It will come as no surprise to know that over four in five Americans used some variety of online payment in 2021. As the final and admittedly critical steps in the buying process, the more secure and simple the process is made, the more likely it is they will go through the purchase and possibly even return for more.
Considering that they’re parting with their hard-earned money, any inconvenience can prove to be a hurdle to successful sales. Having the right payment platform can ensure you’re delivering payment experiences that match your customers’ expectations in terms of safety, speed, and even options. CardConnect’s CardPointe platform is one such option, offering a wide range of solutions catering to the needs of various kinds of users.
However, that’s not the final step, at least for businesses seeking to offer the best shopping experiences to their customers. There is an increasingly important step that can pave the way for smoother operations and better customer experience: ERP Integration.
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About Epicor P21 ERP
Epicor’s Prophet 21 (P21) software is a solution created for distributors to manage a wide variety of business processes from inventory and warehouse management and accounting to eCommerce and business intelligence. The software is built on 5 decades of industry experience.
The software has an active and dedicated user base who constitute the Prophet 21 World Wide User Group.
About CardPointe
CardConnect is a platform offering a wide host of payment processing products from a virtual terminal, and plug-and-play terminal to a hosted payment page, and mobile application. The company is owned by Fiserv and is headquartered in Philadelphia, USA.
CardPointe—its payment gateway—offers businesses an easy means to integrate, process, and manage credit card payments through its merchants processing platform. It also offers integrated payment solutions for businesses seeking to create in-house SaaS solutions.
Related: All you need to know about payment gateways
Integrating Cardpointe and P21 ERP: What it means
In simple terms, Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP integration gets your key business apps talking with each other. It’s possible through a few methods and opens up your business to more transparent processes, and smoother workflows, while empowering teams and platforms to better cater to your customers: old and new.
You can integrate your P21 ERP with your Customer Relation Management (CRM), Product Information Management (PIM) tools, your eCommerce platform and more. The “and more” certainly includes your payments gateway as well—in this case, CardPointe.
Recommended read: The Complete Guide to ERP Integration
Why Integrate payment gateway and P21 ERP?
As mentioned previously, the payment experience plays an important role in a customer’s experience shopping with you. Yet, that customer experience truly starts way before they have even thought to purchase your product: in the way the merchant runs their business: a lot which takes place via the ERP.
Syncing the two systems can help bridge any gaps in time or processes between the business and its payment gateway. The result leads to several advantages including:
Cut the manual work
..and the time, effort, and energy that comes with it. Without integration, companies would require to manually update payment details and information in multiple systems. This isn’t just an expensive use of the resource but opens the possibility of errors that may prove to be costly. Integrating with the ERP allows real-time updates via automated synchronization.
Real-time insights
With the ERP and payments integrated, decision-makers have access to accurate information free of missed or hidden data, especially with regard to cash flow. This accuracy can pave the way for strategies that best leverage the strengths of the organization based on its financial health, and likewise, foresee and mitigate hurdles that it may indicate.
Improved payments tracking
With the customer details and payment information synched, teams have more efficient access to information needed to track payments with their respective purchases. Keeping tabs on pending and overdue payments also becomes more efficient with an integrated setup.
Offer competitive shopping experiences
An integrated system can ensure that your business offers a seamless and timely experience to shoppers. With the influence of improved B2C shopping experiences from eCommerce giants and service providers, more buyers are intuitively expecting similarly smooth experiences even from B2B portals.
Using ERP Integration Middleware
ERP Integration Middleware uses third-party products to sync your P21 ERP with your key business applications. As the name would suggest, it acts as a bridge between the ERP and the respective application enabling the flow of information between the otherwise isolated tools.
DCKAP’s own middleware offering is DCKAP Integrator: designed for specifically for distributors to simplify their business processes via an easy-to-use low-code tool. Over 100 distributors are enjoying smoother workflows, improved decision-making backed by accurate data, and the perks of offering improved customer experiences. Over 50 of these have integrated their Epicor Prophet 21 ERP via DCKAP Integrator.
The product offers limitless integrations: with just the API, it can connect all the business applications you would want to track, acting as a single, real-time source of truth about your business.
Other products offering ERP integration include Dell Bhoomi and Mulesoft.
Watch DCKAP Integrator in action and learn how it can help tackle your specific business challenges by getting your demo scheduled today.
