Why use integrations with your TMS system?
There are many reasons to integrate and connect your back office systems.
Increase productivity.
Reduce wasted time and resources of carrying out manual processes and data entry.
Improving accuracy.
Eliminating data / process / resource silos.
Helping your business to scale.
The list goes on.
Throughout our journey, we’ve envisaged Stream as part of a software ecosystem.
Depending on the type of business, that software ecosystem may encompass an ecommerce website, a warehouse management system (WMS), an enterprise resource planner (ERP), inventory management or an order management system.
We’ve designed Stream to seamlessly connect with those systems so to make your operations more effective and more efficient.
Together, those systems add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Empowering a two-way dialogue
A key reason for implementing integrations is to make communication between software systems faster and more efficient.
And, in the case of Stream, that data can be pushed or pulled in a two-way dialogue.
You, or your partners or customers, might create orders in another system and then need a way to get that order information into Stream ready for planning.
In other cases, an integration might enable you to send delivery or order update information from Stream, back to your ERP, WMS, or order management or accounting system.
You can send status updates back the other way into your other business systems, when an order has been delivered, for instance so that your staff can access information in their ‘native’ applications without having to log in to Stream separately.
Eliminating manual processes
Integrating business system can help eliminate manual and time-consuming manual processes, as well as cutting the risk of human error that comes with that manual data entry.
In Stream’s case, manual entry doesn’t even necessarily mean physically typing orders in, it could be just uploading a spreadsheet.
Whatever the methodology, that’s still time-consuming and can be prone to errors.
Instead of exporting data from another system, emailing it or sending a CSV, and then having to upload that to Stream, an integration can eliminate that process.
You can, for instance, pass orders straight through to Stream, ready to be planned, to make the process is as quick and as easy as possible – and pass updates back the other way.
Making data available in real-time
Another limiting factor for manual processes and spreadsheet uploads is the frequency they are carried out.
By definition, they’re unable to provide real-time updates.
But, as we’re pushing information into and, crucially, out of Stream through an integration, real-time data is made available.
And when you consider that Stream provides visibility to multiple parties, that real-information becomes even more exciting.
You can, for instance, give your partners access to view and manage their own orders, as well as your customers. In our world, partners refer to the businesses who sell the items to the end consumer, for example a retailer.
Partners need visibility over all their orders, including Proof of Delivery and the tracking associated with those orders.
They’re likely going to handle the customer service side of things for the order, and having access to that information via a portal helps the retailer to provide a better level of customer service.
For the end customer, which might be a business or consumer, they’ll want visibility of their own individual order.
Learn more about Stream’s integration ecosystem here and schedule your demo today.