1. Enterprise resource planning systems

ERPs help manage the day-to-day management of ecommerce businesses, including stock management, sales tracking, and project management. By integrating your other business systems into a single ERP, you can reduce the time spent on administrative tasks and make more time to focus on other priorities to drive growth. The best ERP systems use machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate processes and offer insightful data about your business. Often, ecommerce companies today are partnering with cloud-based ERPs that can help make your business more efficient and competitive.

2. Payment service providers (PSPs)

Using a PSP should be a no-brainer for any growing ecommerce business. Why? Because they act as a go-between that connects your online shop, payment options, and your customers. Partnering with a PSP helps offer your customers multiple payment methods. Good ones also take care of the entire electronic payment transfer process – making sure customers pay invoices on time, dealing with security and fraud risks, and offering real-time feedback insights into your business. Mollie is a payment service provider.

3. Customer relationship management technology

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems help businesses manage their relationships and interactions with their customers and leads. CRMs can help you deliver better customer experiences, streamline processes, and increase conversions.

As well as the basic information they provide – customer history, issues, order status – an advanced CRM can give more detailed information, such as social media sentiment about your brand and competitors. Advanced CRMs also now offer state-of-the-art automation processes, refine activities using artificial intelligence, and even provide chatbots that help guide prospects through marketing and sales pipelines.

4. Analytics tools

Ecommerce companies now have access to vast amounts of customer data. With analytical tools, you use this data to, among other things, personalise the customer experience, identify fraud, and optimise pricing. This data can also help you predict trends and forecast demand, allowing you to build up stock for peak-sales seasons or even offer new products to increase sales. These days, some of the market’s best analytics tools are cloud-based, meaning they can process and analyse data extremely quickly, giving ecommerce companies a competitive advantage over their peers. The best analytics tools also use machine learning and AI to offer insights and recommendations.

5. Shipping solutions

Shipping solutions can automate your business’s logistics processes, including managing and tracking deliveries. This can help you organise your shipping workflows to identify efficiencies and reduce costs. More importantly, it can help ensure you keep customers happy with time-slot deliveries, real-time tracking, and effortless returns.

Nowadays, premium shipping software goes beyond basic shipping. The best solutions offer real-time insights and notifications, automate as much of the logistics process as possible, and deliver reports to improve efficiencies. Label printing, threshold-based discounts, ecommerce platform integrations, and support for multiple sales channels are just some benefits that the best shipping solutions will offer. Also, look for a provider that is transparent about pricing, breaking down costs for services, including storage, receiving, and picking and packing.