The Hidden Costs of a Disconnected eCommerce Experience
August 27, 2026
By: Tiffany Hindman
Summary: Is your eCommerce operation creating more work than it should? If your team relies on manual data entry, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems, connecting your eCommerce platform and ERP can simplify the process.
Is your eCommerce operation working harder than it needs to?
For many businesses, the biggest operational problems aren't caused by one massive issue. They're caused by dozens of small tasks that happen every day.
Someone enters an order manually. Someone checks inventory in another system. Someone emails a customer about pricing. Someone updates product information. Someone copies data from one system into another.
Individually, these tasks seem harmless.
Together, they can become a very expensive way to run an eCommerce business.
A disconnected eCommerce operation can affect your employees, your customers, and your ability to grow. The good news is that many of these problems can be addressed by connecting your eCommerce platform with the systems your business already relies on.
Your Team Is Spending Too Much Time Moving Information Around
One of the clearest signs of an inefficient eCommerce operation is simple.
Your employees are copying and pasting a lot. Orders come through the website and need to be entered somewhere else. Customer information has to be transferred. Product details are maintained in multiple systems. Inventory gets checked manually.
The work gets done, but it takes time. And every time information is manually entered, there's another opportunity for something to go wrong. Your employees should be using your systems to get work done. They shouldn't be spending their day acting as the connection between them.
- Your website and your other systems
- Customer records
- Product details maintained in multiple places
- Inventory checks
Customers Are Contacting Your Team for Information They Could Potentially Access Online
Your customer service team is there to help customers.
But there is a difference between helping someone solve a problem and answering the same basic questions all day. If customers regularly contact your team to find out about an order, check product availability, confirm pricing, or reorder something they've purchased before, your website may not be giving them enough information.
A better eCommerce experience can put more of that information directly in front of the customer. That means fewer interruptions for your team and fewer hoops for your customers.
- Find out about an order
- Check product availability
- Confirm pricing
- Reorder something they've purchased before
Your ERP and eCommerce Platform May Have Different Versions of the Truth
Here's a fun game nobody wants to play. Which system is correct?
If your eCommerce platform says one thing and your ERP says another, your employees are left figuring out which information they should trust.
When important business information lives in disconnected systems, keeping everything aligned becomes a constant chore. Connecting your systems helps establish a more consistent flow of information throughout the business.
- Product information
- Customer records
- Pricing
- Inventory
- Orders
- Shipping information
Small Errors Turn Into Big Problems
A typo in a product number might seem insignificant. Until the wrong product gets ordered.
A pricing mistake might seem minor. Until it happens across hundreds of orders. An incorrect inventory number might not seem like a crisis. Until a customer orders something you don't actually have.
Manual processes create opportunities for mistakes at every step. Reducing unnecessary data entry can help reduce those opportunities too.
- The wrong product getting ordered
- Pricing errors across hundreds of orders
- Customers ordering products you don't have
Your Sales Team Is Doing Work That Technology Could Handle
Your sales team should be focused on customers, relationships, and revenue.
Instead, they may be spending time looking up orders, checking pricing, finding product information, or entering routine purchases. Technology shouldn't replace the relationship your sales team has with customers. It should remove some of the repetitive work surrounding that relationship.
When customers can handle routine purchases themselves, salespeople can spend more time on the conversations that actually benefit from their expertise.
- Looking up orders
- Checking pricing
- Finding product information
- Entering routine purchases
Your Customers Can't Easily Reorder
For many B2B businesses, repeat purchases make up a significant portion of online sales.
So why make customers start from scratch every time? If someone regularly purchases the same products, they should have an easy way to find those products again.
Order history, saved products, frequently purchased items, and reorder functionality can turn a tedious process into a much simpler one. The easier you make repeat purchases, the less reason customers have to pick up the phone.
- Order history
- Saved products
- Frequently purchased items
- Reorder functionality
Your Business Is Growing, but Your Processes Aren't
Manual processes can be manageable when order volume is low.
The problem comes when the business starts growing. Ten manual orders might be fine. One hundred is a different story. One thousand is a very different story.
If increasing sales requires adding more people just to handle administrative tasks, your processes may not be scaling with your business. The goal of automation isn't simply to process more orders. It's to allow your business to handle more business without creating the same amount of additional manual work.
- Ten manual orders
- One hundred manual orders
- One thousand manual orders
You're Building Spreadsheets to Fix Your Systems
Spreadsheets aren't the enemy. Sometimes they're incredibly useful.
But if your employees need spreadsheets to keep track of information that should already exist in your business systems, that's worth investigating.
At some point, the spreadsheet stops being a helpful tool and starts becoming another system your business has to maintain.
- Track inventory
- Track customer pricing
- Track orders
- Fill in for information nobody could locate
Your Website Doesn't Reflect How Your Business Actually Operates
Your eCommerce website is the front door to your digital business. But what happens after a customer clicks "Place Order"?
If the answer involves several people, several systems, and several manual steps, the customer experience is only part of the story. A successful eCommerce operation needs to consider what happens behind the website too.
The customer may only see the website. Your business sees everything behind it. Both sides matter.
- The order needs to move through the right processes
- Customer information needs to be available where it's needed
- Inventory needs to be accounted for
- Your team needs the information required to fulfill it
Adding More Orders Means Adding More Headaches
This is perhaps the biggest question to ask. If your online sales doubled next year, could your current processes support that growth efficiently?
If your immediate reaction is, "We'd need to hire more people," that's a sign worth paying attention to.
Growth should be exciting. It shouldn't make everyone wonder who is going to manually enter all those additional orders. A well-designed eCommerce operation can help your business absorb growth without adding the same amount of administrative work.
- Could we handle double the order volume today?
- Would we need to hire just to keep up?
- Are our processes built to scale?
The Goal Isn't More Technology
It can be tempting to assume that every operational problem requires another piece of software. Usually, that's not the answer.
The better question is: how can we make the systems we already use work better together?
Your eCommerce platform, ERP, and other business systems each have a job to do. When they are properly connected, information can move where it needs to go without requiring an employee to manually move it every time.
Automation Should Make Your Business Feel Simpler
The best technology isn't necessarily the technology your employees notice. It's the technology that quietly removes unnecessary work.
Customers place an order. The right information moves where it needs to go. Inventory is updated. Your team gets the information they need. The customer gets their order. Nobody has to build a spreadsheet to make it happen.
That's the goal.
At Strabo Partners, we help businesses connect their eCommerce platforms with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and other business systems to simplify the processes happening behind the customer experience. Our fixed-fee implementation approach also gives businesses a clearly defined project scope and cost before development begins.
Because your eCommerce operation shouldn't require more people just to keep up with the work your technology was supposed to make easier.
Simplify. Automate. Grow.