Once upon a time, maybe the best way for a retailer to enter the ever-evolving e-commerce space involved them installing an e-commerce add-on that was explicitly engineered for their point-of-sale (or POS) system. Such an add-on provided the retailer with not only a low-cost entryway into e-commerce, but also a low-risk opportunity to secure a rapid online presence. Alas, not all software publishers offered these add-ons, so several entities sprung up – each one of them promising to fill this void.
Once upon a time, maybe the best way for a retailer to enter the ever-evolving e-commerce space involved them installing an e-commerce add-on that was explicitly engineered for their point-of-sale (or POS) system. Such an add-on provided the retailer with not only a low-cost entryway into e-commerce, but also a low-risk opportunity to secure a rapid online presence.
Alas, not all software publishers offered these add-ons, so several entities sprung up; each one of them promising to fill this void.
Some of these entities and companies quickly built up a large number of customers, often due to their close integration with Microsoft's POS solution, Dynamics RMS and how easy this solution made it for these customers to start selling online. Chief among them was NitroSell, which also offered its customers the ability to add unique branding to their site, along with integrating more web-ready content to their POS data.
Many of the available and popular NitroSell solutions included all the expected features in an e-commerce solution; design templates, item management tools, payment processing, promotions, gift cards, reporting and analytics, business-to-business support, and SEO tools. The best solutions also allowed customers to manage and synchronize inventory, item, customer, and sales transaction data via Microsoft Dynamics RMS.
The Dawn of a New Era
Over the past decade-plus, technology has changed dramatically. In just the past few years, the number of available e-commerce solutions has exponentially increased, for several reasons.
These reasons range from increasing customer expectations (and even demands) to increasingly complex retail processes to new online sales channels, and more. Many new online shopping carts have even added a self-provisioning model that makes it easier for even a novice to wade confidently into the unstable waters of the e-commerce world. These new e-commerce practitioners and providers frequently get started in the game via Microsoft Dynamics RMS.
Many of these e-commerce solutions are scalable enough to meet the growing demands of retailers, with one such solution frequently standing head-and-shoulders above the rest: Magento.
Since its acquisition by online innovator and heavyweight eBay back in 2011, Magento has emerged as America's fastest-growing e-commerce platform. In fact, Magento today boasts more than 150,000 customers, ranging from super-skinny, one-man independent businesses to hulking Fortune 500 companies. Magento also offers a staggering breadth and depth of functionality to all of its customers and clients, making it not just popular, but powerful to boot.
More recently, eBay sold Magento to a high-powered equity firms partnership, and the new owners announced the much-anticipated release of Magento 2.0 which offers even more great features and functionalities than its popular predecessor.
One of the many strong selling points of Magento and Magento 2.0 is that the platform provides a wide array of options. The simplest and easiest version, Magento Go, is a template-driven platform that empowers the most basic of users to easily launch a functional website, at a very low rate. As they grow and expand, they can then migrate to Magento's Enterprise Edition, which supports much larger implementations and features an even richer feature set. Any and all Magento customers can also take advantage of thousands of add-ons to achieve the exact functionality they need; both now and well into the future.
Migrating to Magento
Just as many aspects of e-commerce have continued to change and evolve, so has the integration model. Companies today aren't always looking for a one-to-one connection between their e-commerce platform and their POS system. Instead, they are seeking many-to-many connections, so they remain agile enough to move and adapt quickly when thinks inevitably change. For example, if a company decides to sell on eBay first and then later on Amazon too, they don't want to buy and manage multiple solutions to support each platform. And if they change their POS or add an accounting system and/or ERP, they don't want to have to start from scratch or get held back by a specific technology that suddenly doesn't meet your needs.
All of these are viable reasons to migrate over from an outdated and limited solution like NitroSell to the powerful and ever-growing Magento. And to do so today. This way, you'll secure your company's e-commerce success not just now, but well into the future, too.
The e-commerce experts here at Imagination Media make this migration process as painless as possible. In addition to our peoples experience and expertise, we provide a versatile, powerful, and helpful Microsoft Dynamics RMS/RMH + Magento Connector.
Our RMS + Magento Connector easily and automatically integrates Microsoft Dynamics RMS or RMH with Magento and in so doing, ensures that you'll never need to worry about managing inventory in two different stores again. Our Connector routinely synchronizes inventory between your brick-and-mortar business and online store. Our Connector also fully and effortlessly supports not just RMS, but the new Retail Management Hero (or RMH) as well.
We've also added great features like gift cards and rewards points integration.
Contact us today to see how we can help you position your business to work and grow in a way that is perfect just for you. We look forward to helping you achieve all your dreams!
