September 3, 2015 Jyotsna Rathore

eCommerce and ERP

eCommerce and ERP platforms

 

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OFBiz- Open For Business

OFBiz is an open source eCommerce and ERP software solution driven by Apache Software Foundation- highly customizable, easy to implement, secure and robust platform for your specific business requirement.

OFBiz comes with fully functional online store which can be customized and branded for your business and purpose.

The built in back office automates your organization’s business process such as- Party (Customer and User) Manager, Order Manager Inventory Manager, Manufacturing and MRP, and Accounting and many more.

One can use most of its automated built-in processes to enhance productivity, therefore reduces request processing time and improve efficiency and ROI. Best suited for medium to big size enterprises and businesses. Web Bliss can help you take full advantage of this power full tool.

OFBiz has a great community support that works continuously to enhance the features, bug fixes and address user requirements that are available for all users free of cost to it.

Some of high level features are listed below that are offered with OFBiz

  • Advanced e-commerce
    • One page checkout, integration with ebay, Paypal, Authorize.net
    • Product promotions, Rule based pricing, Cross-selling, Up-selling
    • Order tracking, Order histories, Re-ordering and newsletter subscription.
    • Encourage sales worldwide with multiple stores, multiple currency and language
  • Catalog management
    • Multiple product store support
    • Advanced Catalog Setup- Products, Categorization and much more
    • Promotion & Price rules management, Tier pricing
    • Procurement, Requirement generation, Product Import
  • Order management (sales & purchase)
    • Order Entry, Order Processing,
    • Returns and communication with customers
    • Reports and requirements
  • Party management
    • Customer Management (part of general party management)
    • Internal user management
  • Facility (Warehouse) management
    • fulfillment (auto stock moves, batched pick, pack & ship)
    • Inventory Management, Receiving and shipment (Incoming and Outgoing)
  • Accounting ( AR, AP, invoice, payment & billing accounts, fixed assets)
  • Manufacturing management (MRP, Bill of Material and Routing)
  • General work effort management (events, tasks, projects, requests, etc)
  • Content management
    • Catalog and Product content
    • Email content, newsletters etc
    • Web sites, general content, blogging, forums, etc
  • Point Of Sales (POS) module using XUI as rich client interface

For more information on OFBiz, please visit ofbiz.apache.org

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MAGENTO

Magento is a flexible, feature rich open source eCommerce platform built in PHP and MYSQL technology. The frontend and backend interface is easy to use, robust and provides maximum control over on your ecommerce store and let you manage it without any technical expertise.

It provides built in support for Customer management, Sales management, Catalog management along with product import, SEO, Content management and marketing tools.

There are paid and free extension available for Magento that provide integration with lot of external third party tools such as Quickbook, WordPress, Mailchimp and many other shipment and payment gateway integration tools.

Magento is best suited for small to medium size businesses that require complete control over their online store with limited back-office support.

Some of the important features of Magento community edition are listed below:

  • Ecommerce
    • One-page checkout, order history, tracking and re-ordering
    • Layered navigation (filtering), Product Comparison
    • Integration with Amazon, multiple PayPal gateways, Authorize.net
    • Integrated for real-time shipping rates from: UPS, UPS XML (account rates), FedEx, (account rates), USPS and DHL
    • Free shipping, Table rates for weight, sub-total, destination and quantity
  • Search Engine Optimization
    • 100% search engine friendly
    • Google Site Map
    • Search engine friendly URL’s
    • URL rewrites give full control of URL’s
    • Social media integration
  • Order management
    • Approve, Pack and ship orders.
    • Bulk actions on orders, customizable order statuses
  • Catalog Management
    • Category, Product management (simple, configurable, bundle and group products)
    • Bulk actions, edit, delete and update products
    • Product Import
    • Multiple Stores, Catalog, Related products, up-sells and cross-sells
    • Promotion and Coupons (Price rules) with the ability to restrict to stores, categories or products, customer and time period
    • Multi-tier pricing for quantity discounts
    • Admin manageable Meta content and urls for product, categories and static content.
  • Customer management and bulk import.
  • Highly customizable store settings for admin
    • Limiting user access to application, screen and action level
    • Google Analytics and reporting
    • Email templates and settings
  • Content management and editing using WYSIWYG editor.

For more detailed, please visit http://www.magentocommerce.com or download Magento eCommerce feature list here.

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SHOPIFY

Shopify is user-friendly hosted ecommerce solution that offers everything from hosting, domain name, theme and full control over your online store.

To start your online store, it simply requires you to create an account at www.shopify.com then choose an existing theme and start uploading your products. The selected theme can be tweaked to make minor changes per your requirement.

Shopify offers different subscription packages depending on how complex functionality on store you need. Some of the high level features are listed below:

  • Store design and hosting
    • Signup for an account,
    • Configure your store using your existing domain or buying a new one from Shopify
    • Choose your website design from 100+ free and paid themes
    • Edit HTML and css in browser
    • Package start from $14
  • Ecommerce
    • Checkout, Pre-order and Phone order
    • Shipping estimates, tracking and delivery dates
    • Multiple payment options- Paypal, Credit card, check, offline payment and pay in store
    • Customer Profile management and address book
    • Over 70 payment gateways available to choose from. Accept payment without third-party account.
    • Discount- Offer discounts and special coupon codes for products in your store
    • Gift Cards- Create and sell personalized gift cards
    • Multiple currencies, tax, multiple language support to suit your store needs.
  • Dashboard- Monitor traffic, sales and revenue
  • Customer management- view, edit and manage customer profiles and groups.
  • Products management- create, update physical and digital products with multiple variants
  • Collections- organize your products into categories
  • Orders- capture payment, fulfill and complete orders
  • Reports- Review your product sales, orders, payment and revenue
  • Content management system (CMS) – control over your webpages, site navigation and design using WYSIWYG editor.
  • Blogging- Connect with your customers, encourage and help them choose you.
  • Marketing and SEO
    • SEO friendly Meta content and URL for webpages.
    • Social media integration.
    • Email marketing
    • Site map generation
    • Integrated Blog
  • Mobile admin- Manage your store anytime anywhere with shopify mobile.

Shopify allows you to extend your store functionality as your business grows but offering pluggable, free and paid extensions.

For more information on features and account creation, please visit http://www.shopify.comThe price information can be found here.

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BIG COMMERCE

BigCommerce is another hosted ecommerce platform (SaaS) that gives you the most comprehensive set of feature in affordable price. Apart from the basic ecommerce features, BigC offers you more advanced tools Out-Of-the-Box included within your package.

It provides ability to manage inventory, showcase products, prices and taxes, configure shipping, payment gateways, tracking etc. As compared to other hosted solutions, BigCommerce has more built-in SEO and marketing tool than any other competitive product. Although the free templates and themes are not as fancier as Shopify or Squarespace

  • Store design and hosting
    • Easy and affordable subscription
    • About 100 professional design themes
    • Customize and integrate your existing design
    • Drag and drop layout customization, edit templates in your browser
  • Ecommerce
    • One page checkout, Pre-order, Bulk discounts and One Click re-order
    • Refunds and credits
    • Shipping estimates and Delivery dates
    • Sell via ebay and facebook
    • Coupons, Free shipping, Gift Certificates
    • Promotional banners and discount rules
    • Multiple currency support
  • Order manager
    • Abandoned Cart saver
    • Min and Max order quantity
    • Custom checkout fields
    • Customize order number
    • Send automatic tracking email to the customers.
    • Sell on ebay, create listing and push products to ebay and manage sales from bigcommerce
  • Product Management
    • View, edit product information, edit product image
    • WYSIWYG editor for product description
    • Bulk import/export product, image and options
    • Categorization of products, drag and drop category assignement
    • Bulk discount quantity pricing
    • Free shipping coupon, Coupon tracking
  • Inventory and stock management
    • Pre-product inventory, enable/disable inventory tracking
    • Set low stock level and automatic inventory control
    • Bulk update invnetory
  • Content Management
    • Fully functional CMS, Easy to use WYSIWYG editor
    • Restrict content to customer groups
  • Marketing and SEO
    • Olark live chat integration
    • Advanced Mailchimp integration
    • Promotion banner
    • Google analytics integration
    • Product suggestions
    • Blog and commenting, manage comments.
    • Newsletter subscription

For more information please visit https://www.bigcommerce.com. Information on packages and pricing can be found here.

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SQUARE SPACE

Squarespace offers a combination of Blogging and eCommerce for customers who want to showcase lot of content on the site and have ecommerce store as well. Its more of a content centric online store that focuses new businesses who need to market their product and the idea via text content. Whether you want to setup simple pages, striking galleries, a professional blog, or an online store, Squarespace does it all.

As soon as you setup your website, it is mobile-ready right from the start. Here are few more features of squarespace:

  • Ecommerce
    • Digital and physical goods with variants
    • Simple pricing with Strip charges (2.9%+3¢)
    • Coupon on orders or specific products
    • Express checkout
    • USPS real-time shipping rates, 3D packing algorithm, Taxes
    • Xero accounting integration, Accept donations
    • SEO and Google Analytic integration
    • Order confirmation email
  • Beautiful and flexible templates
    • WYSIWYG editor, free fonts, template switching (use multiple templates on single website)
    • Advanced Image manager- Drag and drop image, Aviary editor, SEO, CDN etc
    • Galleries- Gallery block, Effects and video and audio collection
  • Social media integration
  • Content Management
    • Import- from dropbox, fb, twitter and flickr
    • Embedded Amazon product block
  • Order management
    • Track and process order
    • Print packing slip, resend notification
    • Export orders
  • Inventory/Store manager
  • Blogging- schedule publish, social sharing

For more information on square space features and pricing please visit: http://www.squarespace.com

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WOO COMMERCE

Woo Commerce is a free eCommerce toolkit for WordPress that turns your blog website into a fully featured online store.

It simply requires downloading and installing woo commerce on the wordpress based website and it works with any WP theme. Some of its important features include:

  • Upload unlimited products, digital and physical goods, with multiple variants
  • Payment Gateway- Paypal (CC and paypal), COD and BACs
  • Shipping methods- flat rates, free shipping, table rates and many third party shipping extensions available
  • Tax- Configure tax classes and local taxes
  • Inventory Management for digital and physical products
  • Marketing- Coupons and discounts, restricted to limited users
  • Reporting – Sales, stock, reviews and store performance report

For more information on Woocommerce features, please visit www.woothemes.com/woocommerce.