1. Point of sale is our Website.
2. Customers use their emails for their online accounts and I hope we can all agree that email addresses are the norm for creating unique accounts online.
3. Adagio uses a 6 character field to identify the customer.
4. We are constantly having to manage the relationships of the online account (email address) to the customer number in Adagio.

Is there a way for Adagio to allow the email address to serve as the customer number? Meaning the email address is the unique or “key identifier” for the customer.

How are others navigating this obstacle?

It would seem attractive to online retailers needing a solution like Adagio to use the email as the key identifier.

Any and all help is appreciated.

Hi Clay,

No, Adagio does not allow an email address to be the customer number. Nor is there a requirement that the email address be unique for each customer. There are scenarios where multiple customer records (say branches) might have the same contact email, in the off-line world.

A data structure change would be required to add an additional index by email address to the customer file in order to be able to search for a customer by email address. And additional R&D would need to be done to accommodate this, which I will leave for others to comment on. There had been some prior discussion about this topic among consultants and Softrak last week.

Thanks for the swift response. I hope I was the catalyst for the dialogue between Consultant and Softrak.

Instead of a data structure change, if the customer number had room for 40-50 characters, that would allow unique emails to be used at that point. From there, a conversion can take place from the 6 digit numbers to the email address.

Im sure that Im oversimplifying it, however, I do find this request to be of benefit to both Softrack and my company. I better include that it could benefit many online retailers too!

Hi Clay,

Well, expanding the customer number to 40-50 characters would be a structure change, and would require re-designing every report and screen that displays the customer code.

I don't think we'd ever insist that an email address be unique to a customer for the reasons mentioned by Support. However, we did offer to customize Adagio to enforce this to your consultant. He was going to discuss this customization with you and get back to us.

There are also solutions available from Adagio 3rd Party Developers North49, Dakota and Link2 Systems to improve integration with external web sites. North49 offers a fully integrated web solution, allowing customers to pay their accounts and see the status of their outstanding orders. Link2 has a module that automatically maps email addresses to Customer Codes and changes orders that have been imported. Dakota has a fully integrated iOS mobile solution for remote order entry.

Depending on the number of new clients arriving each day, we also suggested taking a field in the Customer record on the web site and adding the Adagio Customer code there for use in the order export.

There are a lot of different ways that companies use the web for ordering, paying for and fulfilling orders. Some leave everything up to Amazon, others just take orders and merge those into orders being submitted through other means. Some use Magento. Others use Shopify. Others have had something custom created. Almost all Adagio sites have multiple ways of getting orders into OrderEntry. Some take orders over the phone. Others receive emails. Some still receive faxes!

This is an integration problem that needs to be clarified and discussed with your Adagio Consultant to determine the best way to proceed.

Appreciate the response and my consultant did relay the options to me. My purpose of posting was in hopes to hear from other users that are in my similar position to better understand how they navigate the obstacle. I will further investigate these options and hope I can talk to other online retailers at AOC to better understand how they work with Adagio.

Hi Clay,

I guess it would help if we understood what information you were trying to get into Adagio and through Adagio. I don't see how making the email address a key helps you out. Are you importing Orders? Invoices? Shipments? Payments?

What is your web store sending you, and in what format?

Hi Andrew

If you want to know, give me a call.

However, I don't think you need to know. The issue is quite simple. They would like to import orders/payments into Adagio OrderEntry using the email address to determine who the customer is, or if the customer needs to be added.

Steve

Hi Steve,

According to Lauren Stief, Link2 Systems already has a solution that does exactly that. However, they have not yet updated it to be compatible with OE 9.3.

This has to be a two stage process because Import Orders insists that the customer already exist in Receivables. What is the OrderEntry import to do with those orders for non-existent emails?

Hello Clay,

Lenmax Software Solutions is about to complete the new development of the importer/mapper utility that will allow user/installer to map ASCII, XML, MS Excel, EDI X12 files and ODBC data sources originated on web/ecommerce websites (like Shopify, PrestaShop, Magento, Woocommerce) and import into OrderEntry or SalesCQ in manual or automated modes. The utility will provision the logic and ability to create customer/prospect record for the new email(s) that cannot be found in AC or CQ

Let me know if you are interested
Thank you

Sorry , I meant AR

Hi,

Andrew is correct and we (Link2Systems) have installed versions of CustomerSwap, that allows a customer placing an order on any webstore, with or without payments, to be checked against an existing Adagio customer file to swap in the AR customer details from existing AR accounts into the web order customer details.

We check email addresses and customer phone Numbers and customer addresses, and various combinations of these, to make sure that we have the correct match. So yes, we have the solution that you appear to be looking for. In fact, our solution was designed precisely for the situation that you are describing, for sites that did not want to manage customer numbers on their webstore. .

Our larger sites would process say 3000-5000 orders a day with this CustomerSwap and web orders. It currently works with OE 9.2 and we are testing with OE 9.3 with AR 9.3. It will be soon operational with the latest OE release.

Please email Kyle@stiefgroup.com for more details or have your Adagio dealer contact us. There is not much to demo, as it simply works. Some of our larger sites using the solution would have in excess of 100,000 customers in Adagio Receivables, so this is definitely a scalable solution.

And given you are taking your orders by way of a web POS solution, we also have PaymentsOnOrders as an integrated Adagio software solution, affectionately known as POO.

This solution takes your payment from your webstore invoice and allows you to apply to an open order (in Adagio Order Entry) before the order is shipped and invoiced (in Adagio). And when the order is invoiced, the payment auto applies to the invoice and is paid. The Payment is then auto applied to the pending payment (in BankRec) so that all of that former manual tracking of the pending payments is eliminated.

What will we think of next?

Best,
Brian