3PLs rely on tried-and-true legacy technology, like file-based AS2/x12 or CSV/FTP setups. Meanwhile, Shopify uses REST/GraphQL. Unfortunately, this wasn’t purpose-built to analyze fulfillment data in the same way that other Customer Order Management Software (COMS) is.
Our advice? Keep leveraging Shopify for what it is best at: Being your online store and customer-facing system. Utilize ChannelApe for your single source of commerce operations needs.
Centralized data is key to growth because it ensures that all business decisions are made from the same set of trusted data points; what to purchase, when to launch new products, and how to improve customer relationships, to name a few. Consider that a McKinsey Global Institute survey of 500 executives found that a staggering 85% reported that they were only “somewhat effective” at managing and leveraging collected data. This comes at a huge cost—an average of $14 million a year, according to Gartner.
Thanks to a unified set of APIs for products, orders, fulfillments, suppliers, and channels (e.g., Shopify), you can connect just about anything—Product Information Management (PIM), Digital Asset Management (DAM), Warehouse Management System (WMS), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), among other critical in-house systems.
Operations teams can have full confidence in inventory availability. All while looking in one place.
With our RESTful API, you no longer need to manually maintain connections to dozens of platforms or learn a “new language” when adding something new to a workflow. Learn more about our commerce fulfillment APIs (and play around in a demo environment to test code) here.
ChannelApe’s 3PL Shopify integration in particular makes it easy to build out your customer-centric fulfillment network utilizing pre-configured 3PL partners (or even your own fulfillment locations). With the ability to sync data from multiple systems—any available-to-promise (ATP) adjustment in ChannelApe is sent to Shopify and any other storefronts instantly—operations teams can have full confidence in inventory availability. All while looking in one place.