For a good few years we have been working with eXcommerce with their WebShop Offerings. eXcommerce is very good in the integration of an online ecommerce store using Catalook and DotNetnuke integrated with a great ERP (accounting, CRM, logistics) using Mamut. They have many clients and the process works great.

With recent improvements with nopCommerce 2.0 and our experience in producing some extensions to bring nopCommerce closer to the latest DotNetNuke 6.0 - We thought of creating a solution where one can still use DNN as the WCMS and then use nopcommerce 2.x to run the web shop on the same server and then to use Mamut to deliver a solid ERP. To go deeper into the proposed solution, we are trying to build, let’s look at each of the components:

nopCommerce:

nopCommerce has a wealth of features and capabilities designed to help you launch powerful e-commerce solutions. This page provides you with a quick snapshot of its features and capabilities. We have included all the necessary tools required to build a successful e-commerce store. Although we have used Catalook to deliver similar functionalities within DotNetNuke, but Since DNN 6, we find that Catalook no longer is able match the high end abilities of nopCommerce 2.0. Please see the list of capabilities of nopCommerce:

Price: Free
PCI DSS Compliant (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)

General Cataloug Features

Unlimited number of products
Supports categories and manufacturers
Categories can also be fully nested to any level desired (sub-categories)
Products can be mapped to more than one category or manufacturer
Anonymous checkout
One-page Checkout
Gift Cards (Virtual and Physical)
Recurring Products
Support for kit products (e.g. Build your own computer)
Multilingual support
Multicurrency support
Measure weights, measure dimensions
Real-time currency exchange rates (ECB)
SSL support
Export/import (XML, Excel)
PDF order receipts
Fully 100% customizable design using templates
Phone order support
RMA (return management)
Configurable list of allowed countries
(For billing, For shipping)
ACL (Access control list)
Activity Log
Live chat integration
SMS notifications
Mini shopping cart
OpenID, Facebook and Twitter authentication
W3C compliance (XHTML)

Product Features

Product attributes (e.g. colour, size)
Stock management by product attributes (such as, color and size)
Product tags
Configurable checkout attributes (such as «Gift Wrap» or «Enter custom message»)
Configurable customer attributes (such as «Date of birth», «Phone number»)
Individual prices can be specified for individual customer groups
Allow customers to enter product price (if enabled)
Allow store owner to hide prices for non-registered customers
Supports multiple images per product
Auto image resizing
Downloadable products supported
Downloadable products. License file can be attached
Downloadable products can have an user agreement
Downloadable products. Configurable download activation type: 'When order
payment status is Paid' or 'Manual activation'
Text options on products (e.g. require initials for monogrammed products,
require text name for product customization, etc)
Support for simple products (e.g. a book) or products with variants
Support for sale prices
Product search
Featured products, sale products or new products
Inventory tracking
Disable buy buttons for specific products
Product specifications (e.g. processor, memory, graphic card)
Compare products feature (if enabled)
'Call for price' support
Cross-sells support
Backorder support
Display product stock availability option

Marketing and Promotions

Marketing & Promotions
Reward Points System
Ability to assign design on category, manufacturer or product (unique design
Per category/manufacturer/product)
Supports related products
Marketing manager (Email campaigns)
Customer groups can be marked as free shipping
Customer groups can be marked as tax exempt
Supports discounts
Supports coupons
Discount amount can either be a fixed value or a present off. e.g. $10.00 off or 20% off
You can specify a start date and an end date when the coupon is valid
Discounts can be assigned to products
Discounts can be assigned to categories
Discounts can be assigned to whole order
Discounts can be filtered by a customer role
'Had purchased all of these product variants' discount requirement
'Had purchased one of these product variants' discount requirement
'One time only' discounts
'One time per customer' discounts
Discounts can be assigned to shipping fee
Discount Usage History
Volume discounts (Tier prices)
Recently added products page. RSS.
Recently viewed products page
Free Shipping Option
Customers can review & rate products (if enabled)
Require administrator approval of product reviews for all reviews (if enabled)
Product review helpfulness (“Was this review helpful for you?”)
Search Engine Friendly URL's
Automated URL Re-Writing
Every product, category and manufacturer page can have their own custom search
engine meta tags, page title
Customize default SEO meta tags
Store news items supported. News RSS. News comments
Polls supported
Store blog supported
Forums supported
Supports affiliate programs
Froogle (google base), PriceGrabber / Yahoo Shopping, become.com product feeds
Google XML site map
Customizable email templates
Completely customize the layout & appearance of any category, manufacturer, or
Product page
CMS Topics
Breadcrumb trail for easy site navigation
"Store is closed" feature
QuickBooks integration
Google AdSense integration

Shipping Features

UPS
USPS
FedEx
Australia Post
Canada Post
Restrict Available Shipping Methods by Country
Calculate shipping by order total
Calculate shipping by order weight
Calculate shipping by country & total order weight
Several Shipping Rate Computation Methods used Simultaneously (such as, FedEx and UPS)
Free shipping over $X
Additional shipping charges by product
Specify all orders as free shipping
Admin defined shipping methods (e.g. Ground, Next Day, 2nd Day, etc)
Specify all orders as free shipping
Packaging slips
Support for "no shipping required" products (e.g. services)
Admin defined shipping methods
Customer groups can be marked as free shipping
Shipping tracking number

Tax Features

Tax Features
Apply tax by country
Apply tax by state
Apply tax by zip
StrikeIron tax provider
Individual products can be marked taxable or tax-exempt
Tax classes supported by product (e.g. goods, services, alcohol, etc)
Customer groups can be marked as tax exempt
The European Union Value Added Tax (EU VAT) support (Company VAT Number)
Allow store owner to specify which tax based on:
billing/shipping/default/shipping origin address
Allow store owner to specify whether prices include tax
Allow customer to choose tax display type (incl/excl tax)
Allow store owner to specify tax display type (incl/excl tax)
Allow store owner to specify whether shipping is taxable
Allow store owner to specify whether shipping prices include tax
Allow store owner to specify whether to hide zero tax
Allow store owner to specify whether to hide tax in order summary when prices are shown tax inclusive

Payment Methods, Gateways

Restrict Available Payment Methods by Country
Cash On Delivery payment method
Accept Purchase Order
Accept Checks / Money Order
Accept all major credit and debit cards
Store can be set to authorize only, or auth-capture credit card mode. You can
then capture payment at shipment if desired
Refund (and partial refund) support
Void support
Real-time or offline credit card processing
Manual gateway (just collects order & payment information for offline processing)
Authorize.NET
Google Checkout
Pay in store
PayPal Standard
PayPal Website Payments Pro (Direct )
Purchase order
Other payment methods

Customer Service Features

Allow customers to register/login by email or by username
Wish list
Customers can not view their order history and order statuses
Customer does not have an address book
Customizable Order Emails
Multiple billing and shipping addresses per customer is good to have
Customer roles (groups)
Time zone support
Built-in forum
Password recovery
Display Order Notes to Customers
Several account registration/activation types
Automatic registration (no approving)
Manual registration (Admin Approval)
Email validation during registration
"Email a friend" feature
Compare products feature (if enabled)
News RSS
like Ventrian.
Recently added products RSS Good to have
Image capture on login/registration
Contact Us form
Better plugin support
Installation wizard

With the long list above, one would have thought that it does everything so why we need DNN as the CMS or Mamut as the ERP system: Well here are a few things it does not do well and also there are some items on the roadmap - but no date is available - So these will not happen in 2011 or even early 2012 :

Install Wizard
Mobile phone version
Web Services API for easy integration between nopCommerce and any third-party applications
Auctions
Multistore

DotNetNuke:
Having said the things planned or un-supported elements, nopCommerce is still way ahead of any other Ecommerce product on Microsoft .Net Platform. As well as being able to compete head on with any high end Ecommerce application in the php world. So here are some most engaging aspects of having DotNetNuke community edition or even professional edition sitting alongside this.

Telerik RadEditor Enhanced Rich Text Editor
Localized Content Management
Microsoft Azure Support
Cloud Services Support
Advanced Site Search
Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
Social Networking
Social Media
Google Analytics Support
Taxonomy
Folksonomy
Change Audit
Great Skinning and Templating support that allows one to create any look and feel. Therefore it can replicate a WordPress/Joomla/nopCommerce or other cms system with its advanced skinning engine.

So far so good: If we deliver a DNN community Edition with some heavy weight Custom Modules such as:

Bring2Mind Document Management Module
Ventrian Modules like News Article/Blog http://www.ventrian.com/
Active Social 1.9 - Your Complete Social Networking Solution for DotNetNuke
Dynamic Forms - to create advanced Forms and capture end user responses in DB or email to a list
Live Content - Live Content is ultimate content presentation solution

DNN has so many other added functionalities that one could add and enhance the end user experience - too many to list but naturally, these are commercial offerings and you could spend 2500 USD a year on a DNN professional edition that comes with a host of extra fanctionalites or buy individual solutions and enhance the perfectly capable free core as your requirements grow.

ERP Solution by Mamut: -

This means that with nopCommerce and Mamut integration we can support a total solution and help companies to optimise the company's internal processes for online sales with a world class web presence that combines DotNetnuke and nopCommerce elements in the total solution.

So Question is why would you need an ERP anyway?
If you have a small shop or small web based store with a few sales a week - then you dont need to invest in complicated accounting software or an ERP system.

However, if you have enough sales to cause you logistical problems and more then you need a better solution than trying to do this the old fashion way. Since, every one of the business’s department is generating its own data. When this data remains segregated by department, the result is disorganization and a splintering of information.

This means it can take days for one department to get data from another. Compartmentalized data means built in delays in getting information to where it is needed. Businesses using software packages that do not communicate with each other make the company less competent and result in a loss of profits.

ERP was designed to integrate a business’ data under one common platform. When this data is organized and coordinated to form a complete picture, the business saves costs and increases profit. ERP also cuts down on labour intensive and time consuming processes. Basically, ERP is the answer to many of the problems plaguing de-centralized businesses. ERP combines all business applications into one database so that all departments can share their information and communicate with each other more quickly.

ERP also benefits a business’ order tracking procedures. The ability to track orders properly permits a business to acquire detailed information on where an order stands, to find patterns in a customer’s behaviour, and to decide which marketing strategies work best. The ability to know when and how the manufacturing of a product should be altered is another advantage of ERP. Security is another area where ERP proves to be an advantage. The databases provided by ERP are capable of safely storing a business’ confidential data.

One of the greatest advantages of ERP software comes from its accounting applications which can integrate the cost, profit, and revenue data from each and every sale.

Now if you have also on top of your internal accounting and order processing overhead have a ecommerce needs as well as a solid web presence then you need to integrate these systems in a way that you don’t have to move data manually between systems.

Have a look at the video below by Mamut and in Part II I will expand further in our plans to help you bring these 3 great products closer together and how you can implement them in your business. So you get one all inclusive E-commerce solution that includes your Content Management System as well as the Accounting, Logistics, Post and Pay
Systems!

Comments

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Software Blog Comments

How to Second Life on your iPad or iPhone
Well Abel - There are no App for SL in iPhone or i... by Salar Golestanian

How to Second Life on your iPad or iPhone
How can I install a software or app for second lif... by Abel

Snow Leopard vs Windows 7 – I will stick with Windows 7 for now!
@Abi - Ouch. A 5 year old Toshiba. You should ha... by Joe Brinkman

Snow Leopard vs Windows 7 – I will stick with Windows 7 for now!
Just to correct you, I was a Mac veteran for 10 ye... by Salar Golestanian

Snow Leopard vs Windows 7 – I will stick with Windows 7 for now!
In response to your post (being the daughter in qu... by Abi

About Software Development Blog by Salar Golestanian

These are various Salar Golestanian software development tools and techniques Blog. Some long and some short about the latest topics that interest me about Content Management Systems like DotNetNuke, E-commerce platforms like nopCommerce or other mobile as well as desktop Web Development. Probably the best place for these would have been in SalarO.com, However, some some of these Blogs have less of a commercial or corporate genra, so here they are placed in my personal site. These Blogs help me explain a little more then normally allowed in the 140 character real estate of Twitter posts. They may also have links you to the actual news or site that expands further on my comments.