Codeless Platforms has revealed that French Connection, a UK-based global retailer and wholesaler of fashion clothing, accessories and homeware, with over 200 stores worldwide, has successfully integrated its four Shopify Plus websites (French Connection UK, US and EU, and Great Plains) with its bespoke customer service and warehouse fulfilment solution, Options, using BPA Platform.
“Options has worked well for French Connection for many years, but the solution did not integrate with Shopify Plus. Options manages the management and fulfilment of orders received by our eCommerce sites and subsequently feeds into our ERP systems, so it was vital that our new sites were integrated into the same systems,” explained Vim Juneja, Global Head of IT, French Connection.
“Time was the greatest challenge. We had already committed to the Shopify Plus enterprise commerce platform, so we knew what the end goal was, but we also had business milestones which had to be hit. This meant that the websites and integration needed to be delivered in time for the busy Black Friday sales across the US, UK, and EU.”
“Replacing a successful, busy eCommerce site with a new technology like Shopify was always going to be complex. Doing it for four busy sites could easily have become a multi-year project. However, using BPA Platform enabled us to reduce this time and meet our deadlines.”
Working with its inhouse team, the Shopify Plus agency and developers of Options, French Connection’s chosen BPA Platform partner performed an analysis of each system and produced a detailed functional specification.
“We chose BPA Platform because it ticked all the boxes and allowed us to go ahead with our eCommerce launch as planned. Our BPA Platform partner then developed the tasks within BPA Platform to meet that specification and our business requirements,” revealed Vim Juneja.
BPA Platform is subsequently being used to:
- Retrieve new and updated orders from the Shopify Storefronts.
- Produce Options native XML messages and transfer these into the Options system.
- Manage the financial transactions associated with orders and ensure that payment is taken at the correct time.
- Manage the order risks and ensure that the relevant data is available within Options.
- Retrieve fulfilment information from Options and update the Shopify Storefront.
- Capture the authorised payment at the point that Options dispatches the order.
- Warn customer service and technical teams if there are issues with orders, enabling quick resolution of problems.
Take refund information from Options to enable funds to be returned to customers when goods are returned.
“The flexibility of the solution really highlighted the power of BPA Platform. The solution gives us the scope to continue to improve our business processes. We are already discussing the different ways we can further utilise BPA Platform in the future, including looking at replacing an existing event-driven automation and job scheduling tool; assisting with the implementation of delivery management software; Shopify POS implementation; and integrating with our IBM i system,” concluded Vim Juneja.
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