As a home or kitchen retailer, your journey with the HomeByMe for Retailers 3D planning solution must be seamless from start to finish.
Operating with disconnected systems can be a significant impediment to the successful rollout of a 3D planning solution, preventing you from getting the most out of your systems. Here is what you need to know to successfully integrate your 3D planning solution with your e-commerce and payment platforms.
Article developed in collaboration with INSPI, long-term integration partner of HomeByMe.
As a home or kitchen retailer, your journey with the HomeByMe for Retailers 3D planning solution must be seamless from start to finish, just as it should be for a consumer. And integration of your back-office systems with the solution is the essential first step in this process, ensuring smooth operations and better customer experiences.
First, what do we mean by integrating your systems?
The HomeByMe for Retailers 3D planning solution is just one component of a comprehensive project management flow for you, whether you are a home or kitchen retailer. Integration of the solution into the rest of your workflows ensures that data flows between the platform and your other back-end systems, enabling you to automate critical processes like quotations, payments, order fulfillment, inventory synchronization, promotions, manufacturing – if needed – logistics, financial reporting, and more.
Without integration, data must be manually transferred from one system to the next, which is laborious and can lead to errors, compromising on the customer experience and devaluing your investment in the platform. Automation has three benefits – reliability, speed and accuracy.
Once a consumer has finished creating the room or kitchen of their dreams using the HomeByMe for Retailers 3D planning solution, the project moves onto your other IT systems to the next stages in the order fulfilment cycle: completion of the sale, trigger for manufacturing, delivery or installation, and other follow-up activities. So, the first question to ask is – what data and systems do we need to sync?
Retailers generally have multiple types of legacy systems in place. These may have been built over a long period of time, involving different types of vendors, software and generations of systems. Sometimes, companies who have undergone mergers may have two different types of systems running side by side.
There is very little flexibility to change these existing billing and IT systems. So, it’s common to find situations where state-of-the-art systems like the HomeByMe for Retailers 3D planning solution co-exists with legacy systems that have been in place for years, if not decades.
The most common methodology for integration is to create a middleware platform that links the platform to your ERP, cash, inventory, and other systems. This approach creates an API-layer between the existing legacy applications and the 3D planning solution. As legacy systems get gradually replaced, they can be integrated via the API layer to seamlessly integrate with the solution. This type of ‘agile’ approach brings immediate business value and is futureproof to extend to integration with other types of software, or upgrades to other systems over time.
The HomeByMe for Retailers 3D planning solution comes with the highest security certifications and is entirely cloud based. It has specifically been designed to offer easy integration with retailer systems. Built on web services, it minimizes the time needed to set up and be ready for deployment: retailers have the option of completing the integration independently or engaging with experts to do so. Thanks to longstanding relationships with well-established software integrators such as INSPI, HomeByMe can support home and kitchen retailers through the deployment and integration process.
There are many advantages to using dedicated expertise for integration, including quick rollout and 24×7 access to specialists. In-house retailer IT teams can then focus on their ongoing priorities while working closely with the experts to oversee smooth implementation.
Even though cloud-based 3D planning solutions are easy and affordable to deploy, there is a need to ensure effective integration that creates simple process flows across multiple systems which might not be homogenous. It is only effective integration that will deliver true return on your investment in any 3D planning solution over the long term. Advanced 3D planning solutions like those offered by HomeByMe have a pre-built integration process to help retailers go to market quickly, and can offer expertise and support in the installation and integration process.