Virtual Logistics' Ecommerce Data Integration Blog

It has been said that a picture is worth a 1000 words. With that old adage in mind VL has released another series of infographics about where your data integration lives and how middleware can help your on premise and cloud applications communicate once you have chosen your system. 

I was recently invited to participate in a podcast for the SAP IXN Thought Leadership Series. I have been a member of the IXN network since late 2012. The IXN network is an invitation-only thought leaders network providing insights, sharing ideas and helping readers and listeners become better informed on how they and their companies can improve. The podcast are sponsored by SAP, but IXN members are not paid nor are they spokespersons for SAP. 

A well planned ecommerce integration and whether to choose a middleware package over a single silo EDI solution is closely related. Before I begin to examine this relationship it is important to define a couple of key terms.

Here at Virtual Logistics trade show season is in full swing which means that there is a lot of talk around the office about e-commerce integration. This month, Virtual Logistics was exhibiting at the Magento ecommerce world Imagine 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada where we partnered with SmartOSC to demo end to end Magento e-commerce integration. The trade show was a huge success and another great opportunity for Virtual Logistics to discuss with people about e-commerce integration. There is more to come on the Magento Imagine trade show in a future blog article, but, our demo and our partnership got me thinking; what does Magento end to end integration actually look like?

This past week I have been reading a lot about marketing automation. In an earlier blog article titled 4 key considerations for successful ecommerce integration, I talked about the importance of choosing a system that allows the integration of all of your social media elements, but your social media tools are not the only thing that you need to consider. What about your leads, contacts, campaigns and blog? That is where marketing automation comes in!

They say every picture tells a story. At VL we believe that infographics are a great way of telling a story. A story that business owners need to know and understand.

Ecommerce Integration - We’ve partnered with SmartOSC to promote Magento end to end e-commerce integration at Magento Imagine 2013 in Las Vegas. Read all about it in the press release below. We hope to see you in Las Vegas April 8-10.

This past week, Virtual Logistics attended Canada’s premier digital marketing and e-commerce conference, Dx3 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in downtown Toronto. Dx3’s tagline is ‘where Canadian business gets digital’, and content curator Ron Tite knows how to pick speakers that influence digital both in Canada and around the world. There were many educational opportunities at the show including keynote speeches from:

Should your E-commerce system be integrated? The answer is,more than likely, but what exactly does that phrase mean? In a blog post before Christmas we talked about Amazon’s staggering 35 orders a second from its UK website. Can you imagine what a nightmare that would be during the Christmas or summer shopping season if Amazon were not integrated? So that got me to thinking…what are the most important things to think when looking at E-commerce integration? I came up with 4 considerations or ‘pointers’ that our team here at VL always seem to be asking both current and potential customers in order to make sure that their E-commerce integration is a success.

As the world of social explodes and agencies and marketers get on the social treadmill one of the issues that rears its head very quickly is how do I get all these platforms and systems to talk to each other. For agencies and marketers data integration is as far from their experience as we at VL sewing ladies dresses. Most have no clue, so the manual keyboard pounding goes on. Data gets lost or is incorrectly entered and the whole purpose of marketing automation is weakened by poor data. This is where good solid integration comes into play. So if you are an agency or marketer juggling multiple platforms that need to talk to each other this article is for you.