Use Integration for Automation Success

Automation has not only made our lives easier, it’s made it more fun. A scant few years ago who would have imagined that a little round robot would be vacuuming our floors on a pre-programmed schedule? Likewise, few people could have predicted how far down the YouTube rabbit hole one can fall simply by searching “cats with Roombas.” And while there perhaps are fewer amusing cell phone videos of automation in business, the results are almost as satisfying as watching a cat in a shark costume chase a duck while riding atop a Roomba.

The continued standoff for/against automation generally falls into two camps: those who say machines will free humans to do more creative and higher value work, and those who predict massive unemployment. Yet the idea is to focus not on how automation “replaces” humans, but instead how automation has the potential to create new, more valuable, and more fulfilling roles for humans. Let’s take a look at how some specific automation might impact the success of your organization in 2019 and beyond.

From Challenge to Automation

IN-SYNCH by ROI Consulting is an integration and automation platform that connects any number of disparate systems—even those systems that “know” nothing about ERPs—to your Sage 100 ERP. With this automatic integration, IN-SYNCH is able to eliminate documents, paperwork, and data entry (and data entry errors!) so that you can concentrate on your business and growth instead. Here are just some of the current practices IN-SYNCH can automate for you.

• Manually keying orders: You may be running a successful ecommerce business, but if your ecommerce platform is isolated from your Sage ERP, your ecommerce is likely not running as efficiently as it could. In this case, after an order comes in, someone on your team must copy and paste the order data into Sage. Not only is this time-consuming, it introduces opportunity for keying errors, resulting in order issues, returns, and customer service complaints. IN-SYNCH automates this communication process, with an incoming order automatically triggering the creation of a sales order in Sage. IN-SYNCH is also able to determine whether a sales order connects to an existing customer or if it needs to create a new customer record.
• Know what’s invoiced and shipped: Few things are as exciting for online shoppers as receiving notification that their order has shipped. With IN-SYNCH’s bidirectional integration, it can feed information to, as well as from, Sage. After an order is noted as invoiced and shipped in Sage, IN-SYNCH sends the information back out to the ecommerce cart to mark the order as shipped and trigger the tracking information to send to the customer. It doesn’t matter what ecommerce platform you use nor how the order is shipped. We connect to all of them.
• Keep track of multiple stores: Are you selling through multiple stores (such as Woo Commerce and Amazon and Walmart)? IN-SYNCH integrates to multiple stores and multiple companies … all at once.
• Optimize supply chain with (or without) 3PL: Automation is a big part of the push to go lean and do less with more. Some companies run their own supply chain, while others choose to optimize their fulfillment and shipping through a third-party logistics company (3PL). For many, this necessitates more manual data entry, the same steps they were taking before, just with the 3PL. Fortunately, IN-SYNCH talks to 3PL systems as well, automatically communicating between individual company systems as easily as the systems within one company. IN-SYNCH enables automated real-time data movement between all systems.

Design Your Automation Integration

Every organization is different regarding its integration and automation needs. Your company may already have a list of integration needs that are different from those listed above. Fortunately, ROI Consulting can create custom integrations, connections, and automations. Tell us how you want to be able to consume your data and what your automation goals are, and we’ll make sure that’s how IN-SYNCH delivers information between systems.

Ready to automate your Sage processes? It’s time to talk to the engineers at ROI Consulting. We’ll make sure you talk to the engineers who develop and work with the software, not salespeople. Let’s design your integration program today. Contact us online or call 402-934-2223, ext. 1.