Integration with Upstream and Downstream Systems

ShipOut system, as an essential link in the whole supply chain, business data, and information acquisition, requires us to integrate with some upstream and downstream platforms. The essence of integration is to allow customers to reduce unnecessary operations and unnecessary multi-platform logins.

The specific approach is to build a bridge between different systems and platforms. When business is received or generated upstream, the business data is pushed downstream to allow the downstream to complete its business processing.

Gone are the days of using standalone software. Using a siloed WMS forces employees to work harder and longer to complete tasks, putting people at risk of losing important information not placed by order or customer file and raising unnecessary hurdles; integration allows platforms to automate tasks, saving resources, time, and labor; and a seamless and fast experience.

The integration function of the ShipOut system gets product information and order data from upstream; synchronizes inventory data and inbound and outbound information with OMS, e-commerce platform, and shopping cart. And the integration with downstream is mainly to send shipping data to the downstream platform. After the customer purchases online and generates an order, the upstream system sends the order data information to OMS, which manages the order and commodity information in OMS and pushes it to the WMS system for order fulfillment; the results of inventory data changes triggered by processing such as receiving and shipping products in the warehouse are also returned to the upstream system, and the WMS sends the shipping data to the downstream system and gets the return results from the downstream system—forming a closed loop of the whole process.

The main types of systems that WMS integrates with upstream are the following：

Marketplace

E-commerce platform: mainly business-to-person e-commerce sales model. For example, Amazon, Shopify, and Taobao. The primary business model is to open a store on the e-commerce platform or develop their E-commerce Website. E-commerce sellers operate themselves and sell their products to customers. Some e-commerce platforms provide free logistics services. For example, Wayfair provides logistics labels. When we integrate with Wayfair, we need to get the tracking and label information of the orders from Wayfair in addition to the order information.

B2B e-commerce: The e-commerce sales model is between enterprises and other enterprises, such as Walmart, Target, HomeDepot, etc. These platforms can support both Suppliers and retailers. Still, generally, when we have this integration scenario, most warehouses or sellers exist as Suppliers for these selling platforms, which means that purchase orders will be placed by the platform to us. We transfer out in the form of large shipments out of the warehouse. These platforms often need to be integrated through EDI technology, and most of them are docked through third-party integration platforms like SPS Commerce or CommerceHub.

ERP

ERP is a multi-functional integrated system. Order management, inventory management, finance, listing tool, and other functions are supported. ERP order information is also obtained from Marketplace, e-commerce websites, and other platforms.

The current integration situation and the integration functions achieved

Our system currently supports the integration of OMS/ERP and e-commerce platforms, mainly for the following four functions.

• Get store order information for warehouse fulfillment and synchronize Tacking# to e-commerce stores.
• Synchronize warehouse inventory data to the e-commerce platform.
• Get the shipping information of the platform.
• Synchronize SKU information from the platform to ShipOut.

ShipOut’s integrated e-commerce platform and OMS/ERP (excluding the presentation of user-specific ERPs)

Different forms of integration

There are three forms of integration.

1. Our system integrates with platforms, usually large e-commerce platforms or large ERPs. E-commerce platforms and ERP have many customer groups and large order volumes; the platforms we have integrated in this way include Tongtu, YiCang, ShipStation, etc. The integration uses how we monitor and pull orders, repeatedly refreshing synchronized information and data. The data integration is more stable, but the timeliness is not strong enough.
2. Platform to integrate with ShipOut, generally smaller platforms, separate development is not worth the cost, so you can provide API through our way and let the other party integrate us. This model can not be reflected in our integration store list because the other party achieves all the configurations. Some of the larger ERP platforms use this approach to integrate with us because our customers have more integration requirements. The platforms integrated this way include Horse Gang, Lead Star, Jack Plus, etc. This way, the timeliness is better than the push way, but the push’s success must be confirmed twice or thrice.
3. Integration through third-party platforms. Some platforms specialize in ERP or e-commerce platform integration. We can achieve integration through the integrated platform, saving integration development costs without integrating with each platform one by one, such as CartRover. CartRover is a web application that can be integrated with all popular e-commerce shopping carts today, allowing merchants to synchronize their online orders to their 3PL or warehouse order management system for order fulfillment. Teapplix is currently using this model for integration in our integrations.

Integration with downstream

Downstream integration is mainly to send logistics information data downstream. Merchants need to ship goods to buyers after selling. Integration of downstream primarily refers to logistics channels, including carriers and trucking services.

Carriers

Carriers are logistics service providers with network transportation capabilities and can provide express delivery services. Generally, we say logistics providers, mainly small parcel transport, such as UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, etc. (Although logistics providers also have trucking services, such as FedEx Freight and the like, because of its high price rarely need to integrate with these logistics providers demand).

Trucking services

Mainly with the integration of some trucking service companies, who have their fleet of trucks and can perform the execution of large quantities of goods within a specific area or nationwide area. Our system will use this service for large cargo outbound and transshipment business. Since the shipment volume is relatively large, the trucks will be divided into FTL (full truckload) and LTL (carpool freight). For LTL, consider how the capacity of the trucks can be grouped with other customers with similar address delivery requirements. Currently, our system does not have this integration for the time being because of the need for more information about the trucking companies themselves and the lack of nationwide carriers like UPS and FedEx.

Current integration status and integration functions

At present, our system supports integration with official logistics providers as well as third-party billing platforms, mainly for：

• Estimating logistics costs in advance.
• The ability to obtain or cancel logistics labels.
• Logistics tracking.
• Insurance, COD, signature, and battery support services.
• Address verification.

Our third-party channels are not expanded to customers by default; you need to apply them to customer service when you need to use them.

Different forms of integration

1.  The WMS is integrated directly with the official logistics platform. Usually, we integrate with carriers. We have integrated with UPS and FedEx in this way.
2. WMS integration with logistics accounts agents. We are not directly integrated with official logistics providers like Stamps and Easypost. This category will be reflected in the system similarly to the official logistics provider integration. We have integrated USPS, DHL Express, CANADA Post, UPS Canada, etc., this way.
3. Third-party platform: Integration is achieved through a third-party platform. Third-party billing platforms have price discounts. Discounts on additional fees or base rates are more obvious, but the disadvantage is that the service could be better. Informal third-party platforms have greater risk and are prone to the problem of complicated claims. At present, we mainly focus on integrating third-party platforms to achieve how the customer pays. We follow the other party’s interface requirements for integration. At one time, we also supported the model of providing a standard interface, allowing the third-party platform to develop the interface and us to integrate it. Still, we later found that the third party’s development capability was limited and could not guarantee the quality of the temporarily developed interface, so we terminated this integration.

Downstream integration, we call each other’s interfaces, mainly because playing a single is a business operation that needs to get results quickly. As the information provider to trigger is the most reasonable, we can soon get the results of playing a single.

Technical terms of integration

API

Currently, the mainstream interface technology is realized by using APIs. Large platforms and e-commerce companies have open APIs, and the integration is realized through the available API interface to obtain orders, goods, and other information. Under the circumstances, following the rules of API, specific functional interfaces can be called at any time to get the response data.

ShipOut currently supports API integration and provides Open API integration services.

1. Synchronize user products into our WMS system.
2. Push orders to the warehouse management system according to the user’s needs and monitor the order execution status.
3. Get the latest stock status of the user’s products in the warehouse.
4.  Change the number of products in the user’s warehouse through the inbound registration.
5. Get the billing of warehouse operations.
6.  Estimate the price of the functions to be performed by the user through the warehouse.

EDI

EDI is also a technical way of integration. Conceptually, EDI is similar to API, but the industry is currently accustomed to using a fixed standard data format called EDI integration. For example, both parties agree on a file in Excel format as the data source, the caller will pass this file to a specified location, and the receiver will get this file and parse it according to the agreed rules to obtain data and give feedback. Most platforms that support this integration mode need to be updated. This mode is more general but lacks sufficient verification and exception feedback and requires both parties to follow the interface specification more strictly.

Several special integration descriptions

Amazon-related integration

Amazon’s business is more affluent, so there are more business scenarios for integration, mainly the following.

1. Amazon sellers pull orders: This model is similar to other e-commerce platforms. When the buyer buys an order, we can get it from the Amazon platform and hand it over to the warehouse for executive transportation.
2. Amazon inbound order: mainly used by FBA customers, FBA sellers need to deliver to the Amazon warehouse into the warehouse. You must submit the inbound order in Seller Center and fill in product information, shipping methods, packing methods, etc. Our integration mainly informs this information to Amazon and helps customers to submit warehouse entry orders automatically.
3. Amazon hit single integration: This is an expansion mode of Amazon pull single, pull single at the same time to obtain the face sheet, the order, and the face sheet together with the warehouse to push the executive transport. This mode is similar to Wayfair and Walmart, as explained in the next section.

Wayfair/Walmart DS

Wayfair and Walmart DSV platforms can help sellers to provide free courier services. There are generally two ways.

The first way is that customers buy products to generate orders at the same time, the system directly generates logistics labels so that the warehouse to complete compliance; or, like the Amazon platform again, the seller then has orders to Amazon to buy logistics labels, by our system to get over the executive transport.

Another way is that the platform provides an account, the logistics label of the parcel is generated, and the logistics costs can be by a bill to a third party, the third party that the account provided by the platform. Because the warehouse is through their account to obtain the logistics label, the specific price is not available, so this way is not suitable for further markup. Walmart DSV supports this approach.