How to Harness Cloud Integration and NetSuite to Build Your Retail Business

2 eBook | How to Harness Cloud Integration and Netsuite to Build Your Retail Business

Table of Contents 3 | Introduction

4 | Meeting the Omnichannel Retail Challenge

5 | The Five Characteristics of Connected Retail

6 | The High Cost of Poor Integration

7 | Impacts on Efficiency and Innovation

8 | Why Boomi for Retail?

9 | NetSuite and Boomi: The Foundation for Omnichannel Retail

11 | Customer Stories: Kelly Moore Paints

12 | Customer Stories: Candy.com

13 | Conclusion: Flexibility for a Connected Future

3 eBook | How to Harness Cloud Integration and Netsuite to Build Your Retail Business

Introduction It’s not easy to sustain success in retail these days. Venerable brands are shuttering stores or going out of business entirely. Profound shifts in consumer behavior and the continued rise of ecommerce are creating dynamic challenges for retailers. Companies in this cornerstone industry are painfully aware of the need to transform their operations to survive and prosper.

Retailers gain an edge by running the Oracle NetSuite scalable cloud platform for enterprise resource planning (ERP), including financials and inventory management. As a unified system, NetSuite brings the full advantages of cloud-native technology to deliver agility and scale. With NetSuite, retailers can streamline processes and improve efficiency.

NetSuite also offers ecommerce, customer relationship (CRM) and point of sale (POS) technology.

To take full advantage of NetSuite’s comprehensive enterprise management platform, many retailers connect other best-of-breed applications to extend workflows and build insights from richer datasets. Many retailers want to integrate other applications for marketing automation, electronic data interchange (EDI), warehousing and logistics, sales tax compliance, and distribution.

These multi-application cloud environments require integration. Retailers need to connect NetSuite across diverse sets of applications, data, processes, people and devices. That paves the way for data-driven automation and visibility across all back-office and customer-facing functions.

As a NetSuite partner since 2008, Dell Boomi equips more than 1,000 NetSuite customers with agile cloud integration to run their connected businesses. The Boomi low-code, cloud native integration platform can give your retail business breakthrough capabilities to run faster, smarter and better — in short, to become a connected retailer that can thrive amid industry disruption.

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Meeting the Omnichannel Retail ChallengeSoaring customer expectations have changed the game in retail. With ecommerce, mobile devices and social media, shoppers have more options than ever to research and purchase products. Digital markets have created many more retail channels across physical stores, websites, mobile applications, social media and text messaging. Price transparency and crowd-sourced consumer reviews guide decisions.

Yet consumers no longer buy on price and selection alone. They value relationships with brands that cater to their interests with personalized engagement. Amazon and other top retailers have raised the bar for a seamless omnichannel experience that spans all touchpoints.

The challenge for retailers is to cultivate that exceptional customer journey at every interaction, from digital advertising to on-site product recommendations, in-store interactions and post-purchase support. That requires data and connectivity.

Retailers have data in abundance. Too often, however, it’s locked in standalone silos. Retailers need to rapidly integrate applications. Markets move too fast. The days of months-long, six-figure integration projects are untenable.

But integration is essential to gaining better insights, streamlining automation and increasing business agility. Integration and high quality data are crucial for retailers to orchestrate all processes, including B2B transactions with suppliers and partners.

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The Five Characteristics of Connected Retail1. 360-Degree Customer InsightsRetailers need insights into all customer interactions across all touchpoints, in real time. Those span from digital advertising and email marketing to website activity, purchase history by channel, POS transactions, mobile usage, and inquiries to call centers. They need a single source of truth to gain a 360-degree customer view.

2. Personalized EngagementWith customer insights, retailers are positioned to engage shoppers with personalized interactions tailored to their preferences and interests. With full control of their physical and digital channels, retailers can deliver exceptional shopping experiences with timely and targeted promotions, recommendations and rewards.

3. Seamless Omnichannel Experience Customers are intolerant of even small missteps. They expect consistency at each touchpoint, and flexibility to purchase, pick up and return goods by whichever channel suits them. A flawless experience across every interaction drives repeat business and customer loyalty.

4. Automated, Intelligent OperationsEnsuring adequate stock to meet customer demand is critical, yet so is minimizing inventory costs. Successful retailers are able to improve inventory and distribution efficiencies through integration across internal systems, as well as supply and third-party logistics (3PL) partners.

5. B2B/EDI Optimization B2B transaction, via EDI or newer web services, is a key element of supply chain optimization. Retailers need to flexibly and securely transact with partners, whether on the supply side or selling through Amazon, Walmart or other top outlets. Ultimately, the speed, accuracy and cost-efficiency possible with B2B/ EDI transactions can significantly help elevate the customer experience.

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The High Cost of Poor IntegrationThe five characteristics of connected retail are difficult to achieve with a sprawling collection of disconnected applications and disjointed processes.

Indeed, integration is proving a foundational need for retailers in the cloud era. “The Connected Business,” a global survey conducted by Vanson Bourne for Boomi, found that 91 percent of retailers had experienced business drawbacks as a result of poor integration, such as higher costs and delays in new product deployment.

Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of retailers are struggling to become more connected, according to the report. Another 63 percent report that that poor integration has cost them business opportunities within the past year.

These pain points result when retailers utilize ad hoc custom coding or legacy on-premise integration middleware to connect applications, such as an ecommerce storefront with a cloud ERP platform like NetSuite. Both approaches are costly, time-consuming and not scalable amid the rapid deployment of new cloud-based applications.

Subpar integration drives up costs across retail channels. Productivity takes a particularly big hit. A retailer might spend $100,000 in salary and benefits on a staffer who manually manages the transfer of data to or from enterprise applications and spreadsheets.

of retailers suffer business drawbacks from poor integration

of retailers are struggling to become more connected

of retailers say poor integration has cost them business opportunities

91%

64%

63%

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Impacts on Efficiency and InnovationSimilar inefficiencies may exist in web storefront management, lead-to-cash cycles, POS data management, multi-channel inventory management, and manual partner transactions in lieu of automated B2B/EDI transactions. It adds up to needless costs and delays that erode tenuous margins and hurt the customer experience.

And poor integration inhibits innovation. For example, a retailer that traditionally sells third-party goods may want to introduce its own branded products, produced by a contract manufacturer. Conversely, a manufacturer may want to become a retailer through direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales or even its own physical stores.

Such “crossover” businesses introduce new requirements in partnerships, processes and technologies. It’s extremely difficult to innovate and scale when an organization lacks the connectivity to synchronize a new set of moving parts.

Retailers are now zeroing in on the integration challenge. In Boomi’s “The Connected Business” survey, 80 percent of businesses reported that they are using or deploying cloud-based integration platform as a service (iPaaS) technology to improve their organizational connectedness.

Of retailers using iPaaS, 78 percent said iPaaS has made their organizations faster. Another 62 percent said it’s made them smarter.

Boomi is the integration platform of choice for retailers that want to remove traditional obstacles and transform themselves into data-driven, customer-centric organizations.

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Why Boomi for Retail?Boomi provides an intelligent data platform for retailers to connect, innovate and grow. Boomi’s cloud-native, low-code integration platform helps retailers speed and automate operations while gaining new insights and control across channels.

Retailers such as Lucky Brand, Candy.com, First Source and Kelly-Moore Paints make up a sizable portion of Boomi’s more than 7,000 customers.

Boomi delivers pre-built functionality and open connectors to solve difficult technical challenges, so that you can focus on strategic initiatives and systemic improvements.

With Boomi, retailers can connect NetSuite to other applications far more quickly and easily than is possible with manual coding or legacy middleware.

The Boomi integration platform offers a unified development and management environment to cover all your integration needs across omnichannel retail operations.

Integrate | Application and Data iPaaS: Connect your applications and data sources across a hybrid IT landscape to unlock data silos and achieve pervasive integration.

Hub | Master Data Hub: Synchronize and enrich customer, product and partner data through the Boomi Master Data Hub to generate a single, trusted data source for informed decisions.

Exchange | B2B/EDI Management: Achieve interoperability between your internal systems and your ecosystem of trading partners to extend the reach of your business operations.

Mediate | API Design and Management: Modernize and expose underlying data as APIs to deliver scalable and secure real-time interactions for the new world of applications and IoT devices.

Flow | Workflow Automation and Mobile Development: Automate workflows on any channel, device or platform to create new experiences for customers, partners or employees.

“Boomi has delivered huge savings by simply eliminating the need for outside consulting and integration service. It’s our preferred

choice to integrate any new or existing applications.”Grant Gouldon

IT Director, Kelly-Moore Paints

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NetSuite and Boomi: The Foundation for Omnichannel RetailRetail is a key vertical market for NetSuite. While the company offers a comprehensive retail platform, many retailers elect to use the core NetSuite ERP for financials, inventory and order management, and rely on best-of-breed systems for other functions.

Ecommerce systems from Demandware, Magento and Shopify are common. Many retailers are also using such cloud-based applications as Salesforce for CRM and Marketo or HubSpot for running marketing automation. The mix-and-match possibilities are many for NetSuite retailers, making fast and agile integration a fundamental requirement for success.

Boomi complements NetSuite with rapid low-code integration that lets retailers quickly connect systems as needed. That gives NetSuite-based retailers a distinct advantage in improving their processes, extending operational control, and automating workflows. Integration can help most any aspect of retail operations, including lead-to-cash, ecommerce integration, omnichannel commerce, the 360-degree customer view, and extended supply chain.

Retail Integration Benefits• 360-degree customer view across systems• Single source of truth• Customer-centric process orchestration• Seamless omnichannel commerce• Efficiency and visibility across the organization• More effective supplier and partner relationships

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Lead-to-CashBoomi connects any combination of marketing automation, CRM, ecommerce and NetSuite order management for automation and visibility. For example, a retailer is able to measure marketing campaign effectiveness by tying online activity to customers and orders. In addition, sales orders created in Salesforce are automatically synchronized to NetSuite for invoicing and fulfillment. Ecommerce Integration Retailers need reliable, near real-time ecommerce storefront management. Boomi readily connects NetSuite with a third-party site, whether a retailer-managed system like Shopify or partners such as Amazon and eBay. With a modern integration platform, retailers can synchronize product, inventory and customer data, while capturing orders for back-end fulfillment. Linking to a customer’s history of interactions supports on-site recommendations for cross-sell or replenishment.Omnichannel CommerceBoomi lets retailers easily integrate third-party call center and POS systems with the NetSuite ecosystem. No longer bound to a terminal, modern POS systems can run on tablets with inventory management, purchase order, loyalty program and other capabilities. For example, with NetSuite/POS integration, a store associate can “save the sale” on the floor for an out-of-stock item by checking inventory available elsewhere.

Customer 360-Degree ViewBoomi consolidates crucial customer data from disparate systems to deliver a single source of truth. With all data integrated, a 360-degree customer view is possible for guiding personalized marketing. Meanwhile, Boomi’s Master Data Hub synchronizes customer data across applications, such as NetSuite, Salesforce and Shopify, to ensure that it’s consistent and up-to-date. That’s essential for retailers to meet demands for a consistent cross-channel experience. EDI and Supply ChainBoomi B2B Management eliminates the high cost and inflexibility of traditional on-premise EDI tools, as well as the overhead of manual transactions involving emails, PDFs and spreadsheets. With Boomi, retailers can easily meet the B2B/EDI standards of partners like Walmart and their third-party logistics (3PL) suppliers. And to create an end-to-end supply chain, Boomi can integrate NetSuite with any other application that supports your supply chain workflows, from demand planning to warehouse management.

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Customer StoriesPaint manufacturer Kelly-Moore Paints operates about 150 retail stores, and sells through dealers across the U.S. Kelly-Moore turned to Boomi in 2012 when it needed to integrate Salesforce with its retail POS system and the Oracle E-Business Suite. Since then, the company has expanded Boomi usage across nearly 40 business processes.Boomi’s cloud-native platform has accelerated and simplified integration with customer payment, supply chain and other applications. And it’s allowed Kelly-Moore to capture significant cost savings by reducing the need for outside consulting and integration resources.

Read the Kelly-Moore case study

“We were able to quickly implement our own integrations and manage them with greater confidence. Boomi is so customizable that we can respond to a specific dealer or customer requirement while maintaining our standard integration framework.”Julius MercadoRetail Applications Analyst, Kelly-Moore Paints

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Customer StoriesKnown for its online candy sales, Candy.com has become one of the fastest-growing 3PL vendors for chocolate and other perishable goods in the United States. With such growth, efficiently running its trading partner network was critical to Candy.com.Candy.com turned to Boomi to connect its NetSuite ERP platform with its in-house EDI system. The Boomi NetSuite-to-EDI integration has met EDI compliance standards, improved operational efficiencies, provided scalability amid shifting demands, and contributed to up-to-date customer data. It’s also freed resources to focus on sales and analytics, not manual order management.

Read the Candy.com press release

“We rely on Dell Boomi for our EDI to NetSuite integration because it is a high-productivity platform that’s easy to use, reliable and endlessly scalable. With application integration so painlessly taken care of, we are able to stay focused on accelerating business, not solving business process automation challenges.”Gary CifatteChief Technology Officer, Candy.com

e-book | How to Harness Cloud Integration and Netsuite to Build Your Omnichannel Retail Business

13 eBook | How to Harness Cloud Integration and Netsuite to Build Your Retail Business

Flexibility for a Connected FutureRecent history has shown that change in retail happens fast. The retail landscape today is full of challenges that simply didn’t exist a decade ago. Looking forward, continued disruption is on the horizon with the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and mobile commerce.Retailers need flexible, future-proof integration to keep up with technological and industry disruption. Those able to transform into connected retail businesses are better able to meet ever-rising customer demands while running highly efficient operations.To learn more about how Boomi can help your retail organization take full advantage of NetSuite’s platform for retailers, please visit www.boomi.com/solutions/netsuite/ or contact a Boomi integration expert https://boomi.com/contact in your region.

Additional ResourceseBook: 6 Ways to Optimize NetSuite With Application Integration

eBook: NetSuite Integration Checklist

Datasheet: Dell Boomi Integration Accelerator for Oracle NetSuite and Salesforce