OVERWHELMED ecommerce web developers who are struggling to cope with a pandemic boom in demand have been offered a lifeline, by UK fintech experts who help beat integration headaches.
Devs who specialise in ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce – as well as those who offer bespoke systems – are in greater demand than ever as Covid accelerates the retail exodus to online.
However, they are also coping with increased pushback from demanding clients, who expect their new ecommerce sites to integrate with accounting software like Sage or Xero, or with business management software like Salesforce.
Leading UK platform integration experts Eureka Solutions says the painful reality is that most systems do not speak to each other and say those data black holes are a “blight on business”.
Now the firm has revealed outstanding results from the first full year of its Cloud Data Exchange (CDE) system – which bridged those gaps via 13m successfully automated transactions in 2021, saving users from a total of 75,000 hours of lost productivity.
Lara Fitches, CDE Sales Manager at the £4.5m-a-year firm, said: “Every day we are being contacted by web developers who are at their wits’ end because their clients are demanding integrations that they simply don’t have the capacity to deliver.
“The worst is when it comes to accountancy software, because that is all about tax, VAT and payroll, so there is absolutely no room for error. At a time when they are already incredibly busy this is another headache they can do without.
“Nine out of 10 of them just want us to take away the pain. They want to focus on building beautiful, easy to navigate ecommerce sites – not wrestling with plug-ins, or coding custom solutions that will quickly be out of date.”
Eureka Solutions has invested heavily in CDE, which enables most of the major ecommerce platforms to “speak” to the major accountancy software systems and other business software. As a cloud system it requires no downloads or updates and a dedicated team of developers are constantly adding new “connectors” to bridge even more of the data black holes.
The results since CDE was first taken to market in January 2021 have been stellar. In its first 12 months it handled 12,936,781 transactions that otherwise would have required human intervention. That is estimated to have saved users each an average of 630 hours per year.
Lara added: “Pretty much every business uses accounting software, but those don’t speak to the ecommerce platforms. That means that every time a customer places an order online, a member of staff will have to manually type that information into their book-keeping or accountancy software.
“Then someone also needs to manually adjust stock levels and upload them back to the website. If they are doing that 20 to 100 times a day it is a full-time job for someone. Yet CDE makes all of it happen automatically, to a schedule that’s customised to each individual business.”
The firm says ecommerce website developers are its biggest growth sector because of heightened expectations from a flood of new customers, including start-ups and traditional retailers moving online. However, enthusiasm for new ecommerce sites can wane quickly when it becomes apparent they do not communicate with accountancy software.
Gillian Livingstone, Chief Operating Officer at Eureka Solutions, which employs 65 people from its HQ in East Kilbride, said: “Time is the one thing that all of our clients wish they had more of and we are giving them it – saving our clients on average 630 hours per year.
“When it comes to ecommerce businesses, the efficiencies delivered by CDE speak for themselves.
Users are freed up from error-prone processes that soak up staff time. Staff can focus on being more productive, efficient while instant access to accurate business data brings benefits, from faster order fulfilment to better stock management.”
The system is also ideal for web developers who offer bespoke ecommerce platforms and two of the UK’s most-respected UK ecommerce agencies have bespoke CDE connectors for their platforms – Somerset-based Iconography and Visualsoft, which has its HQ in Newcastle.
Lara added: “What most agencies want are clients who stick with them. When developers can make integrations simple and updates seamless, clients are more likely to stick around. When they are also helping them to be more efficient and profitable, that is as close as you can get to a guarantee of ‘stickiness’.”
Based in East Kilbride, Eureka Solutions is a £4.5m a year operation with 65 staff and delivers cloud-based business solutions to thousands of businesses across the UK. As well as its propriety Cloud Data Exchange solution it deploying global platforms like Oracle NetSuite and Sage 200.
