www.virtuallogistics.ca 1
3 Common Ecommerce
Integration Issues &
Solutions
A Whitepaper on What Custom Data
Integration Could Be Doing to Benefit Your
Business
www.virtuallogistics.ca
www.virtuallogistics.ca2
Contents
Introduction
Mapping Out the Customer Experience
Manual Data Integration
What It Might Look Like
Manual Data Integration
The Solution to the Problem
Conclusion & Resources
03
04
08
10
15
Do You Have the Correct
Data Integration Systems? 12
Things to Consider
When looking at Systems and Integration 14
www.virtuallogistics.ca 3
Introduction
. This whitepaper provides a discussion and analysis of three common problem areas that ecommerce busi-
ness often deal with that will affect business performance, efficiency, and scalability. The problem areas are
customer experience, data movement, and businesses selecting the wrong systems.
Each section of this whitepaper addresses each one of the problem areas with each section beginning
with a brief description of the problem. The example problem is followed by a case-study example further
detailing how the issue can be present and consequently be identified in every day operations. Finally, each
section’s problem is thoroughly analyzed and discussed, providing guidelines for solving each problem area
with recommendations, best practices, and tips. We have chosen these three common problems because
they are often the manifestation of other issues that could be plaguing a business.
Ultimately this whitepaper serves to highlight the importance of integration solutions to a business’ ability
to successfully negotiate and manage the customer experience, data movement, and systems. Through prop-
er integration, businesses can stand to:
•	 Increase sales productivity
•	 Save time per transaction
•	 Cut order processing time
•	 Establish the ability to scale
No one business is immune from these issues whether they be an ecommerce startup, an established enti-
ty or a century old operation. A constant review of one’s processes is a must in our fast paced world.
www.virtuallogistics.ca4
Mapping Out
the Customer Experience
Issues with customer experience can be present in a number of ways. If you are lucky, your customers will
directly give you the feedback you need to better your experience pathway. If you are not so lucky, you will
hear nothing other than the slow downtick of your customer purchases over time. It is a documented fact
that people who experience poor customer service just do not return.
It is well established that dissatisfied customers ‘talk with their feet’: 96% of unhappy customers do not
complain, while 91% of those customers will simply never come back. So only 5% actually let you know that
something is wrong, and usually it is only when something is really very wrong.
Customer experience (or CX) is broadly defined as “the sum of all experiences a customer has with a sup-
plier of goods and/or services”. In forums where you may not have the opportunity for direct face-to-face
contact with your customers, such as ecommerce websites, the idea of and importance of the customer’s
experience in your sales cycle may be pushed to the side or forgotten entirely. This is largely because most
people focus on the technology and not the customer. This may sound surprising and self evident but it is
actually very common. Customer experience should be of the foremost importance in all of your business’
actions, especially in ecommerce!
One way to improve your customer experience pathway is through the automation and integration of
your various systems. However, prior to looking at technology you need to map the experience you want to
provide your customer. What makes you unique, what is your brand, what do you want to impart and what
relationship do you want to establish with your customer.
Once the experience is mapped out automation and integration become critical. Think about it: if your
ecommerce platform is not connected to your accounting and billing system, which is not connected to your
inventory management system, which is not talking to your shipping system, you are likely spending a good
deal of your time manually moving data between these platforms. If there is an error on either your end or
your customer’s through this manual transfer of data, it is not only going to take longer to notice any issues,
but also to solve them. The downstream impact becomes compounded. A simple data entry error can cas-
cade into all sorts of other issues without you even knowing it is happening. Not sure if your customer expe-
rience pathway is working for your company? Our first-hand account from a Corkcicle customer may shed
some light on the matter. If integrating your customer experience could potentially save you money, time,
and business then this experience should provide some insights.
What It Is
www.virtuallogistics.ca 5
“I was intent on making this last holiday season a time of reflection and peace. I was not going to succumb
to witty advertising campaigns inducing me to spend money on needless gifts. But then those brilliant mar-
keters at a sky-rocketing start-up called Corkcicle overcame my ability to say no. I had bought Corkcicle’s
products during the summer so I knew how well their products converted my garage-warmed bottles into
delightfully consumable beverages within a few minutes. This was a vast improvement over ice-in-a-glass. I
knew my friends would love these products too. So when I received the offer email on Black Friday talking
about the pending Cyber Monday deal, I knew I would be ordering. Yes, I am a sucker for a deal.
Monday Morning – I received the email that the deal was on. I headed to work with the intention of placing
my orders that night.
Monday Night – Corkcicle sent me the reminder email. I tried to place an order on my iPad.
During the first attempt, the order failed at the credit card authorization. I do have good credit! I, unlike many
others, tried again. This time I placed an order successfully. Although I didn’t receive an order confirmation,
I decided to add a second order. Still no order confirmations came through. I thought there was something
going wrong with the ecommerce site. But then again, it could be I entered another email. I decided to look
the next day.
Tuesday – No order confirmation. No billing. No emails as promised. I added a calendar entry for Wednesday
to check on this.
Wednesday – I got my order shipped notices. Two orders at full price. Whoa, what just happened? I knew I
had to call Corkcicle and get this double order and billing issue fixed.
Thursday – I had a great call with Corkcicle’s support team and they issued a credit to my card, but my confi-
dence in Corkcicle’s systems and processes was shaken. The experience also left me asking:
How elastic were their systems?
•	 What were they doing to secure my data and credit card information?
•	 What was happening with their sales channels?
•	 Were there other people being affected by Corkcicle’s data integration issues?
So I fired off an email. Stephen Bruner, partner at Corkcicle, responded to my email within an hour. In the
midst of the holiday season, he took the time to both apologize and quell my concerns, and he shared with
me the root cause of their Cyber Monday issues as, “We did have a setting that was incidentally turned off in
preparation for Cyber Monday that had simply turned off confirmation emails from being sent. I can assure
you that our systems are all using up to date and robust security and data transfer methodology. This was
just the result of a costly human error.”
Over the holidays, I provided these Corkcicle packages with my friends, and they loved them. But this
episode also reminded me of four obvious statements around successful ecommerce systems – have a plan,
What It Might Look Like
www.virtuallogistics.ca6
stick to the plan, test the plan, and have a backup plan. And it’s now, in between seasons, where we can
prepare and act with enough time to make corrections and adjustments to guarantee a flawless shopping
season.”
Read the whole story here:
http://blog.virtuallogistics.ca/bid/89103/Ecommerce-Integration-Cyber-Monday-Disasters
www.virtuallogistics.ca 7
We have examined what mapping the customer experience is and we have looked at an example of how
customer service can fall down. The first starting point is to identify the issues you are having. Late ship-
ments, incorrect addresses, incomplete orders are examples of problems we often see. Once you have iden-
tified your customer experience issues, map out the customer experience you want to project (like our sam-
ple, above), after all it’s part of your brand. In our opinion, every e-retailer should fully map out the customer
experience they want their customers to follow on their ecommerce site, while also having appropriate plans
for every circumstance - including a backup plan for when things go wrong, because they often do. To us it
sounds like Corkcicle’s customer experience systems need a more holistic approach!
Our advice based on the Corkcicle story would be the following:
•	 Map the customer experience out, including all the data touch points and interface points. How data gets
moved, processed, and integrated between systems is key in this exercise. Then create a checklist. We’ve
provided a real-life first draft sample of mapping out the customer experience with one of our customers.
As a product of our consultative process, we sit down with customers to work through exactly what the
customer experience pathway is, which is often an illuminating process for all. This exercise also allows
everyone to understand the limitations of the systems being chosen or looked at.
•	 Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. We are always amazed at the ecommerce companies that totally
forget this. Don’t get stuck fixating on your systems, and forget about the customer.
•	 Good customer experience costs money to setup. If it is free, you get what you pay for. If it is limited and
cheap then you are limiting your business and its ability to scale. Customizable flexibility and scalability
costs money.
•	 Finally, listen to people who are experts. Not everyone can be the best at everything they do, and having a
reliable and trustworthy expert at your side is worth their weight in gold. Believe us we see it every single
day.
Manual data entry is exactly what it is – someone is sitting in front of a computer manually inputting data
into an application or entering data from one program into another. Manual integration is like wanting to
copy an excel sheet from one document to another without the help of copy and paste – why do things the
hard way when there are solutions available?
Manual data entry is ultimately a very poor work-around for true integration between different applica-
tions and systems. Some businesses see manual data entry as a simple fact of doing business, as a cheaper
alternative than having a professional integrate systems. But the time and resources spent manually enter-
ing data as well as the indirect costs or bad data actually end up holding a business at a plateau and inhibiting
their ability to scale. Still unsure about how manual data integration may be stunting your business as well as
hurting your bottom line? Read on for two first-hand accounts from customers who experienced difficulty as
a direct result of the seller’s choice to manually integrate their company’s data
Solving Your Customer Experience Issues
What Is Manual Data Entry?
www.virtuallogistics.ca8
Manual Data Integration
What It Might Look Like
“What I am going to review is a real experience; it happened and in my estimation is the result of a lack of
integration and a reliance on manual processes. The etailer was aware of the first of the two total situations,
but the second event had a downstream effect on customer service of which I am sure they were totally un-
aware of.
Back in early November, I ordered some wool sweaters from a company in Ireland, Aran Sweater Mar-
ket. The company manufacturers and produces great quality traditional Aran wool sweaters at great prices.
Check them out, I highly recommend their products.
The First Order of Sweaters
November 9th -- I placed an order for three sweaters. The web experience was of top quality, payment was
easy, and within minutes I received an email confirming my order. Fast, efficient, and a great experience. All
seemed well; everything in the email was correct and I expected a shipment advice in short order based on
the reviews I had read online. A week passed and I had heard nothing.
November 16th -- I went online to the Aran Sweater website to inquire about the status of the order. Aran
Sweater has a nice interactive chat function on their main web page so I had a chat with Geraldine. Geraldine
requested I send a copy of the order confirmation email I received so they could look into it. I did exactly as
instructed, but I received no response even after subsequent follow-up emails.
November 23rd -- I finally received the first email confirming the order status. One of the items was backor-
dered and would ship in 15 days. This was the first communication I had received from Aran Sweater in two
weeks. Given that I did not want to wait another 15 days for the entire shipment I removed the back ordered
item from my order.
November 30th -- I received an order update indicating a refund voucher had been processed to my credit
card and that my order had been shipped by DHL the same day. I did get the refund on my credit card. The
parcel with the sweaters arrived a few days later with super service from DHL. So other than the issue with
the back ordered product, things went fairly smoothly.
The Second Sweater Order
The second situation happened when I placed a new order for another sweater on December 14th. I had
the same experience as I did with my first order in terms of a quick confirmation email, but however this
Story 1: The Aran Sweater Tale
www.virtuallogistics.ca 9
time I had them ship directly to our offices. On the 15th I received confirmation that the sweater had been
shipped. The same day I checked on DHL’s site and saw that the parcel was on its way.
When I scanned the courier entries as I was tracking my package’s progress, something seemed out of
place. It was at this point that I became convinced that Aran’s ecommerce site was not integrated to their
backend systems, and that they were likely relying on manually entered data. You are probably wondering
why I know the shipment data was entered manually. There was no unit number on the pro forma invoice and
there was no unit number on the import invoice. The unit number was in the order confirmation I received
from Aran when I placed the order: that was my first clue. The second clue was the phone number on the or-
der confirmation for shipping: was different than what I had input. My cell phone number had been used as
opposed to the office number; this was with the shipping address on my original order, and not my updated
second order.”
Read the whole story here:
http://www.virtuallogistics.ca/blog/why-integration-matters-and-matters-a-lot-the-aran-sweater-tale
“I placed my order for a baby shower gift - Jolly Jumper and a singing mat - on December 4th. I ordered
from Babies’R’Us’ Canadian website, and was immediately sent a receipt for my purchase.
I received no further updates on my shipment until December 13th, when I received an email from Ba-
bies’R’Us notifying me that my items were just being shipped. That’s nine days between order placement
and order shipping.
I arrived home from work to find a Purolator sticky on my door announcing an attempted delivery shortly
thereafter. I was able to pick up my package directly from Purolator on December 15th, but the package only
contained one item and it was packed in an absurdly large box.
On December 20th I received notice the second item in my order was available for pick-up. Again I picked
up the shipment from Purolator, and again the second item was packed in an absurdly large box. In the midst
of waiting for my orders, I was also checking the order status with Purolator. I noticed my last name was mis-
spelt, and was different on each delivery - good thing it didn’t affect the delivery.
When I reached out to Jolly Jumper to ask how my name was generated incorrectly on each of the orders,
they responded that it was likely Babies’R’Us’ fault as Jolly Jumper ships only to retailers and not consumers.
But why two shipments? It would appear that Babies R Us filled one order from in store inventory in Kam-
loops BC. If you know where Kamloops is, it’s pretty clear Babies R Us doesn’t have a warehouse in the BC
interior – it likely came from a store that had that item in stock.”
So in this example we not only have the issue of manually entered data but we also have a poor customer
service experience.
Read the whole story here:
http://virtuallogistics.ca/blog/ecommerce-integration-three-case-studies-diagnosed-by-dr.-vl
Story 2: Jolly Jumper & Babies ‘R’ Us
www.virtuallogistics.ca10
Manual Data Integration
Trust in ecommerce is key.
This first story speaks to the trust relationship in ecommerce. When you order from an online etailer (and
unless that etailer is an established entity like Amazon or Zappos for example), there is a leap of faith that is
involved in making the purchase. In this case the consumer had done his due diligence with Aran Sweater,
researching them heavily before making his purchase. The initial experience with Aran was excellent, but
the subsequent process was less than confidence building. How is a customer to know what’s happening in
the time between order and receipt of their package? The delay with Aran Sweater likely signifies that the
backend order entry process was overloaded, and probably being completed manually. We suspect that Aran
Sweater’s data was being manually integrated between their web store, accounting system, and the DHL
portal.
The underlying issue behind the Aran Sweater Market tale is scalability. When you have manual processes
and become overloaded, you can’t scale effectively to meet demands. If someone is entering data into the
shipping system software or shipping portal, via the keyboard mistakes will be made.
The experiences with Aran Sweater also speaks to their need for integration to allow a business to scale
efficiently. The second shipment issue was likely human error, and the downstream impact on customer ser-
vice was sufficient enough to irritate the consumer. Aran are likely not even aware of this second problem
and its effects on customer satisfaction; they therefore cannot correct the customer service frustration for
the future. Aran Sweater would eventually, if they asked, get a report from DHL on late shipments and their
cause, and would perhaps find the deeper issue with customer service that way eventually.
Ultimately, this story shows us that scalability to handle higher order volumes does not happen when data
is handled manually. There are four general problem areas that can compound problems over time; each
problem’s root cause is manual data entry.
There are Islands of Technology: a Webstore isolated on its own, shipping software on a desktop, or a ship-
ping portal marooned in seclusion, leaving you to shuffle any data back and forth manually. These islands may
be fine when volumes are low, but don’t count on them to perform the same during peak seasons or if your
business is experiencing growth.
True islands of technology: your various technology programs do not ‘talk’ to each other, allowing errors to
propagate through manually shuttling data between them. The islands of technology need to be integrated
Story 1: The Aran Sweater Tale
The Solution To The Problem
www.virtuallogistics.ca 11
so that manual data entry errors are eliminated as volumes increase. Data should flow seamlessly between
applications with controls on mandatory data so that errors are captured. Are the addresses valid? Do they
need to be cleansed? This is something that automatic integration can help resolve.
Customer dissatisfaction plagues your business. The customer experience absolutely needs to be mapped
out with the data touch points highlighted along the way, as we discussed in Problem 1. What do you want
the customer to experience and how does that affect the flow of data between systems? Do the systems
have the import and export touch points either via XML or CSV to allow you to integrate the systems? The
old adage is true – the customer is king.
This is another textbook case of what happens when the ecommerce business has not mapped out the cus-
tomer experience. But more importantly, the root cause of this issue is likely another case of manual data
entry at some point in the supply chain.
While the user entered her information correctly at the point of sale with Babies’R’Us (Toys’R’Us) as ev-
idenced by the shipping receipt she received in the Toys’R’Us portal, the further notifications that the user
was receiving about the shipping of the items were likely coming from another source. The exact source in
this circumstance is difficult to pin down: it could very well be Jolly Jumper or Babies’R’Us or even Purolator.
But the ultimate culprit behind the spelling of the user’s name on the shipping receipts is clear – typos as a
result of manual data entry.
The customer placed their order with Babies’R’Us, and Jolly Jumper received the order details. Perhaps
each of the orders came to Jolly Jumper separately, explaining why the shipments didn’t come as one pack-
age, but we can’t really be sure of this; it could also be attributed to an inventory availability issue as
evidenced by the shipment from Kamloops, BC.
Either Jolly Jumper or the Babies’R’Us shipping warehouse (whomever was the party to ship the user’s
packages) likely did not have their order processing technologies integrated. Thus the orders were manually
entered- i.e., someone had to literally re-type out the order (name including) at some point to process it. As-
suming that the holiday season was busy for both Jolly Jumper and Babies’R’Us, whoever was inputting the
information might have been in a rush and thus the typos went unnoticed.
Both of the Aran Sweater and Jolly Jumper stories illustrate not only the importance of a business’ data,
but also how that data is treated and worked with. Manual data entry is often a starting place while you are
getting your business up and running, but is not a successful way to plan for the long-term. Investing in your
business and your customers as early as possible through integrating your data applications is the only sure-
fire way to reduce errors, save time and money, and ensure your happy customers stay happy and return to
your business time after time. In our final example we look at ensuring you have the right systems and why
system choice is so important
Story 2: Jolly Jumper & Babies ‘R’ Us
In Summary
www.virtuallogistics.ca12
Do You Have the Correct
Have you ever felt like the systems you have chosen for your business might not be the best fit for your
company? Have you ever felt lost in a sea of seemingly alike competitors when searching for a solution to
making your business, and life, easier? Did you maybe just go with a peer’s recommendation? Or the lowest
price point because you did not understand the options before you?
Even if you answered ‘no’ to all of these questions, you still might not have the right systems for your
business. Just like people are all unique, each business is unique in terms of the systems it needs to operate
efficiently and effectively. And moreover, even if the systems you are using are right for your business today,
the ever-changing technological landscape can almost ensure that these programs will not be the best to-
morrow, next year, or even five years from now.
Inefficiencies, redundancies, or errors may be few and far between, or everywhere you look – both might
be signs that your business doesn’t have the right systems. The question then becomes, how do you know if
you have the right systems for your business? There are definite red flags that can indicate your systems are
in need of a relook, you only need to be made aware of what to look for. Read a real-life consumer story below
to see if any the overarching issues resonate with you.
“My father-in-law desperately wanted a Coleman lunchbox for (his seasonal) work. Yes, for Christmas, in
the middle of winter.
I placed my order on Walmart.ca on December 8th, and I was in luck - it was on sale! I placed my order.
I received my auto-generated confirmation email immediately, and Walmart promised me a 3-7 day ship-
ping window. My previous experiences buying from Walmart online had seen my items delivered in a matter
of days, so I was at ease that my gift would be at my doorstep in no time.
No further word on my order until the eighth day, December 15th when I received a follow-up email from
Walmart: my order had been canceled! To my dismay, ever-reliable Walmart had let me down without any
explanation. I tried to both call and email Walmart’s customer care department without any luck. Visiting
the Walmart.ca page for the cooler had provided me with some insight - the item was now out of stock, and
perhaps was when I initially ordered it. The slowness of updating inventory created a less than satisfactory
What It Is
Data Integration Systems?
What It Might Look Like
www.virtuallogistics.ca 13
experience. But who was at fault? Walmart or Coleman.
I ultimately ended up purchasing the cooler on Amazon.ca on December 16th. I received confirmation of
shipping on December 17th, and came home on December 18th to my delivery waiting on my doorstep.“
Walmart, like many large retailers with ecommerce platforms, do not actually warehouse most, if any, of
its online stock. Instead, it is the individual manufacturer’s responsibility to receive, pick, pack, and ship each
order Walmart.ca receives directly to the consumer from their own warehouses. This is referred to as ‘ven-
dor drop-shipping’:
“Vendor Drop Shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in
stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler,
who then ships the goods directly to the customer.” (Wikipedia.org)
What likely occurred between Walmart.ca and Coleman was that Coleman was not, or could not; update
Walmart quickly enough on the status of their stock via an EDI transaction. Likely the item ordered was al-
ready out of stock at Coleman’s warehouses when the order was placed on Walmart.ca.
The time delay in the customer being notified of this discrepancy could be a result of a number of factors:
the busy holiday season rush on coolers, lack of technology, lack of properly integrated technology, or even
misplaced or miscounted stock, with or without the aid of technology.
There are some tell-tale signs that should tell you immediately if your system or systems – specifically,
your EDI system which would have been used in the last example – are not up to snuff. Feel free in your own
analysis to expand this list to systems beyond EDI because the data movement principles are the same – if
the same issues happen with a non-EDI system, the message stays the same: the system is probably not the
best your business could be using. So when in doubt, consult a trusted expert or ask for referrals from exist-
ing business partners!
So it is crucial that you start your search for your best-fit system with an understanding of your real needs;
don’t just respond to external demands or pressures, wherever they may be originating from. Make sure you
are not locking yourself into something you will regret in a year. Plan for growth.
How To Make Sure You Have the Right Systems
www.virtuallogistics.ca14
Things to Consider
•	 If you are doing EDI your trading partner’s recommended solution is not the best bet in most cases. A
trading partner will push a preferred solution because it serves their purposes not yours.
•	 Cost is not an indicator of quality, reliability, value, or suitability. In EDI especially, it is buyer beware. Not
all solutions are the same - make sure you are comparing the same line items when you look at quotes.
•	 Understand your real needs – what do you want the system to accomplish for your business? This comes
back to properly mapping the customer experience.
•	 Signing a long-term contract is madness. Technology moves too fast to commit to a single solution for the
long term.
•	 If you have to do EDI, avoid choosing a system that only does EDI. Today, an ecommerce integration
platform should do more than just EDI. EDI is just another data flow into and out of an organization, so
why have one solution for each data flow? Consolidate things into an ecommerce integration platform
that can handle EDI, web services, spreadsheets, XML, CSV files, and so on. If you are not, then you are
establishing islands of technology that in the long run will be more expensive to maintain.
•	 Don’t succumb to the high-pressure sales pitch because you are under pressure to comply. Take the time
to think and make sure the solutions (and partner) are right.
•	 Make sure you understand the technology and the implications it will have for your organization, includ-
ing fit with corporate culture and how the vendor is willing to interact with you.
•	 Make sure ecommerce and data movement is part of your overall corporate strategy, and that you lever-
age the efficiencies of integration and automation. Having a web store and integrating to a piece of paper
is not leveraging technology.
•	 Finally, do your homework. Take the time to understand the solution, the provider, how the system can
be expanded and how you can grow with it. Does the supplier have a growth path or a one-size-fits-all
approach, or are they willing to create a solution customized to your needs and experience.
•	 VL Inc. uses a hub-and-spoke methodology of designing our data integration solutions to allow
.our customers to adjust without collapsing the entire integration. We’ve also effectively anticipated and
gotten ahead of the SaaS and cloud integration trend with our VL OMNI offering, allowing our custom-
ers to visualize their data translations and transactions from anywhere in the world via their iOS device.
Ecommerce or EDI
When Looking at Systems and Integration
www.virtuallogistics.ca 15
Conclusion
. There are a lot of common threads in the three examples we described. The problems that arise from not
mapping out the customer experience, using manual data entry, and using the wrong systems are woven in
each experience. This includes poor planning, trying to be static in a quickly changing world, not spending
properly on technology and reaping the rewards of that choice, as well as refusing to integrate programs.
Additionally, we cannot stress the importance of planning enough throughout all of our discussions: your
business should have a plan, stick to the plan, test the plan, and have a backup plan to account for any and all
situations that may arise in any of the problem areas reviewed in this whitepaper.
Perhaps the most important thread in all of our discussions is the customer. The knee-jerk reaction to
each of these issues in this whitepaper is that they only affect internal business operations and the custom-
er never sees behind the scenes. Yet each issue is affecting your entire sales cycle and more, starting with
dissatisfied customers who simply will never buy from you again. Integration will certainly help with all the
problems we reviewed, but it is key to have an integration solution that is custom-tailored to your needs and
goals. Trying to get the same value out of a discounted one-size-fits-all product will leave you harrowed and
worse off than you were before.
So the take away from this whitepaper is that you should not be silently complacent with how things are
while your business slowly slips further and further. Learn how to spot the red flags, do your due diligence in
collecting as much information about the problems, and then seek a solution. And always try to be your own
advocate. How? If you are not knowledgeable about a system, technology, product, or solution, you should
look to fill that gap – either by going out and learning for yourself, or trusting the advice of a vetted expert.
Henry Ford put it very well when he said: “I am not the smartest, but I surround myself with competent peo-
ple”.
Contact VL to find out how you can
integrate with VL OMNI
Follow us on social media or our blog at
www.virtuallogistics.ca/blog
www.virtuallogistics.ca16
VL Inc.
Since our start in 1994, VL has been
focused on helping businesses function
more efficiently and effectively. We do
this through providing high-quality data
integration services as a partner in your
business’ ongoing growth.
www.virtuallogistics.ca
Want to see more of VL? Follow us on Social Media:

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Three Common Ecommerce Integration Issues And Their Solutions

  • 1. www.virtuallogistics.ca 1 3 Common Ecommerce Integration Issues & Solutions A Whitepaper on What Custom Data Integration Could Be Doing to Benefit Your Business www.virtuallogistics.ca
  • 2. www.virtuallogistics.ca2 Contents Introduction Mapping Out the Customer Experience Manual Data Integration What It Might Look Like Manual Data Integration The Solution to the Problem Conclusion & Resources 03 04 08 10 15 Do You Have the Correct Data Integration Systems? 12 Things to Consider When looking at Systems and Integration 14
  • 3. www.virtuallogistics.ca 3 Introduction . This whitepaper provides a discussion and analysis of three common problem areas that ecommerce busi- ness often deal with that will affect business performance, efficiency, and scalability. The problem areas are customer experience, data movement, and businesses selecting the wrong systems. Each section of this whitepaper addresses each one of the problem areas with each section beginning with a brief description of the problem. The example problem is followed by a case-study example further detailing how the issue can be present and consequently be identified in every day operations. Finally, each section’s problem is thoroughly analyzed and discussed, providing guidelines for solving each problem area with recommendations, best practices, and tips. We have chosen these three common problems because they are often the manifestation of other issues that could be plaguing a business. Ultimately this whitepaper serves to highlight the importance of integration solutions to a business’ ability to successfully negotiate and manage the customer experience, data movement, and systems. Through prop- er integration, businesses can stand to: • Increase sales productivity • Save time per transaction • Cut order processing time • Establish the ability to scale No one business is immune from these issues whether they be an ecommerce startup, an established enti- ty or a century old operation. A constant review of one’s processes is a must in our fast paced world.
  • 4. www.virtuallogistics.ca4 Mapping Out the Customer Experience Issues with customer experience can be present in a number of ways. If you are lucky, your customers will directly give you the feedback you need to better your experience pathway. If you are not so lucky, you will hear nothing other than the slow downtick of your customer purchases over time. It is a documented fact that people who experience poor customer service just do not return. It is well established that dissatisfied customers ‘talk with their feet’: 96% of unhappy customers do not complain, while 91% of those customers will simply never come back. So only 5% actually let you know that something is wrong, and usually it is only when something is really very wrong. Customer experience (or CX) is broadly defined as “the sum of all experiences a customer has with a sup- plier of goods and/or services”. In forums where you may not have the opportunity for direct face-to-face contact with your customers, such as ecommerce websites, the idea of and importance of the customer’s experience in your sales cycle may be pushed to the side or forgotten entirely. This is largely because most people focus on the technology and not the customer. This may sound surprising and self evident but it is actually very common. Customer experience should be of the foremost importance in all of your business’ actions, especially in ecommerce! One way to improve your customer experience pathway is through the automation and integration of your various systems. However, prior to looking at technology you need to map the experience you want to provide your customer. What makes you unique, what is your brand, what do you want to impart and what relationship do you want to establish with your customer. Once the experience is mapped out automation and integration become critical. Think about it: if your ecommerce platform is not connected to your accounting and billing system, which is not connected to your inventory management system, which is not talking to your shipping system, you are likely spending a good deal of your time manually moving data between these platforms. If there is an error on either your end or your customer’s through this manual transfer of data, it is not only going to take longer to notice any issues, but also to solve them. The downstream impact becomes compounded. A simple data entry error can cas- cade into all sorts of other issues without you even knowing it is happening. Not sure if your customer expe- rience pathway is working for your company? Our first-hand account from a Corkcicle customer may shed some light on the matter. If integrating your customer experience could potentially save you money, time, and business then this experience should provide some insights. What It Is
  • 5. www.virtuallogistics.ca 5 “I was intent on making this last holiday season a time of reflection and peace. I was not going to succumb to witty advertising campaigns inducing me to spend money on needless gifts. But then those brilliant mar- keters at a sky-rocketing start-up called Corkcicle overcame my ability to say no. I had bought Corkcicle’s products during the summer so I knew how well their products converted my garage-warmed bottles into delightfully consumable beverages within a few minutes. This was a vast improvement over ice-in-a-glass. I knew my friends would love these products too. So when I received the offer email on Black Friday talking about the pending Cyber Monday deal, I knew I would be ordering. Yes, I am a sucker for a deal. Monday Morning – I received the email that the deal was on. I headed to work with the intention of placing my orders that night. Monday Night – Corkcicle sent me the reminder email. I tried to place an order on my iPad. During the first attempt, the order failed at the credit card authorization. I do have good credit! I, unlike many others, tried again. This time I placed an order successfully. Although I didn’t receive an order confirmation, I decided to add a second order. Still no order confirmations came through. I thought there was something going wrong with the ecommerce site. But then again, it could be I entered another email. I decided to look the next day. Tuesday – No order confirmation. No billing. No emails as promised. I added a calendar entry for Wednesday to check on this. Wednesday – I got my order shipped notices. Two orders at full price. Whoa, what just happened? I knew I had to call Corkcicle and get this double order and billing issue fixed. Thursday – I had a great call with Corkcicle’s support team and they issued a credit to my card, but my confi- dence in Corkcicle’s systems and processes was shaken. The experience also left me asking: How elastic were their systems? • What were they doing to secure my data and credit card information? • What was happening with their sales channels? • Were there other people being affected by Corkcicle’s data integration issues? So I fired off an email. Stephen Bruner, partner at Corkcicle, responded to my email within an hour. In the midst of the holiday season, he took the time to both apologize and quell my concerns, and he shared with me the root cause of their Cyber Monday issues as, “We did have a setting that was incidentally turned off in preparation for Cyber Monday that had simply turned off confirmation emails from being sent. I can assure you that our systems are all using up to date and robust security and data transfer methodology. This was just the result of a costly human error.” Over the holidays, I provided these Corkcicle packages with my friends, and they loved them. But this episode also reminded me of four obvious statements around successful ecommerce systems – have a plan, What It Might Look Like
  • 6. www.virtuallogistics.ca6 stick to the plan, test the plan, and have a backup plan. And it’s now, in between seasons, where we can prepare and act with enough time to make corrections and adjustments to guarantee a flawless shopping season.” Read the whole story here: http://blog.virtuallogistics.ca/bid/89103/Ecommerce-Integration-Cyber-Monday-Disasters
  • 7. www.virtuallogistics.ca 7 We have examined what mapping the customer experience is and we have looked at an example of how customer service can fall down. The first starting point is to identify the issues you are having. Late ship- ments, incorrect addresses, incomplete orders are examples of problems we often see. Once you have iden- tified your customer experience issues, map out the customer experience you want to project (like our sam- ple, above), after all it’s part of your brand. In our opinion, every e-retailer should fully map out the customer experience they want their customers to follow on their ecommerce site, while also having appropriate plans for every circumstance - including a backup plan for when things go wrong, because they often do. To us it sounds like Corkcicle’s customer experience systems need a more holistic approach! Our advice based on the Corkcicle story would be the following: • Map the customer experience out, including all the data touch points and interface points. How data gets moved, processed, and integrated between systems is key in this exercise. Then create a checklist. We’ve provided a real-life first draft sample of mapping out the customer experience with one of our customers. As a product of our consultative process, we sit down with customers to work through exactly what the customer experience pathway is, which is often an illuminating process for all. This exercise also allows everyone to understand the limitations of the systems being chosen or looked at. • Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. We are always amazed at the ecommerce companies that totally forget this. Don’t get stuck fixating on your systems, and forget about the customer. • Good customer experience costs money to setup. If it is free, you get what you pay for. If it is limited and cheap then you are limiting your business and its ability to scale. Customizable flexibility and scalability costs money. • Finally, listen to people who are experts. Not everyone can be the best at everything they do, and having a reliable and trustworthy expert at your side is worth their weight in gold. Believe us we see it every single day. Manual data entry is exactly what it is – someone is sitting in front of a computer manually inputting data into an application or entering data from one program into another. Manual integration is like wanting to copy an excel sheet from one document to another without the help of copy and paste – why do things the hard way when there are solutions available? Manual data entry is ultimately a very poor work-around for true integration between different applica- tions and systems. Some businesses see manual data entry as a simple fact of doing business, as a cheaper alternative than having a professional integrate systems. But the time and resources spent manually enter- ing data as well as the indirect costs or bad data actually end up holding a business at a plateau and inhibiting their ability to scale. Still unsure about how manual data integration may be stunting your business as well as hurting your bottom line? Read on for two first-hand accounts from customers who experienced difficulty as a direct result of the seller’s choice to manually integrate their company’s data Solving Your Customer Experience Issues What Is Manual Data Entry?
  • 8. www.virtuallogistics.ca8 Manual Data Integration What It Might Look Like “What I am going to review is a real experience; it happened and in my estimation is the result of a lack of integration and a reliance on manual processes. The etailer was aware of the first of the two total situations, but the second event had a downstream effect on customer service of which I am sure they were totally un- aware of. Back in early November, I ordered some wool sweaters from a company in Ireland, Aran Sweater Mar- ket. The company manufacturers and produces great quality traditional Aran wool sweaters at great prices. Check them out, I highly recommend their products. The First Order of Sweaters November 9th -- I placed an order for three sweaters. The web experience was of top quality, payment was easy, and within minutes I received an email confirming my order. Fast, efficient, and a great experience. All seemed well; everything in the email was correct and I expected a shipment advice in short order based on the reviews I had read online. A week passed and I had heard nothing. November 16th -- I went online to the Aran Sweater website to inquire about the status of the order. Aran Sweater has a nice interactive chat function on their main web page so I had a chat with Geraldine. Geraldine requested I send a copy of the order confirmation email I received so they could look into it. I did exactly as instructed, but I received no response even after subsequent follow-up emails. November 23rd -- I finally received the first email confirming the order status. One of the items was backor- dered and would ship in 15 days. This was the first communication I had received from Aran Sweater in two weeks. Given that I did not want to wait another 15 days for the entire shipment I removed the back ordered item from my order. November 30th -- I received an order update indicating a refund voucher had been processed to my credit card and that my order had been shipped by DHL the same day. I did get the refund on my credit card. The parcel with the sweaters arrived a few days later with super service from DHL. So other than the issue with the back ordered product, things went fairly smoothly. The Second Sweater Order The second situation happened when I placed a new order for another sweater on December 14th. I had the same experience as I did with my first order in terms of a quick confirmation email, but however this Story 1: The Aran Sweater Tale
  • 9. www.virtuallogistics.ca 9 time I had them ship directly to our offices. On the 15th I received confirmation that the sweater had been shipped. The same day I checked on DHL’s site and saw that the parcel was on its way. When I scanned the courier entries as I was tracking my package’s progress, something seemed out of place. It was at this point that I became convinced that Aran’s ecommerce site was not integrated to their backend systems, and that they were likely relying on manually entered data. You are probably wondering why I know the shipment data was entered manually. There was no unit number on the pro forma invoice and there was no unit number on the import invoice. The unit number was in the order confirmation I received from Aran when I placed the order: that was my first clue. The second clue was the phone number on the or- der confirmation for shipping: was different than what I had input. My cell phone number had been used as opposed to the office number; this was with the shipping address on my original order, and not my updated second order.” Read the whole story here: http://www.virtuallogistics.ca/blog/why-integration-matters-and-matters-a-lot-the-aran-sweater-tale “I placed my order for a baby shower gift - Jolly Jumper and a singing mat - on December 4th. I ordered from Babies’R’Us’ Canadian website, and was immediately sent a receipt for my purchase. I received no further updates on my shipment until December 13th, when I received an email from Ba- bies’R’Us notifying me that my items were just being shipped. That’s nine days between order placement and order shipping. I arrived home from work to find a Purolator sticky on my door announcing an attempted delivery shortly thereafter. I was able to pick up my package directly from Purolator on December 15th, but the package only contained one item and it was packed in an absurdly large box. On December 20th I received notice the second item in my order was available for pick-up. Again I picked up the shipment from Purolator, and again the second item was packed in an absurdly large box. In the midst of waiting for my orders, I was also checking the order status with Purolator. I noticed my last name was mis- spelt, and was different on each delivery - good thing it didn’t affect the delivery. When I reached out to Jolly Jumper to ask how my name was generated incorrectly on each of the orders, they responded that it was likely Babies’R’Us’ fault as Jolly Jumper ships only to retailers and not consumers. But why two shipments? It would appear that Babies R Us filled one order from in store inventory in Kam- loops BC. If you know where Kamloops is, it’s pretty clear Babies R Us doesn’t have a warehouse in the BC interior – it likely came from a store that had that item in stock.” So in this example we not only have the issue of manually entered data but we also have a poor customer service experience. Read the whole story here: http://virtuallogistics.ca/blog/ecommerce-integration-three-case-studies-diagnosed-by-dr.-vl Story 2: Jolly Jumper & Babies ‘R’ Us
  • 10. www.virtuallogistics.ca10 Manual Data Integration Trust in ecommerce is key. This first story speaks to the trust relationship in ecommerce. When you order from an online etailer (and unless that etailer is an established entity like Amazon or Zappos for example), there is a leap of faith that is involved in making the purchase. In this case the consumer had done his due diligence with Aran Sweater, researching them heavily before making his purchase. The initial experience with Aran was excellent, but the subsequent process was less than confidence building. How is a customer to know what’s happening in the time between order and receipt of their package? The delay with Aran Sweater likely signifies that the backend order entry process was overloaded, and probably being completed manually. We suspect that Aran Sweater’s data was being manually integrated between their web store, accounting system, and the DHL portal. The underlying issue behind the Aran Sweater Market tale is scalability. When you have manual processes and become overloaded, you can’t scale effectively to meet demands. If someone is entering data into the shipping system software or shipping portal, via the keyboard mistakes will be made. The experiences with Aran Sweater also speaks to their need for integration to allow a business to scale efficiently. The second shipment issue was likely human error, and the downstream impact on customer ser- vice was sufficient enough to irritate the consumer. Aran are likely not even aware of this second problem and its effects on customer satisfaction; they therefore cannot correct the customer service frustration for the future. Aran Sweater would eventually, if they asked, get a report from DHL on late shipments and their cause, and would perhaps find the deeper issue with customer service that way eventually. Ultimately, this story shows us that scalability to handle higher order volumes does not happen when data is handled manually. There are four general problem areas that can compound problems over time; each problem’s root cause is manual data entry. There are Islands of Technology: a Webstore isolated on its own, shipping software on a desktop, or a ship- ping portal marooned in seclusion, leaving you to shuffle any data back and forth manually. These islands may be fine when volumes are low, but don’t count on them to perform the same during peak seasons or if your business is experiencing growth. True islands of technology: your various technology programs do not ‘talk’ to each other, allowing errors to propagate through manually shuttling data between them. The islands of technology need to be integrated Story 1: The Aran Sweater Tale The Solution To The Problem
  • 11. www.virtuallogistics.ca 11 so that manual data entry errors are eliminated as volumes increase. Data should flow seamlessly between applications with controls on mandatory data so that errors are captured. Are the addresses valid? Do they need to be cleansed? This is something that automatic integration can help resolve. Customer dissatisfaction plagues your business. The customer experience absolutely needs to be mapped out with the data touch points highlighted along the way, as we discussed in Problem 1. What do you want the customer to experience and how does that affect the flow of data between systems? Do the systems have the import and export touch points either via XML or CSV to allow you to integrate the systems? The old adage is true – the customer is king. This is another textbook case of what happens when the ecommerce business has not mapped out the cus- tomer experience. But more importantly, the root cause of this issue is likely another case of manual data entry at some point in the supply chain. While the user entered her information correctly at the point of sale with Babies’R’Us (Toys’R’Us) as ev- idenced by the shipping receipt she received in the Toys’R’Us portal, the further notifications that the user was receiving about the shipping of the items were likely coming from another source. The exact source in this circumstance is difficult to pin down: it could very well be Jolly Jumper or Babies’R’Us or even Purolator. But the ultimate culprit behind the spelling of the user’s name on the shipping receipts is clear – typos as a result of manual data entry. The customer placed their order with Babies’R’Us, and Jolly Jumper received the order details. Perhaps each of the orders came to Jolly Jumper separately, explaining why the shipments didn’t come as one pack- age, but we can’t really be sure of this; it could also be attributed to an inventory availability issue as evidenced by the shipment from Kamloops, BC. Either Jolly Jumper or the Babies’R’Us shipping warehouse (whomever was the party to ship the user’s packages) likely did not have their order processing technologies integrated. Thus the orders were manually entered- i.e., someone had to literally re-type out the order (name including) at some point to process it. As- suming that the holiday season was busy for both Jolly Jumper and Babies’R’Us, whoever was inputting the information might have been in a rush and thus the typos went unnoticed. Both of the Aran Sweater and Jolly Jumper stories illustrate not only the importance of a business’ data, but also how that data is treated and worked with. Manual data entry is often a starting place while you are getting your business up and running, but is not a successful way to plan for the long-term. Investing in your business and your customers as early as possible through integrating your data applications is the only sure- fire way to reduce errors, save time and money, and ensure your happy customers stay happy and return to your business time after time. In our final example we look at ensuring you have the right systems and why system choice is so important Story 2: Jolly Jumper & Babies ‘R’ Us In Summary
  • 12. www.virtuallogistics.ca12 Do You Have the Correct Have you ever felt like the systems you have chosen for your business might not be the best fit for your company? Have you ever felt lost in a sea of seemingly alike competitors when searching for a solution to making your business, and life, easier? Did you maybe just go with a peer’s recommendation? Or the lowest price point because you did not understand the options before you? Even if you answered ‘no’ to all of these questions, you still might not have the right systems for your business. Just like people are all unique, each business is unique in terms of the systems it needs to operate efficiently and effectively. And moreover, even if the systems you are using are right for your business today, the ever-changing technological landscape can almost ensure that these programs will not be the best to- morrow, next year, or even five years from now. Inefficiencies, redundancies, or errors may be few and far between, or everywhere you look – both might be signs that your business doesn’t have the right systems. The question then becomes, how do you know if you have the right systems for your business? There are definite red flags that can indicate your systems are in need of a relook, you only need to be made aware of what to look for. Read a real-life consumer story below to see if any the overarching issues resonate with you. “My father-in-law desperately wanted a Coleman lunchbox for (his seasonal) work. Yes, for Christmas, in the middle of winter. I placed my order on Walmart.ca on December 8th, and I was in luck - it was on sale! I placed my order. I received my auto-generated confirmation email immediately, and Walmart promised me a 3-7 day ship- ping window. My previous experiences buying from Walmart online had seen my items delivered in a matter of days, so I was at ease that my gift would be at my doorstep in no time. No further word on my order until the eighth day, December 15th when I received a follow-up email from Walmart: my order had been canceled! To my dismay, ever-reliable Walmart had let me down without any explanation. I tried to both call and email Walmart’s customer care department without any luck. Visiting the Walmart.ca page for the cooler had provided me with some insight - the item was now out of stock, and perhaps was when I initially ordered it. The slowness of updating inventory created a less than satisfactory What It Is Data Integration Systems? What It Might Look Like
  • 13. www.virtuallogistics.ca 13 experience. But who was at fault? Walmart or Coleman. I ultimately ended up purchasing the cooler on Amazon.ca on December 16th. I received confirmation of shipping on December 17th, and came home on December 18th to my delivery waiting on my doorstep.“ Walmart, like many large retailers with ecommerce platforms, do not actually warehouse most, if any, of its online stock. Instead, it is the individual manufacturer’s responsibility to receive, pick, pack, and ship each order Walmart.ca receives directly to the consumer from their own warehouses. This is referred to as ‘ven- dor drop-shipping’: “Vendor Drop Shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer.” (Wikipedia.org) What likely occurred between Walmart.ca and Coleman was that Coleman was not, or could not; update Walmart quickly enough on the status of their stock via an EDI transaction. Likely the item ordered was al- ready out of stock at Coleman’s warehouses when the order was placed on Walmart.ca. The time delay in the customer being notified of this discrepancy could be a result of a number of factors: the busy holiday season rush on coolers, lack of technology, lack of properly integrated technology, or even misplaced or miscounted stock, with or without the aid of technology. There are some tell-tale signs that should tell you immediately if your system or systems – specifically, your EDI system which would have been used in the last example – are not up to snuff. Feel free in your own analysis to expand this list to systems beyond EDI because the data movement principles are the same – if the same issues happen with a non-EDI system, the message stays the same: the system is probably not the best your business could be using. So when in doubt, consult a trusted expert or ask for referrals from exist- ing business partners! So it is crucial that you start your search for your best-fit system with an understanding of your real needs; don’t just respond to external demands or pressures, wherever they may be originating from. Make sure you are not locking yourself into something you will regret in a year. Plan for growth. How To Make Sure You Have the Right Systems
  • 14. www.virtuallogistics.ca14 Things to Consider • If you are doing EDI your trading partner’s recommended solution is not the best bet in most cases. A trading partner will push a preferred solution because it serves their purposes not yours. • Cost is not an indicator of quality, reliability, value, or suitability. In EDI especially, it is buyer beware. Not all solutions are the same - make sure you are comparing the same line items when you look at quotes. • Understand your real needs – what do you want the system to accomplish for your business? This comes back to properly mapping the customer experience. • Signing a long-term contract is madness. Technology moves too fast to commit to a single solution for the long term. • If you have to do EDI, avoid choosing a system that only does EDI. Today, an ecommerce integration platform should do more than just EDI. EDI is just another data flow into and out of an organization, so why have one solution for each data flow? Consolidate things into an ecommerce integration platform that can handle EDI, web services, spreadsheets, XML, CSV files, and so on. If you are not, then you are establishing islands of technology that in the long run will be more expensive to maintain. • Don’t succumb to the high-pressure sales pitch because you are under pressure to comply. Take the time to think and make sure the solutions (and partner) are right. • Make sure you understand the technology and the implications it will have for your organization, includ- ing fit with corporate culture and how the vendor is willing to interact with you. • Make sure ecommerce and data movement is part of your overall corporate strategy, and that you lever- age the efficiencies of integration and automation. Having a web store and integrating to a piece of paper is not leveraging technology. • Finally, do your homework. Take the time to understand the solution, the provider, how the system can be expanded and how you can grow with it. Does the supplier have a growth path or a one-size-fits-all approach, or are they willing to create a solution customized to your needs and experience. • VL Inc. uses a hub-and-spoke methodology of designing our data integration solutions to allow .our customers to adjust without collapsing the entire integration. We’ve also effectively anticipated and gotten ahead of the SaaS and cloud integration trend with our VL OMNI offering, allowing our custom- ers to visualize their data translations and transactions from anywhere in the world via their iOS device. Ecommerce or EDI When Looking at Systems and Integration
  • 15. www.virtuallogistics.ca 15 Conclusion . There are a lot of common threads in the three examples we described. The problems that arise from not mapping out the customer experience, using manual data entry, and using the wrong systems are woven in each experience. This includes poor planning, trying to be static in a quickly changing world, not spending properly on technology and reaping the rewards of that choice, as well as refusing to integrate programs. Additionally, we cannot stress the importance of planning enough throughout all of our discussions: your business should have a plan, stick to the plan, test the plan, and have a backup plan to account for any and all situations that may arise in any of the problem areas reviewed in this whitepaper. Perhaps the most important thread in all of our discussions is the customer. The knee-jerk reaction to each of these issues in this whitepaper is that they only affect internal business operations and the custom- er never sees behind the scenes. Yet each issue is affecting your entire sales cycle and more, starting with dissatisfied customers who simply will never buy from you again. Integration will certainly help with all the problems we reviewed, but it is key to have an integration solution that is custom-tailored to your needs and goals. Trying to get the same value out of a discounted one-size-fits-all product will leave you harrowed and worse off than you were before. So the take away from this whitepaper is that you should not be silently complacent with how things are while your business slowly slips further and further. Learn how to spot the red flags, do your due diligence in collecting as much information about the problems, and then seek a solution. And always try to be your own advocate. How? If you are not knowledgeable about a system, technology, product, or solution, you should look to fill that gap – either by going out and learning for yourself, or trusting the advice of a vetted expert. Henry Ford put it very well when he said: “I am not the smartest, but I surround myself with competent peo- ple”. Contact VL to find out how you can integrate with VL OMNI Follow us on social media or our blog at www.virtuallogistics.ca/blog
  • 16. www.virtuallogistics.ca16 VL Inc. Since our start in 1994, VL has been focused on helping businesses function more efficiently and effectively. We do this through providing high-quality data integration services as a partner in your business’ ongoing growth. www.virtuallogistics.ca Want to see more of VL? Follow us on Social Media: