What is the best ERP for ecommerce? Top Ecommerce ERP Systems

As Ecommerce businesses grow their leadership begins to ask, what is the best ERP platform to manage sales orders, stock, logistics, service and sometimes also manufacturing and more?

Typically, Ecommerce businesses begin with a slick front end online system, then bolt on additional stock modules to Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce, otherwise they adopt a small accounting package with similar add-ons that don't cope well under heavy growth.

In this article, we'll explore some of the common needs of ecommerce businesses when considering ERP systems and then we'll look at some of the popular enterprise resource planning software for ecommerce businesses of different sizes. If you need help structuring your search, our ERP requirements template is a great starting point.

What do Ecommerce businesses need in an ERP system?

Sales

You probably won't want to handle sales in an ERP specifically since you're an ecommerce business, but you'll definitely want to integrate your ecommerce platform such as Shopify, Magento or WooCommerce into your ERP software to transfer sales order and fulfilment data from one platform to another. In this scenario its a good idea to ask your ERP vendor or partner whether their platform has integrations into your ecommerce platform. If these integrations are prebuilt and maintained natively or via your ERP partner, it can significantly reduce the cost of your ERP implementation and have you up and running quickly.

That said, some ERP solutions do offer inbuilt or integrated ecommerce front end platforms with their software. For example, many larger or fast growing midsize ecommerce companies have adopted SAP S/4HANA alongside SAP Commerce Cloud (formerly Hybris). Netsuite similarly acquired Venda for ecommerce capabilities to offer integrated ecommerce & ERP functionality.

Customer Service

The best ecommerce ERP platforms offer integrated customer service alongside other key ERP modules including stock, logistics and finance. By integrating all of these data points into one platform, customer service queries and issues can be handled in a faster manner, helping you to retain more customers and spread the good word.

Inventory, Warehouse & Stock Management

You may operate your ecommerce business across several countries, warehouses and locations and your ERP software needs to be capable of managing this. In some scenarios such as fashion, you also need to be able to maintain a larger number of SKU's and variants. For larger ecommerce companies, tighter control of your warehouse is also crucial for efficient operations and therefore bin management and locations is also crucial.

Accounting & Financial Management

As sales volumes increase, so does financial complexity for ecommerce businesses and the needs on your enterprise resource planning software. Many ecommerce companies grow internationally and have legal entities in multiple countries or need to simply consider multicurrency support for international sales. As legal entities grow, the ability to manage multiple legal entities in one system also becomes crucial to enable intercompany processes.

Alongside these requirements, tight general ledger, accounts payable and cash flow forecasting capabilities are also important for the ecommerce industry to enable profitable and efficient operations.