I would appreciate any advice on this. I am not a developer. I am starting an online ebook business. Our backend data base runs on purely web based applications running on an SQL server 2008, .NET 4 / 64 bit environment. It contains all the stock information and pricing data. Due to the fact that we need to store 200,000 sku and rising all the stock information and pricing needs to be kept in the back end database.
Nopcommerce has been suggested as a good ecommerce database and cms system. Would it be suitable for this project? And does it have an established ability to pull data to the back end for viewing, browsing and also transfering data into the basket for customer purchases?
Thanks for your help.
As far as I know there is no out of the box support for second (backend) database. However, as you may already know, it is an open source solution and can easily be extended to support what you are asking for. You will need to hire someone who is nopCommerce savvy.
Also, nopCommerce has a support forum ... you might have better luck asking your question there as the project contributors often visit that section. Good luck!
Related
I'm migrating to an ecommerce platform that would help me sell my products online to a wider user base. I am told Shopify/Zepo is an online shop for small businesses and Magento/woocommerce are solutions. What exactly is the difference between a "shop" and "solution"? Or what if I build a site from scratch? Where do I start from?
Shopify/Zepo are SaaS ecommerce platforms which can handle milions of visits/transactions per day if your store is a real success.
Magento/woocommerce are 'own hosted' tools/platforms.
Both are ok to start with, but if you think you'll do good, be careful on the last ones. They might seem cheap at the beginning but they can eventually ruin your business.
When starting it's always wiser to start with a SaaS tool which has no upfront costs and allow you to download all your data (products, customers, orders) in case you want to move to another platform.
Starting with Magento or WooCommerce will force you to have a sys team or a web developer almost permanently doing server-packages updates and so, let alone security, performance and scalability issues.
I do not believe using an off-the-shelf SAAS alone will ever be enough for a successful ecommerce website.
If you want to have a successful ecommerce solution you will need at least a good web developer to keep your site up-to-date.
Moreover, there will be many opportunities such as integration with your back-end systems that an off-the-shelf SAAS might not be able to handle.
My advice is to find a good technical resource, even if it's just one web developer, and build your product together - invariably it's more about people than technology or platform.
A client asked us if it's possible to have the products on their website integrated with Sage Evolution so that when products are purchased online by users the stock values on Sage Evolution will be updated as well. The client would like this to be integrated with their existing WordPress site.
From what I've found so far, I don't think there's anything already available to use with WordPress except the SagePay through WooCommerce plugin. I'm not quite sure if this connects to a Sage client and updates the stock as well.
I found a Sage Evolution SDK that can be used but I doubt the client would buy with that kind of fees. There's also the SData api which I found here: Integrating with Sage Financial Software.
I'm not sure if you can use SData with Sage Evolution.
I would appreciate any help on this, thank in advance :)
As you've already noted, Sage Evolution has its own SDK and does not use the SData standard. Developers need to purchase a developer license and end-customers need to purchase a customer license.
I'd strongly recommend you don't go straight to the database as direct db writes could compromise transactional integrity and the Evolution database tends to change structurally quite frequently.
To use the SDK, you can't avoid the customer license fee but you can get a head start and avoid coding the integration by hand with Flowgear (www.flowgear.net). The Community plan is free and supports low transactional volumes. More about the connector at http://www.flowgear.net/pre-built/sage-evolution and https://developers.flowgear.net/kb/Node:Sage_Evolution
Disclosure: I work at Flowgear.
Not sure how to ask this question since I know very little about CRM software, but assume the following:
Joe has a website that offers a service related to customers of various businesses
Joe wants to approach companies and convince them to add hooks into their CRM software, so that every time they view an entry for a customer, there is one additional field, which points to information on Joe's website and is related to that customer.
As I understand it, most/all CRM systems have a way to add a new field for each entry in the database. However, for Joe to make it easier for companies to accept his proposal, can he prepare an add-on/script/plugin/etc so that every company with CRM software of a given brand can just run it and the new field gets added, so that Joe doesn't have to work with every company's individual CRM Software installation and tailor his solution to that? (Basically one add-on for companies who use SAP, one add-on for companies which use Oracle, etc)
Or is each company's CRM installation so customized that it is almost impossible to make a generic add-on/script/plugin/etc for all companies who use CRM of a given brand?
Unfortunately, there is no standard. This is one reason why it's a good idea to stick to popular CRMs such as Salesforce and SugarCRM. Both have a large selection of add-ons through AppExchange and SugarExchange respectively.
Most modern CRM solutions is based on an SOA approach. Each CRM platform is design to support independent vendor solutions like this. Each CRM uses a different deployment approach and different software development languages. Depending on the language you know, that may help direct you to the first CRM product.
I hope I understand your question correctly, you want any system to be able to link in to yours and retrieve a link so that people can pull data from your system via the link. If that is the case the best way is to create a Webservice, any CRM program should be able to call the Webservice and get the required data.
I need an opinion and advise from experienced ASP.NET people, what way to go.
Assuming that a developer has some practical background with HTML/JavaScript/PHP on one side and some .NET/C#/WPF experience on the other side. No previous hands on experience with ASP.NET - only theory and some read books on the topic.
The task is to build ASP.NET web site with User Managment functionality (user authentication, user account, user buying history, user points and so on) and E-commerce functionality with shopping cart, checkout and all needed for this.
Is it worth, i.e. will it be faster, more reliable and secure in the result to use a ASP.NET CMS system (for example Sitefinity from Telerik as declared developer friendly) to build such first site? In what case the learning curve will be more steep and it will take more time to achieve similar results?
Notes to take into consideration: 1) Price of the CMS matters not very much 2) E-commerce module should be written from scratch in any case (and integrated in case of using CMS) due to very specific requirements
It will be much faster to get an existing system. If you're going to have a shopping cart, then I would suggest you not even consider writing it yourself if this is your first foray into ASP.NET. The security and PCI Requirements alone will take you forever.
We recently got a new shopping cart for our web site and decided to purchase, and we're an experienced team. Our company used the AspDotNetStorefront, and we're pretty happy with it. You can use it for content management as well, and the price is good, but there are plenty of good alternatives out there.
How would I programmatically connect to an existing back-end system of a restaurant using say Micros POS, with a web app built with .Net and C#. Thanks.
Update: Sorry for the ambiguity but I'd like to set up an online ordering system that takes users' orders and forward to a restaurant's back-end system to be processed and printed in the kitchen for cooks to see.
There is no particular reason for choosing .Net other than the fact I'm most familiar with it. I'm open to other options.
In general I'm looking for information regarding the feasibility of this and how to go about it programmatically. How would my app send orders to the kitchen's printers? Do restaurant back-end systems allow for a .Net (or any other) app communicate with it? Do they provide an API?
I currently work at an ISV that does basically this with another one of the big 3 point of sale systems.
First and foremost, get the Micros environment up in a VM.
Next, most of these back office systems are running either Windows 2000 or Windows XP (depending on the age of the system), so be really careful about the version of .Net you choose.
Now, as far as architecture goes, run a service on the back office that communicates regularly with a centralized web service (the website that customers order on), once an order is made available, from there you can then insert it into <insert pos type here>.
You will also find in most instances, especially with Micros being the largest Point of Sale on the market for restaurants, they will not be very helpful with documentation and helping you out with integrating into their software.
Also, I think that My Micros (their enterprise application) already supports this type of functionality.
Another opinion, get into FSTech this year and browse all the competition, there are tons for online ordering just so you can get familiar with the competitions feature sets.
What you need to know is define what you want to do with the POS before a choice of technology, if all you want to do is show some data/reports from the POS system's work, you would need to connect to whatever back-end database the POS devices feed into.
If you need to do something else, you need to look for whatever relevant documentation.
It would help you more to ask a more specific question.
I would probably start by determining if Micros POS has an API. If they do, are the systems at individual restaurants even connected to the net? Try chatting up the manager at a place that uses one of these systems, or just check the documentation on their website.