As almost all businesses increasingly become digital-focused, there is a huge reliance on ERP and CRM solutions that do some, but not all, of what your office needs. To increase flexibility, the current trend is away from fixed solutions toward composable ERPs (be it Infor CloudSuite, SalesForce, or other product), adaptable to changing business needs, rather than tying you to a vendor’s roadmap.
The smart people at research firm Gartner define Composable ERP as “an adaptive technology strategy that enables the foundational, administrative and operational digital capabilities enabling an enterprise to keep up with the pace of business change.”
In simpler terms, the ERP becomes more “your” product rather than something you have to work around. Your IT team or developers can use the ERP as a basic platform on which they can hang powerful third-party integrations, security tools, and import all types of legacy or cloud data, and extend it through custom features.
The more data that the ERP can access. from sales, purchasing, human resources, and production enables the business to get a fuller picture of the business in action, and respond faster to competitive opportunities or challenges. Other benefits include an improved user experience, the ERP adapts as the business changes, and it supports the whole business better rather than being an IT “thing” that people feel they have to use.
Many businesses don’t have time or resources for developers, fortunately there are plenty of third-party tools out there, for e-commerce, supply chain and back-office functions. At Cartis, we provide payment solutions that easily integrate with ERPs to provide custom payment integrations, value-added reseller connections through finance gateways, and online store plugins to improve data visibility.
An omnichannel integrated payment experience from Cartis can work with your ERP, linking those transactions to payment and finance functions, faster and more accurately, as all applications become more about agility and less about rigid stability.
The Practical Benefits of Composable ERP and Cartis
Many businesses continue to see strong growth in e-commerce, but often lack the tools and fidelity to rapidly process those growing numbers of transactions. Some use a mix of systems that struggle to work together, if at all. Others integrate them in an ad hoc manner that creates business and reputational risk if things go wrong.
The modern composable ERP removes those risks through APIs, connectors and official integrations that work with a huge number of other applications to create a better product. Most of these are cloud-based, reducing the need for companies to invest in capital costs for servers and costly applications.
The good news as ecommerce dominates sales, is that finance and payment solutions exist in many forms for businesses to adopt, rather than reinventing the wheel. With a composable or extension-friendly ERP, they are easy to bolt on, integrate with data streams, and get the business handling those growing digital sales faster.
Cartis works with the leading names in payments, including VISA, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, and the growing number of online payment platforms for rapid integration and use of their services.
However, with growing digital sales comes increased chargebacks, greater risk of fraud, the pain of rapid returns, and the need to issue refunds. Here, Cartis works with its partners to help your business avoid fraud and speed up the process of refunds to maintain an accurate picture of the business and sales, and minimize fees and delays.
And while those benefits are visible in-house, your company can also proudly tout its rapid return, refund, and strong finance partnership credentials to prospects and customers, helping deliver better customer service, and more efficient business operations, while convincing new partners to be more likely to work with you.
Into the future of payments
As all businesses that deal with digital services know, nothing stands still. Already AI tools are making orders and trades at the most convenient rates up and down business supply chains. Bots buy sneakers online the nano-second they hit the store page, and consumers increasingly use automated payments for services and products.
As the volume of digital sales increases, all businesses need to be ready to handle the load, and have the partnerships in place to deal with a changing payments landscape. They must also be ready for changes in legislation and accountability, ensuring that compliance goals are met. Cartis’ streamlined digital payment gateway will help play a key role in meeting business and customer needs, and as ERPs further change to fit in to the changing operations landscape.
For more information, visit Cartis Payments to learn about payment integration and how our ability to integrate with ERPs is changing how businesses work.