xTuple reimagines eCommerce as Real-time Sales & Customer Service Access for Small and Mid-Sized Business

NORFOLK, VA — 

Test drive of xTuple open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) software now includes integrated business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce

Effective immediately, xTupleCommerce — the xTuple ERP-integrated Web-based tool for automating sales and marketing interactions with prospects, customers, business partners, and more — is available to test with the software company's unlimited "Free Trial."

Making the rounds of third and fourth quarter supply chain conferences, xTuple introduced the concept of eCommerce to help distributors and manufacturers with their specific challenges — to better service customers, to improve relationships, and increase efficiency and the bottom line — reimagining and expanding the definition of "eCommerce" beyond traditional online retail.

With this new addition to the complimentary trial, which consists of a public demo database refreshed every night, testers not only can poke and prod the ERP — something offered for years — they also see the results of their work immediately on the xTupleCommerce demo website, connected to the same database.

451 Research Impact Report: xTuple brings commerce to the supply chain

xTuple is doing rapidly something its larger rivals can only do very slowly and incrementally — adapt to the realities of customer-driven dynamic supply chains — and in particular its digital commerce capabilities, reports 451 Research’s Alan Pelz-Sharpe.

“xTuple has a clear vision as to how ERP will be leveraged in the future — that's more than many of its competitors can boast,” says Pelz-Sharpe.

Read the complete 451 Research Impact Report on xTuple.

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it

Committed to delivering hands-on, minds-on professional development from initial design to final delivery, xTuple’s Web Services Group developed a new website for ASSET STEM Education™ — a leading national science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education improvement nonprofit established by the Bayer Corporation and community partners.

From Rebecca Shapiro, director of business applications at ASSET —

xTuple is a team of accomplished technologists that provide affordable ERP for small and mid-sized business. The open source model enables the customer to self-serve with the knowledge that professional services are available.

ASSET website customers are now able to self-serve and:

  • Review detailed product information and place orders
  • Manage account information and view past and pending orders
  • View scheduled events and courses, purchase seats and register educators
  • Download invoices

ASSET products using xTupleCommerce

 

ASSET events using xTupleCommerce

According to CEO Ned Lilly, xTupleCommerce started its product life as the "xTuple Web Portal," and the initial implementation was the online "supportal" that still today manages support tickets, bugs and feature requests. It connects a website front-end to the ERP back-end — specifically in this case, the Incident Management, or issue tracker, system in the CRM module. Customers asked for shopping cart functionality — for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales — and new development ensued.

The Web Portal product is the first offering to use the new xTuple REST API (Application Programming Interface), and every single business object in the xTuple ERP system is exposed and available to Web services, where it can be "consumed" in real time. The result is no batch jobs, and no double-entry of data. 

With this full-scale rewrite, all logic and information in the xTuple ERP system, including customer-specific pricing, terms, product availability, etc., is instantly available to the website that an organization's business partners use (customers, vendors, etc.).

The tools available are extensive — the xTupleCommerce website is built on a hugely scalable Content Management System (CMS), powered by the open source Drupal. Users can edit ERP information in either the xTuple Desktop client or from the xTupleCommerce website, and can configure how product information is presented, including how search engines index the content. Blogs, static webpages, contact forms, and much more, are also available  by request  in a complimentary private demo, so testers can see the full power of an integrated ERP/CRM system and customer-facing website.

xTuple ERP empowers every enterprise with eCommerce

Seamlessly connecting online, retail, wholesale, supplier, inside and outside sales, xTupleCommerce is a robust business application used by organizations doing large-scale business transactions.

xTupleCommerce users report new monthly sales in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, from both existing and new customers, and list the biggest benefits to their customers, vendors and other trading partners as:

  • Self-serve on the website to update account information, check on order status themselves
  • Selling customer-exclusive replacement parts
  • Represent and make purchases on behalf of multiple parties via outside sales
  • Expose status, activities and documents to all stakeholders in a project
  • Order-processing with notifications, special pricing and upsell opportunities
  • View pending orders, saved carts, current cart of items, shipping addresses, etc.

xTupleCommerce customers report that their customers find the system to be efficient, intuitive, and much less an eCommerce site than a customer service-oriented business tool. There is no learning curve, ramp-up time, or training required. New customers go “live” with their xTupleCommerce site and start seeing the benefit in increased revenue and improved customer satisfaction.

Traditional eCommerce systems can charge upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the modest cost of xTupleCommerce can be recouped with the increase in revenue achieved in just one year, an impressive return-on-investment (ROI).

"When the sites go-live and orders start coming in overnight, or from buyers that the website owner has never met, it becomes obvious to our customer that xTupleCommerce is a 24-hour sales and service machine," said Josh Fischer, manager of xTuple Web Services Group.

 

Tweets

Announced: Free test drive of #opensource #ERP software now includes live integrated #B2B #eCommerce | LINK

Reimagineering eCommerce as Real-time Sales & Customer Service Access for Small & Mid-Sized Business #SMB | LINK

Powered by xTupleCommerce @ASSETeducation Services Online delivers user-friendly experience | LINK via @xTupleCommerce

Tags

#ENSW #ERP #SMB #manufacturing #distribution #logistics #supplychain #eCommerce #opensource #B2B

 

 

About xTuple, the world’s #1 open source ERP

BOSSIE/Best of Open Source Awards 2015: xTuple named InfoWorld's top pick in open source business applications — they're the engines behind every modern business. Read more about BOSSIE Awards.

Award-winning xTuple, makers of the world’s leading suite of open source accounting, Corporate Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), is supply chain management software for growing businesses to control their operations and profitability. xTuple integrates all critical functional areas in one modular system: sales, financials and operations — including customer and supplier management, inventory control, manufacturing and distribution — the powerful tools to Grow Your World®.

As a commercial open source company, xTuple works with a global community of tens of thousands of professional users. xTuple gives customers the ability to tailor solutions with multi-platform support for Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile as well as flexible licensing and pricing options. Join the innovation conversation with the open source community at www.xTuple.com.