“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.”
— Rudiger Dornbusch, Economist
The eCommerce business is booming and will continue to grow in in the coming years. The retail eCommerce sales worldwide amounted to 3.53 trillion US dollars in 2019 and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to a whopping 6.54 trillion US dollars by 2023, according to this data from Statista.
Small businesses have looked up at eCommerce juggernauts like Amazon and Walmart with a sense of envy and frustration. The question was how these small businesses manage to enter the eCommerce market.
Many solutions were introduced in the past few years to address this question. This blog is all about our pick for an eCommerce solution. It is called Odoo, a platform where you can create and manage an eStore. Odoo has lived up to its claim of being the ‘world’s easiest all in one management software’.
With an emphasis on customizability, it allows seamless implementation of functions like Building your product catalogues, configuring various payment and delivery methods and managing back-office processes such as inventory, purchase, vendors and much more.
A Case Study
Let me walk you through a case study where Odoo came to our rescue:
Our client had a large business dealing with off-the-shelf goods – with no online presence. Our client saw that their business was spiraling downwards when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and shut down all retail outlets for a considerable time.
They decided to digitally transform their business model and enter the eCommerce sector. Their requirements were:
- Boost sales via an eCommerce website
- Having multiple warehouses within the country, they needed a single platform to manage inventory, purchase and sales – with detail customizability options
- A secure payment gateway which is an absolute necessity
- Automated discounts on products corresponding to the quantity a customer purchase
- Boost up sale using upselling and cross selling
Along with all these, it was also very critical for our client to have all of this available within a short time span. And they were pretty certain that they didn’t wish to follow the conventional method of developing an eCommerce platform from scratch.
That was when we decided to build the website using Odoo.
Why Odoo
Finding a progressed solution that allows CRM and ERP integrations is as important as building a robust, elegant and smooth eCommerce platform in the advancing eCommerce world. And this is the very reason Odoo becomes the go to solution. Odoo eCommerce allows seamless integration with other Odoo business apps.
Odoo offers several benefits some of which are listed below:
1. Craft stunning product pages
Yes, your product speaks for your brand. And having superior quality product pages is imperative for an eCommerce website. Odoo allows you to create stunning product pages with a simple ‘Drag and Drop’ option with a lot of customization on offer for the layout, colors, look and theme of your store.
In addition, we can add features to our product like:
- Optional products related to selected items
- Multiple currencies
- Discounts
- Promo codes and etc.
2. Manage products seamlessly
Odoo allows a smooth product management, for the addition of new products and removal of the outdated ones. Also, this enables you to create detailed product pages, add images, banners, call to actions, slides etc. making the whole process of designing and editing product details so seamless. Moreover, all the information gets merged and integrated throughout the system.
3. One-step checkout
Odoo offers the convenience of one-step checkout making the transaction short and user-friendly. There is also an availability of creating customized check out to suit your business.
4. Fully integrated with Payment Gateway
Allow customers to pay with Paypal, Ogone, Adyen, Buckaroo, Authorize.net, Stipe. You can choose the payment option which is suitable for your store. This way it provides flexibility as the different payment method for every business is different.
5. Shipping integration
Odoo eCommerce allows store owners to put add-on connectors to manage your shipping services. Odoo ERP integrates with famous shipping carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL and also you can easily track your order from Odoo ERP.
Benefits of Odoo eCommerce integration with other Odoo business apps
- All in one place – Integrating eCommerce with Odoo ERP allows to manage everything from one location. Odoo Website, Odoo CRM, Odoo Sales, Odoo Accounting, Odoo Manufacturing, Odoo Inventory and more are fully integrated with Odoo eCommerce so you can manage your business with just one system.
- Multiple store management – Odoo ERP integration with eCommerce stores offers you to handle multiple stores from one single software. Now, managing common inventory for all the stores becomes easy, rather managing it differently.
- Make business profitable – Odoo ERP and eCommerce integration make your profitable by analysis correct sales and inventory level. Inventory and sales can easily be maintained via automatic stock adjustments and reporting. Dedicated customer portals help keep customer data organized with order tracking and claims, allowing customers to download invoices and delivery orders as well as view pending shipments from a single location.
Process of development
For someone new to this platform, it might seem pretty exciting for the ease with which they can setup an eCommerce website with minimal coding efforts! Here’s how it goes:
Server setup
- Set up a server in the cloud with Odoo recommended configuration and install & configure Odoo application in this server.
Configuring the client’s company
- Add admin and other users
- External email server configuration setup – For incoming and outgoing emails
- Inventory setup
- Warehouses and storage locations setup
- Setup delivery routes and shipping methods
- Product inventory setup
- Invoicing
- Invoice templates configuration
- Currency setup
- Tax details setup
- Payment type structuring
- Purchase and Sale
- Adding vendors
- Discount structure
- Product configurator – Create products, product variants and setting their respective:
- Pricing
- Unit of measure
- Billing
- Invoicing, etc.
- Email setup
- Wish-list/ Cart management
- Payment gateway integration – with multiple payment methods (Credit/Debit cards, UPI, Net banking, etc.)
- Deciding the theme and designing the landing page UI
- The website’s UI/UX designs were also done in parallel to the afore-mentioned configurations
And it is as simple as that.
In our overall experience, Odoo is a very reliable, easy to use eCommerce platform that provides the fastest time-to-market and gives better ROI. Afterall for a business it is all about generating better revenues and constant increase in sales. Its flexibility in nature, makes it fit in any size or any category of business.
I’d like to go back to their headline ‘Odoo – world’s easiest all in one management software’. That’s what it is!
