From online shop to ERP: Business Central behind Shopify.

Where the customer stood

Cure Concept, based in Düsseldorf, develops and sells professional cosmetic devices and care products. It sells through Shopify to consumers and partners, as well as through direct sales and at trade fairs. Goods come from suppliers in Europe and Asia and are shipped from the company's own warehouse. The business grew quickly, across several channels and countries. The tools from the early days had carried that well for a long time. With every new channel, keeping them in sync took more time. On top of that came requirements a shop alone does not cover: batches and best-before dates, serial numbers, landed costs including freight and duties, tax per destination country. It was time for an ERP behind the shop.

What we did

We put Business Central behind the Shopify store. Orders from the shop, the B2B portal and direct sales flow into Business Central automatically. Stock levels flow back to the shop, and gross prices arrive exactly as the customer saw them. Every item is tracked in the way that suits it: care products by batch and best-before date, devices by serial number. Remaining shelf life is checked at goods receipt, and at dispatch whatever expires first goes out first. Purchase suggestions appear before stock runs out. Freight and customs duties are allocated to items so that landed costs are correct. Sets and bundles are set up as bills of materials. Tax is configured per destination country. Handover to the tax advisers continues along the proven route for now. A direct DATEV connection follows as a separate step. That way bookkeeping carried on without interruption at go-live. We worked in three steps. First we settled the processes, items and decisions. Then we built in a test environment connected to the shop, with anything that could reach the outside world disabled. For go-live we brought across the opening stock with its batches, trained people by role and switched to live operation.

What came out of it

Every batch can be traced through to the customer. Orders from the shop, the B2B portal and direct sales arrive in Business Central without being typed in, and shop stock matches the warehouse.

Purchasing and the warehouse now plan with the same figures as sales. Purchase suggestions arrive in time, and landed costs are correct. The shop stays the shop window, and stock, purchasing and orders run behind it in one system.

This data foundation is the groundwork for agents. Because stock, batches, orders and landed costs now sit cleanly in one place, an agent can start working there next. It could, for example, prepare purchase suggestions, match supplier confirmations or check freight invoices against the order. People still give the approval.

What proved harder than expected

Classify first, then post. Is an item tracked by batch, best-before date or serial number? That has to be settled before the first stock is posted, because it is very hard to change later. We tested in such a way that no customer noticed a thing. Tax per destination country was set up properly once, after a test order to another EU country. That leaves the question of who issues the invoice: the shop, the ERP or the existing tool. It sounds like a detail, but it determines how payments are reconciled and how data is handed over to DATEV. That is why we raised it early and planned the DATEV connection as a separate step instead of folding it into go-live.