration with your ecommerce system totaly nailed down.

I'd be happy to share our experiences with you.

 

[Lady Apollo]

Thank you.
ATM we're edging towards magento professional, however this is a "best out of a bad bunch" choice.
I've looked at bespoke but i feel locking into one developer/company could ultimately be a risk not worth taking.

 

[edmondscommerce]

If you do choose Magento we would be happy to help with the implementation.

Totally agree with regards to vendor lock in with bespoke systems. There is also the massive cost of getting functionality that is anywhere close to Magento.

I'm curious as to why you think its a bad bunch though. I think new ecommerce businesses have never had it so good with the range and quality of carts available today, many of the best being free open source ones.

Rewind only a few years and it was very different.

 

[dfieldsend]

What ever font end e-commerce system you choose, make sure it links directly into your backend in-house stock / warehouse system, as this part is usually overlooked!

There are not many backend systems that provide a dynamic link so choose carefully!

Try Blue-Logic as this DOES include all this functionality.

 

[Herbie_Aftertaste]

Hi Lady Apollo,

I've implemented and used khaos control extrensively, overall it does a good job and has loads of functionality. The trick is to get the integration with your ecommerce system totaly nailed down.

I'd be happy to share our experiences with you.

Hi Mike
I'm busy researching Khas Control as a stock control/sales order processing solution at the moment. This will be perhaps the largest capital investment so far in our business (I had hoped that due to the explosion of mail-order/ecommerce that there might be cheaper generic alternatives on the market but I don't think this is the case).

Would be extremely grateful if you would give me a quick lowdown on this package's best/worst points. Is there anything you would change if you had the chance to start again? Are there any newer systems you have spotted since implementation that you think could do a better job?

Whatever system we end up running with, it's gonna be a busy next few months.......

 

[AndyP]

Have you considered Linnworks? Its a fraction of the cost and is excellent.

 

[IW-Tom]

Reading through this thread, it seem many of us are in the same boat. I'm only a little fish, but having just migrated to Magento, I have been looking for something to tie up the back end.

Perhaps the answer is a collaborative effort to get a Magento \ openERP integration that is also open source and not custom to just one companies needs (we're all doing the same basic stuff).

 

[kulture]

use linnworks

 

[HotMustardMedia]

Hi
We're a web consultancy and looked into a handfull of ERP systems in 2010 for Planet X Bikes, at that point they were keen to move away from the spreadsheet editing and admin which that was creating.

We compared a bunch of ERP systems; Mail Order Mananger, Khaos Control, NetSuite, Sanderson, MiCommerce, AMO and some OpenSource ERP platforms (Compiere, openERP, sugar, vtiger...).

With strong e-commerce backgrounds we chose Khaos Control as it had the most mature and accessible web service, allowing the web integration to take control over a lot of aspects of how orders were subsequently processed. As an example we could segregate orders based on stockcode, stock type, user's location, order value etc... so that some orders are automatically put infront of the right staff (for the PlanetX integration we needed a lot of functionality to segment orders for building bikes and international sales).

We've since gone on to produce more websites and integrations with Khaos Control, each one smoother than the last as our experience has grown, infact after two years we now have a fully featured e-commerce platform built from the ground up that syncs with most all of the Khaos Control backend.

The technical team at Keystone are another reason why we originally used their platform, they're able to modify the system for each customer at very reasonable rates, something which has allowed every client to get their business processes well honed. Their webservice is also well documented and is now very mature (you wont be paying for them to fix bugs). Plenty of users of the other ERP platforms we surveyed had problems because of the lack of flex in the suppliers to add new or modify functionality.

One cautionary point is that you do need to have plenty of momentum and enthusiam when you come to migrate your platform as it really does need buy in from all parts of your business to get the most out of it.

If you want to discuss more of this do give us a call (google "hot mustard media")

 

[geedesign]

Just dropped in on this conversation and it looks like most of us are struggling to find an elegant solution, me included.

I have over 6 years experience with Orderwise Stock Control and Order Processing Software as a previous forum member posted, and yes the sales team always say 'yes, yes, yes', however from my point of view, it is a thorough stock control and order processing system but it lacks speed and finess by being built on the foxpro framework. Overall, very clunky and reminds me of a Microsoft Access database feel. Orderwise 7 (just released) is now built on the SQL framework but I doubt very much that integration with Magento will be as smooth as we would like. I would love to hear if someone has this live, bug free and can tell us what information is posted back and forth.

Anyway, my reason for posting is because I am looking at using an all-in-one integrated solution, how much easier would it be? After hours and hours of research, days in fact and after years of Joomla-Virtuemart experience I feel the need for a simpler solution.

I want a solution that has an attractive frontend ecommerce shop that can be templated and styled easily (Magento) and has great SEO potential, easy backend administration with full stock control, shipping and order processing, and something that doesn't cost the earth.

I stumbled upon Opentaps communtiy edition (free) using a Magento Ecommerce (Free edition) frontend. Opentaps being a full CRM + ERP solution all in one with a web interface. Magento being Magento, a solid shopping cart system.

Open source means that there is plenty of community support and regular updates. There is also a connector available (On Magento Connect) that sends sales order information into Opentaps from Magento, Opentaps processes and captures that information via the connector and allows consignment information to get posted back to Magento. All customer information gets posted back and forth also as well does newsletter subscritpion info and other info.

On the face of it, it looks like a solution that could work, also check out the metapack API to handle the shipping headaches, on metapack.com and you could have yourself a tidy little system. Metapack already has an API for Magento.

I thought I would share my findings with you for those of you looking for a cost effective solution. If anyone has this setup currently, likewise I would like to hear your views.

Thanks