To create a true Magento 2 omnichannel solution for your business and customers, you need to integrate a few third-party extensions, starting with Magento Commerce Order Management.
Magento 2 is the world’s leading enterprise eCommerce platform. More than 200,000 businesses have migrated to M2 because it provides complete control over your data and content and delivers modern site functionality.
M2 has a wide range of flexible and user-friendly features, from inventory and catalog management to SEO to advanced marketing and sales options. It can also be the foundation of an omnichannel solution for your business.
But on its own, Magento 2 is ‘just’ a web ordering system. It needs the support of third-party extensions to fulfill the needs of a store POS and provide seamless order management across every channel.
Think of Magento Commerce Order Management as air traffic control for your commerce activities.
MCOM is a modular, cloud-based platform that provides centralized inventory, order and fulfillment capabilities. It manages orders coming in from all channels and matches them to the best eCommerce fulfillment options. You can also manage all logistics, customer service and payment processes of an order from creation through completion.
“With MCOM and other third-party extensions that add POS features, you can create a single Magento-based system for taking orders online and in store. This model can then be expanded across multiple stores to provide a constant, low-friction, unified commerce experience.” – Mayank Agrawal, CTO, DotcomWeavers
With M2 and MCOM, you can sell effectively to anyone, anywhere. But how does that work for your business?
Real-Time Inventory: Gives you the ability to pool stock from multiple sources and provide totals for different front ends (international stores, warehouses, etc.). You can specify product safety margins and get real-time inventory updates to mitigate the risk of oversells.
Single Customer View: Combine databases to create a single view of customer orders and product inventory. This helps increase efficiency, deliverability and order fulfillment. Combined data offers greater insight for communicating and nurturing customers (think personalization, offers, and incentives) and creates a tailored customer journey.
Item Sourcing Engine: Intelligently source order items from the best location(s) according to rules that you define. MCOM also gives you the flexibility to ‘batch’ orders or source them in real-time, depending on speed requirements. This enables you to optimize inventory, minimize the number of split shipments, save on costs and make customers happier.
Flexible Fulfillment: Magento 2 and MCOM support a variety of fulfillment options for your omnichannel offering:
MCOM also offers an out-of-the-box in-store interface for sources (warehouses, etc.) without fulfillment software of their own, which is good for click & collect and ship-from-store orders. Finally, it can also connect with third-party fulfillment tools via powerful APIs.
Customer Services: Magento + MCOM provides a host of customer-friendly features including:
As with the fulfillment feature, MCOM offers an out-of-the-box customer service option. It can also connect to your CRM tool and even gives you the ability to add MCOM screens to third-party tools.
Payment Options: MCOM makes connecting your payment system seamless and efficient for your business and your customers. Again, MCOM offers an out-of-the-box payment solution and supports flexible third-party tool connectivity and customization so you can set up the payment gateway you need.
With Magento 2 and MCOM, you can deliver a better user experience and optimize your retail. Here’s how.
Superior Order Management
MCOM merges your online and offline business by centralizing inventory in real-time, even globally, and intelligently sourcing products for fulfillment. This supports an ‘endless aisle of inventory’, which gives customers more purchasing options. It also helps store associates ‘save sales’ that might have been lost due to a lack of inventory in the store.
Flexible Order Fulfillment
Better fulfillment means more sales. MCOM can reduce the operational costs of managing your inventory by turning your stores, warehouses, suppliers, and partners into distribution centers. This enables you to satisfy customer needs and make more sales. Some options are:
A Better In-Store Experience
The easier you make it for customers to shop the way they want, the more sales you’ll see. Capabilities like Mobile POS from eBizmart (a Magento partner), can help you personalize customer engagement. Store associates can access products, pricing, coupons, orders and returns on a tablet, which makes shopping convenient for customers and earns you more sales.
Omnichannel Makes You Competitive
Nearly half of all retailers have or will adopt an omnichannel eCommerce platform by the end of 2019. Omnichannel must be a priority for businesses that want to succeed.
With a unified commerce offering, you can create a consistent, customer-centric experience that helps people engage with your brand. …All this, while streamlining your business operations and reducing your total cost of ownership.
Note: this process is technical and we suggest you find a qualified Magento development team to assist you.
To connect MCOM with your Magento 2 store, your developer will need to install the MCOM connector. This is available via Composer. The key requirements are:
Once the MCOM connector is installed, a few configurations must be made on the Magento instance. These are made under the newly-created admin section for MCOM. Here’s a checklist to follow:
For Magento users, MCOM enables you to launch a true Magento 2 omnichannel solution. Here are the key points we covered:
MAGENTO COMMERCE EDITION
MAGENTO COMMERCE ORDER MANAGEMENT
THIRD PARTY EXTENSION ECOSYSTEM
Finally, keep in mind that support for Magento 1 ends in June 2020. This means you’ll need to migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2.
So, if you’re considering a Magento 2 omnichannel solution for your business, speak with your developer about adding Magento Commerce Order Management to your migration project.
We also offer free Magento migration and integration assessments. Get in touch today to schedule yours!
If this article was helpful or if you have questions please let us know in the comments!
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