In a world with more emphasis on remote selling and working than ever before, the leaders of every industry are investing in digitizing their business infrastructure.

The pandemic revealed a lack of proper tools to support an entirely online business for many big merchants. To adapt, companies are investing in front-end selling through ecommerce and by centralizing their back-end operations with an all-in-one digital business platform.  

But, what is an “all-in-one digital business platform” and why are companies keen on investing in them as they scale their business upwards and tackle new challenges? What benefits are these merchants seeing after implementation, and what challenges will you inevitably face if you fail to start your digital transformation today?  

What is a digital business platform?  

A digital business platform is a ready-made infrastructure that companies can use to quickly build out their online presence instead of building from scratch. These platforms utilize integrations or extensions to provide customizable solutions for a variety of business problems, but sometimes too many individual extensions and outside development can make these platforms expensive and time-consuming to implement.  

However, all-in-one business platforms exist with interoperable sets of services that can be brought together to create apps and workflows based on the specific client need and context. These platforms are built with business agility in mind and provide much faster and less expensive time-to-markets than barebone infrastructures.  

Without the proper digital infrastructure in place, businesses looking to move digitally will face many roadblocks and challenges. Technical debt is the term used to describe the number of upgrades and updates needed of older platforms before you can truly optimize customer experience. These can be costly upgrades if you aren’t already on a modular business platform and can hold you back from getting the most out of your business.  

Benefits of a business platform 

Why should you invest in getting your online business onto an all-in-one platform? A digital business platform eliminates the issue of technical debt, with a team to support you on upgrades, updates and more so you don’t have to worry about any potential down time or investment before taking the next step in your digital business.

The modular nature of these platforms allows you also to easily and seamlessly integrate all the solutions you need to thrive in this “New Normal” landscape. This includes an Inventory Management System (IMS) or Order Management System (OMS), like Linnworks, which also provides your tax automating software, payroll, analytics and more.

An automated business platform allows all of these individual cogs in your business machine to work together smoothly, transferring data from one to the other without manual entry or analysis – saving you time and money on these operational processes. Moving to a cloud-based platform allowed this major US-furnishing firm to realize 99% uptime with a 32% reduction in system costs.

When your business is running automatically online, the benefits are seen for themselves – a leading insurance provider saw a 97% reduction in the cost of operating their finance reconciliation process and claims production trends after making the move to digital and giving their customers self-service options digitally. Reduced maintenance costs and increased business agility are only some of the many benefits to implementing a platform. A leading dairy company was able to reduce 25% of their infrastructure – a significant time savings which will lower costs exponentially over time.

How ecommerce fits in 

With a digital platform in place, the modular nature allows your ecommerce platform, like Magento or BigCommerce, to easily be plugged in to your other business solutions.

An underrated benefit of an all-in-one business platform is how easily data can be moved between integrated applications, like moving customer data from your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to your OMS automatically or using that data through ecommerce for remarketing or product recommendations automatically. Having a dedicated OMS/IMS solution, like Linnworks directly embedded helps automate order fulfillment and inventory management for warehouses seamlessly, all from one singular business platform.  

While a platform can integrate with most ecommerce platforms, choosing the right one for you is still crucial when thinking about scalability and customizability. Redstage has put together their “Ultimate eCommerce Platform Comparison Guide” to help with making that decision.  

Choosing the right ecommerce platform to integrate with your inventory and order management solutions, and having that all plugged into your digital business platform may seem like a lot of trial and error to find the right combination, but what if your ecommerce agency, business platform, and OMS/IMS are already working together?  

Key steps to implementing a business platform

Implementing an all-in-one business platform requires collaboration on multiple fronts to ensure every crucial piece of your business is connected. Linnworks, Redstage, and Fulcrum Digital have recently partnered  to ensure that their clients can seamlessly integrate their order and inventory management with their commerce store-front in one modular and agile platform.

Our teams can help you replatform, implement, and enhance your business operations with robust and specialized technologies. Here are some important considerations before you take the plunge:  

• Integrations – Redstage and Fulcrum Digital can help merchants add ERP tools and other solutions to the Linnworks platform if they’re not already integrated. Redstage and Fulcrum Digital have an ecosystem of solutions partners and can integrate your preferred third-party applications into the FulcrumOne business platform, for the ultimate in streamlined business processes.
• Customizations – Working directly with a customizable platform like FulcrumOne, you’ll be able to advance and optimize your business operations. With customizations such as machine learning, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and more, you can experience exponential business growth through these integrations.  
• Ecommerce – According to Redstage, clients have seen up to 87% revenue growth, 57% increase in transactions, and up to 170% boost to conversion rate through ecommerce optimization, whether it’s a brand new ecommerce build or a site refresh. The award winning creative and development teams have a decade of experience with B2C and B2B.  
• Onboarding assistance – With a hand-in-hand approach by all three companies, the partnership will ensure a service-centric onboarding experience. Every client receives hands-on, one-on-one assistance not only at the beginning, but throughout the entire merchant journey from business strategy to ongoing site maintenance and support.

For more insights from Linnworks, Redstage and Fulcrum Digital, see here if your industry is ready for the switch to the effortless economy.