Manually passing orders between systems and updating spreadsheets can seem manageable while a store is small. As the catalog grows, these tasks become a source of fulfillment mistakes, delays and lost margin.
What to automate first
Prioritize tasks that happen frequently, affect customers and lead to errors. Stock levels, orders, prices and delivery statuses usually offer the greatest impact.
- Send orders to your ERP, CRM or warehouse.
- Update available quantities.
- Retrieve supplier costs and apply markup rules.
- Send tracking numbers back to the store.
Integrating a supplier catalog
A reliable integration layer maps categories and fields, cleans descriptions, normalizes images and filters out unsuitable items before publication.
- Keep the supplier's external product identifier.
- Define a source of truth for each field.
- Log price and stock changes.
Webhooks, reconciliation and errors
Orders require a quick response, so the system should receive events immediately through webhooks. Periodic reconciliation remains a safety net when a notification is missed.
- Prevent duplicates when a request is retried.
- Use a queue when a system is temporarily unavailable.
- Notify the responsible person after repeated errors.
How to measure the result
Before development, record staff time, error frequency and update delays. After launch, compare the same metrics.
- Hours of manual work per week.
- Cancellations caused by incorrect stock levels.
- Time from order placement to fulfillment processing.