The project aimed to seamlessly integrate our new Shopify website with NetSuite, while also connecting our 3PL partners to ensure smooth order processing and inventory management. The key objective was to create an efficient, automated workflow that enhanced operational efficiency, improved real-time data accuracy, and delivered a seamless customer experience.
From Frog Stack's perspective, we wanted to help the business migrate smoothly away from Magento, replace existing warehouses integrations and also open up the opportunity for improved warehouse integrations in the future (e.g. works orders integrated to WMS, inventory adjustments, inventory transfers, returns portal).
We moved to Shopify from Magento to enhance flexibility, improve site performance, and provide a more user-friendly experience for both customers and our internal team. Shopify’s intuitive interface, scalability, and extensive app ecosystem made it the ideal choice to support our growing business. It also offered a combined e-commerce and POS solution in one platform.
From Frog Stack's perspective, we wanted to help the business get the most from their relatively new ERP (NetSuite), aiding them with automated fulfilments and automated transaction and payout reconciliations (time saving for Finance team to have refunds and Shopify Payments payouts posting to NetSuite and auto-reconciling).
We chose Frog Stack because of their deep expertise in ERP integrations, their ability to customize solutions to fit our specific needs, and their track record of successfully bridging complex systems like NetSuite and Shopify. Their agile approach and understanding of both technical and operational challenges made them the right partner for the job.
Working with Frog Stack was a seamless and collaborative experience. They were proactive, solution-oriented, and highly responsive throughout the project. Their expertise ensured a smooth transition, and their ongoing support has been invaluable in optimizing our workflows.
From Frog Stack's perspective, defining the product catalog structure for use on Shopify was key and ensuring that data synced correctly 3 different Shopify storefronts got the project off to a great start.
In terms of order testing, catering for different order types (e.g. subscription, gift-with-purchase, free samples) was also a good challenge and an important part of end-to-end testing.
Handling kits with batch-controlled inventory on NetSuite was also particularly fun; look it up, there are some NetSuite limitations we had to work around!
From Frog Stack's perspective, the brief for the warehouse integrations (for launch) was to mimic the existing (flat file) data flows as similarly as possible. This reduced project risk from a warehouse point-of-view and avoided any delay or additional cost in terms of changes on the warehouse/3PL end. Flat file based integrations with warehouse management systems is unfortunately still fairly common in 2024! Technically this is not difficult, but it can limit the robustness of the integration as it can limit our ability to query the WMS to achieve certain validations/exception handling.
