Does anyone have experience with OE and the importing of orders from a 3rd party website? I have heard it referred to as virtual vendor (not sure if this is a process description or a product name). Looking at the possibility of expanding to sales team uploading orders to a website and then sales desk retrieving them into Adagio OE. Looking for any experience, comments, suggestions, etc. from anyone who has worked with this type of arrangement.

Thanks

There is a web store solution (product) called Virtual Vendor that integrates with Adagio.

I have a number of clients using Virtual Vendor (though not the offline sales part that you are intereted in for your sales team as this is a relatively new add-on).

Hi Gail

I like VV but I have only used it to integrate customer-driven websites to OE. I think it might be overkill as a tool for importing orders into Adagio from a sales team. But I might be wrong.

In any case, I would suggest talking to or emailing Dave Repchuck at 818.859.7210 - http://www.bravosw.com/adagio.htm . He has been doing this sort of stuff for 20+ years in the ACCPAC Plus and now Adagio world.

Steve

Steve, Thanks for your reply; The natural evolution for us would be to also provide this as a customer-driven tool. We are thinking at first roll out to sale team, work out issues and then roll out to customers. Can you provide me any feedback on your experience with the integration into OE, maintenance issues, pit-falls, etc.

Thanks

Hi Gail

I think others have more experience with VV than me but I can tell you that the company is a good one to work with - extremely knowledgeable, responsive and with alot of patience.

As for VV itself, the integration with Adagio could not be tighter. Quite a bit of planning has to go into the installation and the setup can be tedious because it may require restructuring badly organized categories (or other tables such as price lists) in Adagio inventory.

As for pitfalls, do not be in a rush - it takes at least three months to get comfortable. Also, your existing website will have to be cloned and hosted by VV in order for it to work - don't expect VV to work directly with your existing website. They do a very good job at cloning. And make sure you are clear on the ongoing maintenance fees, which while not large can add up over time.

Steve

Hi Gail,

I can answer any specific questions regarding Virtual-Vendor, the online store system that integrates with Adagio. We do have a new feature to enable off-line sales order entry, it then can upload sales to the web store to complete the order and get it to Adagio OE.

Doug Dickie and Steve Schwartz are experienced Adagio resources and are also familiar with Virtual-Vendor for their Adagio clients. You would work with your Adagio Dealer to assist with a Virtual-Vendor deployment.

I would need to know more about what you envision, with respect to your sales reps entering off-line sales orders. Let me know what you have in mind?

Best Regards,

Peter Odehnal

If you already have a web store, and all you need to do is to import orders that you receive on a web store, we have done this for one of our clients.

They have a web store and use an e-commerce solution called Cart-32 (which they started using well before they automated with Adagio).

The Cart-32 does not integrate directly with Adagio, but we created a routine with the following steps:
1. The user exports the orders received daily from Cart-32.

2. We capture the data in an Access database. We made this a menu-driven application, where the client reviews the orders before they are transferred to Adagio. (The user looks for obvious errors – wrong address or other missing info).

3. Finally, the user starts up Adagio O/E & imports the orders into O/E using the "File > Import > Orders" routine.

If this is your situation, I can put you in touch with the client and you can discuss the application.

Samuel

An automated and error-free way of importing sales orders from a web store into Adagio Order Entry is to ensure the web store scans Adagio AR, IC and OE to sync Items, Customers, AlternativePriceLists, Special Prices, Ship-to-Addresses, tax groups and tax definitions... so the SalesOrderImport file that's generated by the web store imports cleanly into Adagio OE.

If customer number, item code or any of the information breaks validations and tests performed by Adagio OE's Order Import, the results are difficult to deal with. A fully automated solution enables the business to focus on building sales. Simple retail web stores or comprehensive web catalogs and self-serve order entry solutions for wholesale distribution should be able to scale to process hundreds of web orders, without manual interventions.