THE IMPORTANCE OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT FOR ECOMMERCEwww.sage.co.uk

1 Frost and Sullivan. December 2014. Future of B2B Online Retailing.

2 Aberdeen Group. July 2014. Real-time financial reporting: The need for speed.

3 Aberdeen Group, July 2014. Secrets for Improved Productivity and Performance in the Back-Office

Improve your cash flow with Sage X3 Introduction

The ecommerce market is still growing with the B2B commerce market predicted to be twice as large as the B2C market by 20201. Will your ecommerce strategy support this growth? And if so, do you have a successful ecommerce storefront backed by a powerful financial management system?

Often business owners use an ecommerce platform and a financial management system separately, creating silos of information, thereby making the overall financial tracking and reporting process cumbersome. Imagine if you could get all your financial data online, from a single dashboard and without any human interaction – how much easier and simpler would it be to manage your company’s overall performance.

By integrating ecommerce solutions with a scalable Financial Management System, companies will save time and reduce errors by automating the transfer of payment and sales data from the front-end store platform to the back-end financial system. Furthermore, it will help them in gaining the much needed flexibility to keep pace with customer demands through a widening range of insights into orders, products and financials.

With a Financial Management System keeping track of how your business is performing, you will be able to concentrate all your energy on running and expanding your business. Aberdeen Group found that 86% of organisations with real-time access to financial performance are able to deliver timely and accurate information for decision-making2. Another Aberdeen report proves that lack of accounting integration causes 56% of respondent’s difficulty in ensuring consistency across data3.

In this paper, we examine the importance of financial management for ecommerce. We will also look at how ecommerce businesses can benefit from using a payment gateway like Sage Pay with a Financial Management System like Sage X3.

www.sage.co.uk/software-and-services/business-management-solutions/sage-x3 0800 952 0082

Listed below are top 4 points detailing how you can drive business growth and efficiency by using a Financial Management System for ecommerce:

FlexibilityFactor: While you may have started your business with just a handful of customers, as your company grows, you will need a system that helps you manage both large volumes of orders as well as complex business processes. So flexibility in terms of future expansion – both locally and globally is paramount.

Importance: A fully integrated Financial Management and ecommerce system will give your finance team access to the data they need, whenever and wherever they need it. From a single user dashboard they will be able to access sales and revenue information by product, financial reporting such as cost accounting, budget and commitments, stock and demand trends etc.

Sage X3: Sage X3 covers multi-channel, multi-location, multi-company and multi-currency transactions, with unlimited in-built currencies and exchange rates. With features like global compliance, multi-language, multi-legislation and multi-ledger, it is also efficient in managing a global business. With a set of various currencies and exchange rates, you will be able to manage several companies, located in different countries through a single database, as transactions entered in foreign currency are automatically converted into the ledger currency.

Customer SatisfactionFactor: Ease of getting most up to date product information, inventory availability, order tracking, etc. online is a sure fire way of reducing operational issues and meeting customer satisfaction levels.

Importance: By automating the data exchange between a Financial Management System and ecommerce front-end the whole process from order generation to processing to fulfilment is taken care of. A Financial Management System will support full management of billing, payments and revenue. This can include customer payment schedules and transactions, credit management and revenue tracking across the business. Having all this information at a click of a button will help your finance team in providing excellent customer service as well. Research shows that for every 20% improvement in data quality and efficiency, there is a 9% improvement in customer service quality and responsiveness4.

Sage X3: Sage X3 allows customers to get real-time information about available inventory, latest order status and even track shipments with tracking numbers. By integrating a payment gateway with your ecommerce store, such as Sage Pay, both your customer service and finance teams and your customers will have access to payment information at all times. Availability of such information helps to reduce your operations cost and improves customer experience with your store front.

4 IDG Research Services. Feb 2014. Impact of data effectiveness on business outcomes.

Sage X3 With a set of various currencies

and exchange rates, you will be able to manage several

companies, located in different countries through a single

database, as transactions entered in foreign currency are

automatically converted into the ledger currency.

www.sage.co.uk/software-and-services/business-management-solutions/sage-x3 0800 952 0082

SATISFACTIONCUSTOMER

By automating the data exchange between a Financial Management System and ecommerce front-end the whole process from order generation

to processing to fulfilment is taken care of.

Simplicity Factor: By automating the data transfer from ecommerce store with the Financial Management System, businesses can expect a reduction in errors and time spent on data entry, helping them to concentrate on growth.

Importance: Whether your customers are consumers or businesses, the integration of a Financial Management System with your ecommerce store front will give you everything you need in a single integrated business application so you can reach more potential customers, sell more products, efficiently and accurately fulfil orders, and drive customer satisfaction across multiple websites, channels and international regions.

Sage X3: From a small start-up with big plans to an established enterprise, Sage X3 has scalability to support both. It offers rich functionality to simplify the management of accounting information by managing several functions through one database. The feature helps in eliminating the need for using spreadsheets, thereby reducing any chances of error, as you will be able to pull reports, as well as generate invoices from sales orders at the click of a button. It also eliminates the complexity of tax and VAT with tax management capabilities on debit, on payment, suspension of tax, VAT on pre-payment and more.

Analysis Factor: When all payment transactions integrate automatically with the accounting system, businesses gain real-time, unified visibility into payments, sales, revenue, products etc. Having a complete picture of cash-flow enables stronger business decision-making, plus better financial control and audit reporting.

Importance: With real-time visibility of everything across the business in terms of cash-flow, your finance department will be able to make quick and informed decisions. Aberdeen Group reports that access to real-time financial data allows companies to improve the amount of time it takes to make decisions by 11%5.

Sage X3: The lifeline of a business is its cash flow and Sage X3 supports real-time analysis of how much money is coming in and going out of your business. It provides you with cash forecasts and translation of sales and purchase documents in future cash issue/entry. It even helps you monitor internal expenses by keeping a log of personal information entries.

5 Aberdeen Group. July 2014. Secrets for Improved Productivity and Performance in the Back-Office

Sage X3 It eliminates the complexity

of tax and VAT with tax management capabilities on

debit, on payment, suspension of tax, VAT on pre-payment

and more.

www.sage.co.uk/software-and-services/business-management-solutions/sage-x3 0800 952 0082

ConclusionA Financial Management System, when used in conjunction with an ecommerce system, provides companies with the in-depth knowledge that is required to ensure that data sharing and monitoring is achieved to a high standard.

It can provide a feature-rich, fully integrated system that pulls across all customer, prospect and financial information for back-office finance departments to have a single view of spend and revenue.

Sage X3 Sage X3 is a multi-language, multi-company, multi-site, multi-currency, multi-ledger, and multi-legislation financial management tool and business management software that provides comprehensive accounting, quick implementation, scalability and flexibility options.

Sage X3 offers great control over accounting and financial data, by allowing users to define General Ledger analytical dimensions and offering filtering drill-down of financial activity. Detailed and visual reporting with simple exporting to a chosen presentation program, give you the flexibility to report quickly to stakeholders. Fixed asset management functionality is included as a standard, enabling planning and budgeting of assets through the entire lifecycle, helping the company make the right decisions.

Sage X3 Detailed and visual reporting

with simple exporting to a chosen presentation program,

give you the flexibility to report quickly to stakeholders.

www.sage.co.uk/software-and-services/business-management-solutions/sage-x3 0800 952 0082

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