Running an ecommerce business can be a difficult undertaking, having to manage complex activities across various business functions like product development, operations, finance, marketing, and more.
Outsourcing those responsibilities to a third-party logistics (3PL) provider like Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS) can be a great way to reduce tradeoffs often associated with operating an ecommerce business. You can leverage a 3PL’s expertise and established infrastructure to optimize operations like inventory management and order fulfillment with ASCS service Multichannel Fulfillment. When you engage ASCS as your 3PL, you get access to Amazon’s trusted fulfillment network, which helps businesses deliver for customers with reliable pick, pack, and ship capabilities for orders placed on Amazon and beyond. You can leverage this network to fuel the growth of your own business around the globe and across sales channels.
By partnering with a 3PL you also gain access to its suite of ecommerce fulfillment integrations that can connect to your sales channels and back-end systems. With Amazon’s Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF) integrations, you can take advantage of ecommerce fulfillment automation and other business benefits, including:
- Cutting down on manual effort: While some business owners may still manage their order fulfillment operations through a series of spreadsheets, automating your order fulfillment using an integration means you no longer need to submit customer orders to your fulfillment provider manually. This, in turn, saves you time and frees you up to focus more on other areas of your business, like marketing and sales.
- Operating more efficiently: Employing an integration allows orders, customer information, and tracking details to automatically flow between your sales channels to your 3PL fulfillment provider without any lag. You can also easily sync your inventory levels across your channels, improving inventory and order picking accuracy.
- Growing your sales across multiple channels: With automated multichannel fulfillment, you can easily and effectively get up and running on new channels as you expand your business.
Choosing an ecommerce integration is a big decision, and it’s important to evaluate all the options out there to determine which integration will best meet your business needs.
Amazon MCF offers over 100 different integration options, from free-to-use apps, built by Amazon to inventory and order management solutions to custom APIs.
If you’re an Amazon seller, you can try the new MCF Integration Selection Tool to find the right integration solution for your business.
In this blog, we will discuss the five types of ecommerce fulfillment integrations available for MCF and explain how these integrations support and optimize ecommerce fulfillment automation.
#1: Direct integration
The new Amazon MCF and Buy with Prime app for Shopify is an updated version of the Amazon MCF app for Shopify, combining the fulfillment benefits of Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment and the ecommerce benefits of Buy with Prime.
With a single free-to-use app, you can integrate both MCF and Buy with Prime seamlessly into your existing Shopify site and manage your catalog, orders, and returns for both services directly in Shopify admin.
In addition to the MCF features already available to you through the existing app, the new app includes an integrated cart that lets shoppers add products fulfilled by MCF and Prime-eligible products to your Shopify site’s existing cart and then check out in one transaction.
Additionally, you can use both solutions to cover your entire site’s fulfillment needs and save on fulfillment costs by consolidating shipments of multi-unit orders in the integrated cart.
Note: You must have products activated with MCF and Buy with Prime to take advantage of the integrated cart and fulfillment cost savings.
#2: Third-party applications
Third-party integrations with MCF are built by independent software vendors (ISVs) to provide a connection between MCF and the ecommerce solution provider that powers your direct-to-consumer (DTC) website. These apps are a good fit for merchants seeking a single integration between MCF and their websites.
It’s important to note that each third-party app offers a unique set of features and benefits. WebBee and ByteStand, for example, are available in countries outside the US.
As you evaluate your different options, make sure to check that the app offers the functionality you’re looking for.
Businesses around the world have successfully deployed third-party integrations with MCF. Poppi, a beverage retailer, used WebBee to integrate its Shopify website with MCF and reduce its fulfillment costs by 30%.
From the flow of orders to the speed of fulfillment, the WebBee integration is exceptionally reliable. With its precise reporting, I gain measurable insights about my orders. I always know my Amazon inventory levels, and our customers also benefit from real-time tracking updates about their orders. Integrating our business with MCF has raised my confidence as a business manager.
#3: Inventory and order management solutions
Inventory and order management solutions streamline the way you manage your business and support ecommerce fulfillment automation. These prebuilt third-party solutions allow you to conduct your inventory and order management across all your sales channels through a single system.
If your operations involve complex order routing, and you wish to connect multiple sales channels to MCF for ecommerce fulfillment automation, inventory and order management solutions might be the right choice for you. Some of these solutions also connect to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which is helpful for financial reporting.
You can integrate with MCF using a variety of inventory and order management solutions and multichannel order fulfillment software, such as Veeqo, Listing Mirror, ShipStation, Pipe17, Rithum, and more.
For smart home retailer Wyze, the Pipe17 integration with MCF made order fulfillment easy, enabling the company to improve click-to-delivery speeds by over 50%.
And because MCF is part of ASCS’s broader end-to-end supply chain solution, you also get access to other services your business might need, like ground and air freight, warehousing and distribution, and more.
#4: Returns management solutions
Reverse logistics (also known as returns management) is an essential component of ecommerce operations. It can have a major impact on your customer experience as well as your bottom line. By integrating and using a returns management solution with MCF, you can automate the process and avoid the hassle of manually managing returns. Additionally, you can glean meaningful insights from your returns data to identify problematic products and other issues.
If you sell products that typically have a high return rate—like apparel, footwear, or beauty products— an integration with a returns management solution might be beneficial for your business.
Returns management solutions, like ReturnGo, make reverse logistics with MCF simple. Just set up a portal (with customizable return setting options like store credit) that customers can access from your website to initiate a return. Then, you can determine whether you wish the item sent back to you or returned to Amazon to be incorporated into your Amazon inventory.
#5: Custom APIs
If your business’s back-end systems and website are custom-built and you have your own developers, our custom APIs might be the right integration choice for you. With these developer-friendly APIs and our dedicated technical support team, you can build your own custom integration that can perform a variety of functions, including:
- Displaying dynamic (up-to-the-minute) delivery and shipping dates
- Showing inventory availability for your orders, along with inventory that is en route or on hand within any fulfillment center
- Viewing all tracking IDs in an MCF order
- Automatically generating a Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) for returns
If you are interested in building your own custom API integrations, you can consult with solution architects on the MCF team for help with customizations. You can also test your code prior to going live using our dynamic MCF Outbound API Sandbox.
Access our developer documentation to get started.
Automate your order fulfillment with MCF
Utilizing an ecommerce fulfillment integration to automate your order fulfillment can help you optimize your business operations and grow your multichannel sales.
Take the time to explore the different integration options to find the right solution for your business.
