Shopify is the most popular platform for creating e-Commerce online businesses owing to its strong platform and reasonable price structure. Companies must, however, connect it with other specialist solutions in order to fully utilize their online retail shop. 

• Global e-commerce is expected to rise to a total of $4.89 trillion in 2021—almost a 400% increase in seven years.

• More than 1.7M merchants sell using the Shopify platform. (Source)

• Shopify processed $5.1 billion+ sales in 2020. (Source)

The Shopify App Store includes over 4200 apps, with merchants installing an average of 6 apps.  (Source). Apps are used by 87 percent of them to operate their businesses. 

When examining the retail industry over the last decade, it is apparent that e-Commerce has transformed how businesses and customers interact. Because of the expense or expected business interruption, the requirement for e-Commerce connection with a Merchant Operating System like CommerceCore™ is sometimes disregarded. 

However, failing to integrate means foregoing tremendous benefits such as lower operating expenses, more delivery options, better customer experiences, enhanced control, and greater insight.

Operating System for Shopify Merchants 

Enterprise integration as a solution to common Shopify back-end customization problems

Tracking the manufacturing process of custom made jewelry along with the inventory needed for its production represented a complex problem for our client.

For a custom-made jewelry company, the manufacturing process is the engine that drives everything else. It is linked to production, sales, raw material inventory , reordering, and consignments, thus it is an integrating feature, consolidating multiple sub-processes.

The best solution to this problem is to implement a system that would keep track of all tasks in one place.

While some ERP systems can be complicated, the multidimensional benefit of the CommerceCore™ Merchant Operating System is that  it is highly efficient since it links all elements of a business in one business management system.

CommerceCore™ is a modular Open Source Merchant Operating System with a wide range of customizable features. Shopify stores integrated with CommerceCore™ manage various e-Commerce activities such as:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM), 

• Order management, 

• Inventory management, 

• Purchase, and vendor management,

• Manufacturing, 

• Billing and payments,

• Shipping,

• Communication with partners, customer and vendors,

• Dropshipping,

• Just-in-time purchase.

By automatically integrating Shopify orders and customer data into CommerceCore™, the Shopify CommerceCore™ connection allows companies to automate critical business operations while saving time and expense.

Streamline Manufacturing

Shopify is the platform of choice for many new companies, and for good reason! Shopify enables company owners to quickly and affordably launch an e-Commerce shop in order to start growing a client base and delivering orders. However, when these organizations develop and expand into new channels, they frequently confront a slew of difficulties, particularly with regard to order management.

In today's competitive retail climate, most established businesses demand real-time inventory, order, and return management capabilities, which Shopify's order management system lacks. Brands struggle to fulfill orders and meet escalating customer expectations without real-time insight and availability across channels and locations.

As a jewelry company, our client faced similar problems with using Shopify regarding their product management system. The problems with Shopify included:

Lack of Inventory Synchronization and Back-Order Management

Because Shopify's order management system does not provide real-time inventory visibility across both online and offline channels, companies frequently place orders online only to cancel them due to supply shortages. 

Shopify's lack of inventory synchronization capabilities across numerous channels results in dissatisfied customers and time-consuming manual operations to maintain correct inventory reporting.

To make matters worse, Shopify does not monitor when items will be refilled, so when a client calls, your customer support staff will be unable to offer an estimated delivery date. 

Because Shopify does not track backorders, your customer service staff will be unable to assist customers who phone in to check about the status of their purchase because they will have no visibility into whether the item is being routed, picked up, packed, or shipped.

Return Management Challenges

The largest process-related issue for many Shopify returns is the time these returns take to process and manage correctly. Merchants demand a more synchronized centralized returns management, so that they continue to offer a high customer satisfaction and minimize operative losses due to returns & replacements.

Returns are an anticipated and unavoidable aspect of the online purchasing experience. According to studies, e-Commerce firms generally have a 20-30% return rate, and buyers demand a refund nearly instantly. 

• 91% of customers say they examine a website's return policy before making a purchase.(Source)

Shopify, on the other hand, only provides a minimal return procedure that relies on human operations, inefficient tracking, and inadequate record keeping. As a result, clients may have to wait up to 10-15 days for their money to be returned.

• Shopify only offers limited refunds and exchanges (Source)

When a consumer phones in to seek a refund, your staff must manually search up the order, confirm the return policy, create a return ticket, and issue a shipping label. When the returns arrive at the warehouse, your team may finally begin the refund process in Shopify and cancel the support case. 

If the returned item is not damaged, it is the responsibility of the customer support staff to manually refill the item in Shopify for resale. As your company's order and return volume grows, you may anticipate these processes to take hundreds of hours, harm client relationships, and reduce your profit margin.

High Delivery Costs and Lack of Fast Delivery

It can be costly to ship an order placed on the west coast from an east coast warehouse. Retailers may opt to fulfill online orders from a shop or a warehouse near the customer's shipping location to save transportation costs and provide next-day delivery to customers. Shopify maintains inventory across several locations, however you can't choose the warehouse nearest to the customer's location.

As a result, clients face expensive delivery prices and lengthy delivery times.

While this distribution mechanism may have sufficed in the past, it is no longer enough in today's want-it-now retail atmosphere. If you haven't already, prepare to lose valuable sales to competitors who have invested in a sophisticated order management system.

All of our client’s four shops are on the same platform - Shopify, which gives one of the primary reasons for them to be unified with a CommerceCore™ Merchant Operating system (MOPS).

Streamlining jewelry manufacturing operations by implementing a Shopify CommerceCore™ connector

All of our client’s four shops are on the same platform - Shopify, which gives one of the primary reasons for them to be unified with a CommerceCore™ Merchant Operating system (MOPS).

All of our client’s shops have the same inventory, orders are sent to the same locations and they require comprehensive routes on the Shopify platform to handle all of their clients' information. 

Specific requests like engraving, a gift bag, a pendant, gemstones and crystals, or for customers to pick the materials from which the jewelry is made, orders are not maintained in stock. As a result of all of this, order processing automation is of critical importance for them.

The reason why our client turned to CommerceCore™ is that all the manufacturing applications are integrated into a single solution while keeping it modern and uncomplicated. 

The main challenge of its implementation was to define the specific needs of our client. For that, we used the info gathered from our client on the process workshop.

9  reasons why CommerceCore™ MOPS is a perfect solution for our client:

• It helps them to centralize the different business divisions, helping  them reduce the effort and time that staff is spending on different departments;

• It provides a real-time view that helps jewelry manufacturers to make correct decisions by using the data and capitalize on opportunities;

• It helps in categorizing the data which enables effective management of their products;

• It enables them to set product variants and By-products in the bills of material;

• It helps them manage production by work order or by manufacturing order;

• It offers Master Production Schedule (MPS) which enables the schedule of production of stock;

• It offers Preventive and Corrective maintenance management;

• It offers management of quality control points, checks, measures;

• It provides improved and standardized reporting.

Conclusion:

The CommerceCore™ software helps our client avoid wasting time and opportunities that won’t convert into business results. It simplifies their work by providing quick access to accurate data. They save time by having less work since the software does the daily and time consuming tasks by itself.

By utilizing the CommerceCore™ Merchant Operating System, they are managing their custom-made jewelry production as well as its corresponding inventory needs.