Question
Good day, I am a designer that is working on a new Shopify website for a client in Bermuda. My client uses NCR Counterpoint as their POS system, so we need an integration platform. They have 1 location, will start off with about 1,000 SKUs, and will probably receive under 100 sales per month via the site.
We have been offered integration by the business that installed and manages Counterpoint for my client, but I am very frustrated with limitations of the integration they are offering. It makes for a counter-intuitive and inefficient workflow. As the designer, using their integration, I would ONLY be able to create Shopify Collections (mapped from categories), Shopify Tags (mapped from sub-categories) and Descriptions (written in HTML) in Counterpoint. (Images are uploaded to Shopify and don't sync). And that any modifications that I made in Shopify to any of these fields would be overwritten by Counterpoint's integration sync. If there are any changes, additions or spelling mistakes to correct - I would need to jump back and forth between Shopify and Counterpoint! And as a contractor in this situation, I would prefer to go into my client's POS system as minimally as possible! After the initial product integration, I would like to do all my merchandising in Shopify alone - including creating special collections, additional tags, and rich descriptions that I can modify on the fly in a WSIWYG environment. When I requested that certain fields don't overwrite during syncs after initial integration (description, categories and sub-categories) or, as my client only uses 1 Category and 1 Sub-category, that those two fields respectively map to Category and Product Type in Shopify leaving Collections and Tags free for me to use as I needed - I was told that this would be an extremely costly customization and not recommended as it wouldn't be "optimal".
Why it isn't "optimal", I still can't figure out... This all leads to the big question: can Modern Retail offer the type of integration that is intuitive and efficient for the web designer/merchandiser? (Taking all the above into account!) According to your amazing animated graphic - it seems so! And after delving into your documentation and support blog, integration customization does not appear to be sub-optimal.
In fact, a specific query answer gave me great hope as it says:
- "...we typically only update prices and inventory. All other fields are untouched because you can edit those directly within the e-commerce platform." "Side note: we do have the ability in our Integrator to overwrite certain values but not others. As mentioned above, price and quantity on hand (QOH) are typically 2 attributes that get overwritten by default. However, it would be just as easy to include other variables as well."
I understand that the above answer was to someone who was migrating products from one e-commerce platform to another, but wouldn't the same apply for a new installation? I am very much looking forward to your response and would be happy to chat with a representative.
Answer
Thank you for your detailed explanation - I really enjoyed it! I'm going to try to do you justice with my own detailed explanation!
Philosophically, Modern Retail has a different approach that you completely picked up. We believe the e-commerce platforms (Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or Magento) are better suited to merchandise the products that Counterpoint. They have so many capabilities that are much better than the POS system, specifically designed to help users merchandise products being sold on a website. How do you expect Counterpoint or any POS system to complete when they are focused on the in-store customer? They don't and/or your website will be "limited" to what the POS system can do. For example, Counterpoint only allows one product image. Many retailers want to upload multiple images for their online products. Do you need to upload the first image in Counterpoint and images 2-5 in Shopify? That's just confusing.
Additionally, we like to adhere to the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple, Stupid) as much as possible. For most of our B2C Integrations, we only need to constantly update the following fields between Counterpoint and the website: Inventory, Price, Sale Price, and UPC. This makes it a very "light" integration, requiring far fewer API calls to work. This saves the client money regardless of which e-commerce platform they are using! It also makes for a faster integration!
So why do our competitors do it differently? Well, if they are Counterpoint resellers, they see Counterpoint as the center of the universe. They probably can't begin to understand why someone wouldn't want to do all their work in Counterpoint. I also get database people saying something like: "I want one centralized database where everything is done, and I want that to be Counterpoint." There's a massive problem with this approach - the website is still constantly changing, and so are the retailer's business needs. Let's say they want to start selling on Amazon or eBay, which have their own unique product attributes. Are you going to add those fields to Counterpoint and push them up to the website so they can be sent to the marketplace? What if you wanted to organize your product catalog using categories/sub-subcategories/sub-sub-categories, tags, collections, filters, etc.? Are you going to add all of those to Counterpoint as well and push them up to the website? When does it end??? Our experience is never - it's a losing battle! Instead, keep Counterpoint at the center of your operations by letting it manage inventory and price, and leave all online merchandising up to the website platform!
Let's not forget that all these customizations to Counterpoint make Counterpoint more complicated as well! Modifying or bastardizing Counterpoint in any way is taboo in Modern Retail's eyes. Our integration does NOT modify Counterpoint. This means you can upgrade Counterpoint at any time and it won't affect our integration!
Ok, that was a fun discussion for a Friday afternoon!
Many of the merchandising features on this page would be hard, if not impossible, if all the data and design was driven from Counterpoint. For example, the multiple categories and sub-categories, lines dividing the various sections, etc. Instead, all of this can easily be done on the e-commerce platform.