How many times have you faced emergency crises, and you were prepared for them? It could be anything as simple as an electricity collapse or as big as a medical situation. Still, whatever it might be, we tend to ignore how complex it could get until it happens.

Well, integrating your eCommerce store with the necessary tools is no different.

Be it with ERP, CRM, Accounting, or any other software, integration is all about choosing suitable software where your data flows effortlessly, delivering its potential.

Even the coolest and most innovative software might fail your eCommerce store if integration isn’t performed considering all the data and services in a business together.

TL; DR

This blog will help you explore the integration abilities of the two most innovative ERP software (Odoo and Sage) for an e-commerce store.

Sage 200: Solution that supports manufacturers, distributors, and business services.

Sage 200 is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that offers accounts, financials, business intelligence, purchasing, production, cash, sales order processing, and CRM modules for your business.

Its standard version provides access to the accounting module, while the Sage 200 professional version also offers Project Accounting, CRM, BI, and Manufacturing modules.

Manufacturing:

• Create estimates
• Identify resources through graphical planners
• Improve purchasing from MRP recommendations
• Reduce errors from Work Order Processing
• Control material/labor/machine costs through powerful stock projection facilities.
• Create BOM consisting of stock items, operations, and subcontract
• Calculate stock based on the set quantity of your BOM and identifies shortage.
• Automatically record expected scrap or production losses

Business Intelligence:

• It consists of 16 predefined data cubes to provide a 360 view of your data.
• The module is Excel-based, allowing users to create new and change the existing Sage 200cloud BI reports.
• The predefined reports will let you calculate profit and loss by cost centre, department, stock valuation, and top customers.
• It also enables synchronization between different reports through data filters in real time.

Project Accounting:

• Track costs and revenues against budgets at both project level and below
• Cut down the need to re-key information by creating projects from quotes or sales orders
• Multi structure module allows you to create simple or more complex projects based on your current project structure.
• Consolidation of multiple companies into a parent company
• Record costs and fill timesheets and expenses against projects using the web-based timesheet and expenses module.
• Record revenue using sales, SOP, POP, purchase, timesheet, and expenses transactions
• Choose to enable or disable integration with different ledgers.

Financials:

• Detailed nominal code structure which can be customized for your business.
• Automated bank statements, direct debits, and standing orders.
• Powerful period-end control for all ledgers to get an accurate profit and loss ratio.
• Manage all foreign currency transactions with flexible exchange rate adjustments.
• Multi-company consolidation
• Perform VAT returns and forecast cash flow.

Commercials:

• Access to the entire history of any order (multiple delivery addresses, price negotiations, etc.)
• Up to 100 different currencies are supported.
• Comprehensive batch and serial tracking on products.
• Flag up invoices in dispute.
• Track stock across multiple locations.
• Track your products’ location and what price they were sold at.
• Track serial and batch numbers from arrival to dispatch of goods
• Track products with expired dates, use and sell-by dates.
• Suggest Alternatives for Out-of-stock products
• Use various costing methods depending on your business need (FIFO, Actual, Average, or Standard).

CRM:

• Link Accounts with Sales, Marketing, and Service departments.
• Track phone calls, meetings, documents, tasks, and emails.
• Log support tickets.
• Manage marketing campaigns
• Convert quotes to orders.
• Sales reps can view credit limits, invoices, orders, etc.

Odoo ERP: An app for every business need!

Odoo is a suite of open-source business applications: CRM, eCommerce, accounting, inventory, point of sale, project management, etc. With a thriving customer base of 2+ million users and more than 7300 Odoo apps, it is easy to use and fully integrated.

Know more about our Odoo Development Services

Finance:

Accounting-

• Bank Synchronization
• Create sharp and professional invoices to manage recurring bills and payments
• Generate dynamic statements using business intelligence cubes to report across any dimension.
• Smart Reconciliation tool
• Send reminders to get paid quickly

Invoicing-

• Generate invoices automatically based on sales orders, delivery orders, contracts, or time and material.
• Customize and analyze your invoicing by product, customer, salesperson, etc.
• Multi-company rules
• Batch Payments
• Automated tax reports

Expenses-

• Accountants can record travel, office, or any other employee expenditure on Expense Dashboard.
• Employees can upload receipts into the expense record
• Managers can set targets/budgets and generate reports based on the entire team

Spreadsheets (BI)-

• Make projections, calculate commissions and extra data analysis with real-time data.
• Conditional formatting allows to detection of critical issues and generates patterns.
• Filtering options and graphs to help you manage and understand data.

Documents-

• Easily share, send, categorize, and archive scanned documents
• Generate business documents such as vendor bills, tasks, and sheets for manufacturing
• Scan documents from emails directly
• Get your contracts/NDAs/payroll/policies e-signed with secured identification and encryption.
• Prepare employment contracts

Sales:

CRM-

• Design custom CRM dashboards to visualize your sales team KPIs.
• Cohort Analysis of your KPI’s time and detect trends.
• Schedule activities based on sales scripts, calls, meetings, mailing, and quotes.
• Fetch the details of the lead/opportunity
• Real-time overview of monthly targets and performance
• Real-time messaging to collaborate with team members
• Leads Nurturing, Lead Scoring, Online Acquisition, Live Chat, URL trackers, Call-to-actions
• Pipeline Management, Log calls, plan next actions, and analyze lost reasons on your opportunities.
• Set customer preferences for language, delivery methods, financial data, etc.
• Email gateways, custom alerts, create email templates.
• Create a dial queue on customers/opportunities through VoIP.

Sales-

• Build quotations online from quote to signature
• Increase sales volume by automatically proposing options, applying closing triggers, discounts, and more.
• Get custom alerts for relevant activities.
• Create quotations by dragging and dropping blocks of product descriptions, images, and additional information.
• Pricelist rules to calculate the price based on customer conditions.
• Order & contract sorting

Point of Sale-

• Set up new stores with just an internet connection.
• Once installed, the POS will stay operational even after complete disconnection.
• Reward loyal customers with points, gifts, and discounts.
• Integrated with Inventory to make accurate forecasts to manage procurements.

Rental-

• Create your rental order, schedule, deliver, return, and invoice from one single view.
• Keep an eye on the availability of your products and serial numbers from a Gantt view.

Amazon Connector-

• Synchronize your Amazon orders and manage deliveries in Odoo with nine supported marketplaces within North America and Europe.

Inventory and MRP:

Inventory-

• Double-entry Inventory to track all stock moves
• Automated replenishment
• Drop-shipping, Cross-docking, and multi-warehouse automation
• Real-time dynamic reports with custom dashboards to keep track of products

Manufacturing-

• MRP, Quality, Maintenance, and PLM are fully integrated.
• Capture data in real time from your equipment using the API.
• Real-time communication and alerts for workers during operations.
• Use barcodes to speed up operations at every step.
• Workcenter Control Panel
• Dynamic reports on everything from costing to traceability, performance analysis, and OEE (overall equipment efficiency).

Purchase-

• Track product availability in your supplier’s stock and check your order status from within the app.
• Blanket Order Agreement to buy goods from a supplier at a negotiated price, on a recurring basis during a specific period.
• Use a single Odoo instance to synchronize operations between different companies or warehouses with its multi-company rules.

Human Resources:

• Centralize all your HR information- leaves, allocations, timesheets, attendances, appraisals, recruitments, referrals, and expenses.
• Get expenses updated in Odoo Accounting and approved fast.
• Design form-based questionnaires and evaluation process.
• Boost engagement with social tools.
• Manage your applicant pipeline with Odoo Survey to create a screening questionnaire.
• Whether applicants contact you by email or using an online form, track all the data and answer in just a click, using templates or personalized emails.
• Manage your vehicles, contracts, costs, insurance, and assignments with Odoo Fleet.

Marketing:

• Plan, monitor, and analyze social media accounts in one place.
• Reach your audience anywhere on the web through push notifications.
• Turn visitors into leads and customers with Live Chat.
• Craft successful email campaigns and get accurate stats on every email sent out.
• An all-in-one, event management platform, automate registration, organize calendars, sell tickets online, and much more.

Services:

• Organize projects, schedule tasks, track deadlines, design worksheets, invoice services, and analyze reports on-site with Odoo Field Service Management.
• Manage and track your activities and time through any device, anywhere, even without an internet connection with Odoo Timesheet.
• Solve customer tickets with an amazing Kanban view at the Odoo helpdesk.
• With Odoo Planning’s Gantt chart tool, modify assignments or shifts’ times with a single click.
• Let clients schedule appointments for themselves at their convenience with Odoo Appointment.
• Synchronize your schedule with Google Calendar, Apple iCal, and Microsoft Outlook.

Productivity:

• Enhance team communication with Odoo Discuss live chat accessible from all Odoo modules.
• Appoint a person to approve a client’s request through notifications with the Odoo Approval app.
• Odoo IoT Box allows you to connect external devices to your Odoo database through WIFI, Bluetooth, USB, or HDMI.

Custom Odoo app development lets you tweak the existing functionalities of modules according to your business needs.

Odoo Vs Sage200: Choose Software that Performs According to Your Commerce Needs  

Delivering experience is the foremost thing when it comes to an eCommerce store/website. Be it accounting, ERP, or CRM, the end-user experience is directly proportional to the back-end users who spend the majority of their time working within the software to enhance the front-end operations. In order to deliver a better experience, functionality, speed, and convenience to your team, the software solution you choose must maintain a balance between ease of use and a robust set of features.

Sage though being an ERP Management solution has often been coined more as an accounting software; its functionality as an ERP software is limited compared to Odoo.

Sage offers two versions, one being Sage, one accountant edition, which is helpful for accounting freelancers, and another one is Sage Cloud which is available for SMEs.

Compared to Odoo, Sage is expensive and does not support Pipeline Management, Opportunity management, Lead scoring, Timesheet Management, and Real-time chats, whereas Odoo covers all these functionalities.

Odoo due to its open-source framework gives you the flexibility to customize features and modules as per your business needs. Know more about custom Odoo app development to elevate your e-Commerce experience.

Eyes on Integration Capabilities!

Users over time have been facing errors integrating Sage 200 with Sage 200 CRM and other platforms/software.

Source: https://my.sage.co.uk/public/help/askarticle.aspx?articleid=30715

On the other hand, Odoo rightly fits any given software providing efficient results. Odoo is a system that evolves as your business needs to grow, providing your business with the flexibility to exist and work towards future goals and steady growth.

Odoo covers almost all business/ERP aspects and is easy to install whereas every module is tightly integrated with other apps and software.

But, being highly customizable can become costly due to limited support/development options directly from the vendor.

Sage 200 is highly suitable for manufacturing, distribution, and retail which efficiently helps businesses run their accounting operations.

It has limitations when it comes to integration with third-party software/platforms and offers fewer modules than Odoo. Sage200 users are not provided any free trial period. It has limited usability when it comes to the theme store, mobile responsiveness, full keyboard support, chats, emails, the entire web interface, and more.

As collaboration is the key to success for any business type, it is beneficial to choose a simple and user-friendly solution that will let your employees work quickly and effectively while avoiding the need for time-consuming training sessions.

Concluding, when it comes to selecting an ERP system, Odoo ERP is a more dynamic solution than Sage200 due to its easy adaptability and tight integration with its modules and third-party software.

If you are looking forward to connecting your eCommerce store with an appropriate ERP, CRM, or Accounting software, let’s jump into a conversation and discuss the best possible outcome for your business.

Explore the capabilities of Odoo as an ERP for your e-Commerce store.