In pursuit of the omnichannel shopping Holy Grail, retailers often focus on the front-end customer experience with slick ecommerce websites, mobile apps, digital marketing and interactive brick-and-mortar store experiences.
Yet the front end is only part of the equation for retail success. As the Boomi retail team confirmed at NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas last month, top retailers pay equal attention to back-end processes, from business-to-business (B2B) transactions to supply chain management.
Orchestrating B2B and supply chain processes is critical to delivering the transparency, accuracy and speed that customers expect throughout the buying cycle. And it helps retailers reduce high costs that can result from manual work and B2B partners that underperform.
In a recent blog post, we detailed how Boomi equips retailers running NetSuite and other platforms to achieve a unified 360-degree customer view. With a fully synchronized hybrid IT infrastructure, retailers can deliver personalized front-end engagement across all channels.
It’s equally important for retailers to synchronize B2B and supply chain processes through application and data integration for true omnichannel retail.
To learn more about how Boomi and NetSuite can drive your omnichannel retail operations, download our new ebook, “How to Harness Cloud Integration and NetSuite to Build Your Retail Business.”
Avoiding Risks to the Customer Experience
A poorly managed supply chain can hurt customer satisfaction. Product scarcity, lengthy shipping cycles, and a lack of transparency in orders and fulfillment can cripple your retail business. Yet those shortcomings can be difficult to identify and monitor. A modern retailer can’t rely on outdated manual processes to run its back office.
Retailers that run NetSuite have a proven platform that can greatly streamline many of your workflows and business processes, from financials and inventory to customer relationship management (CRM), ecommerce and physical point of sale (POS).
Yet many rely on best-of-breed applications for some process and data, making integration critical for creating a connected retail business across your hybrid IT infrastructure.
Retailers also typically have partnerships with product vendors and third-party logistics providers (3PLs). Many sell their goods in other digital and physical channels, such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart and others.
Boomi’s unified platform equips retailers with cloud-native technology to integrate with applications and partners, as outlined in a new Boomi ebook, “How to Harness Cloud Integration and NetSuite to Build Your Retail Business.”
Electronic data interchange
Boomi’s B2B / EDI Management provides a complete platform to manage trading partner interactions without the high cost and time of running a legacy system or manual work. Quickly onboard thousands of trading partners while gaining full visibility into all transactions. Benefit from Boomi’s support for EDI standards such as X12, EDIFACT, RosettaNet and Tradacoms.
Ecommerce integration
EDI with Boomi lets you easily transact with ecommerce partners like Amazon or Walmart, while Boomi’s data integration platform lets you connect a NetSuite back end to a third-party Demandware, Shopify, Magento or ecommerce platforms, as well as POS systems. That supports cross-channel inventory visibility and the flexibility needed for buyers to shop, pick up and return by any channel they choose.
B2B partners
In addition to EDI, Boomi lets you better manage relationships with supplier, distribution and logistics partners by aggregating disparate performance and pricing data into an analytics platform. Boomi-supported partner performance management helps reduce costs, speed processes and ensure that customers enjoy an exceptional omnichannel experience.
Data confidence
Minimize the risk that inaccurate, out-dated, or out-of-reach data harms the
e customer experience. Boomi DataHub synchronizes, enriches and de-duplicates data across diverse cloud and on-premise systems. It ensures consistency and quality and helps you keep ever-changing product data models in synch across complex supplier, channel and geographic landscapes.
Connected Retail for Candy.com
Candy.com, a NetSuite retailer, is among those retailers that take advantage of Boomi to streamline the B2B aspect of its business. The company’s evolution into a candy distributor triggered a surge in sales volume and the need to scale order processing.
Candy.com turned to Boomi to connect its NetSuite platform with its in-house EDI system. The Boomi NetSuite-to-EDI integration has made EDI management and workflows far more efficient while providing scalability.
Candy.com can now easily respond to shifting demands with real-time and near real-time data about its processes. It’s also freed resources to focus on sales, financial reporting and business analysis…not manual order management.
“We rely on Boomi for our EDI-to NetSuite integration because it is a high-productivity platform that’s easy to use, super reliable and endlessly scalable,” said Gary Cifatte, Candy.com’s chief technology officer. “With EDI and application integration so painlessly taken care of, we are able to stay focused on expanding our business, not solving business process problems.
To learn more about how Boomi can help your NetSuite-based retail business improve B2B and supply chain processes, download our new ebook, “How to Harness Cloud Integration and NetSuite to Build Your Retail Business.”
About the author: Andrew Hawthorn is a senior product manager for Boomi.