Virtual Warehouse For CMS - Cant Get My Head Round It

[DSLiverpool]

Ok - CMS system manages your stock, does the ordering and loads up onto websites and 3rd party platforms - no problem, where I am struggling is when our suppliers have stock and offer feeds we have been told to use a virtual warehouse and our CMS looks to that to see what it can list as "in stock" updating several times a day from supplier feeds. Assuming that's correct where do you get the software to feed the virtual warehouse as Brightpearl are fking useless and we seem to be trailblazing for them.

Any help really appreciated

nb our Brightpearl issue was solved by us not them - they couldn't help and its a generic issue

[maffski]

I suspect the chances of there being an existing Brightpearl app that can understand your suppliers feeds is fairly low.

So you're probably looking at getting something written, most supplier feeds are just XML documents are spreadsheets. I don't know what suppliers you use but I'm sure when we did Nimans integration it was a CSV speadsheet - but this was years ago.

I'd probably start by checking with your suppliers what data feeds they offer and getting some examples from them.

[DSLiverpool]

maffski said:

I suspect the chances of there being an existing Brightpearl app that can understand your suppliers feeds is fairly low.

So you're probably looking at getting something written, most supplier feeds are just XML documents are spreadsheets. I don't know what suppliers you use but I'm sure when we did Nimans integration it was a CSV speadsheet - but this was years ago.

I'd probably start by checking with your suppliers what data feeds they offer and getting some examples from them.

Logical Ta - will see if they can go through a "rosetta stone" so they all arrive the VW in the same format - amazing lack of support for this problem.

[maffski]

DSLiverpool said:

Logical Ta - will see if they can go through a "rosetta stone" so they all arrive the VW in the same format - amazing lack of support for this problem.

Trouble is the few attempts at producing a standard for this stuff have all been aimed at large scale manufacturing and retail, and they're just so complex it's useless for any more normal sized businesses.

I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a big thing in the next few years - getting a useable product, stock and order exchange between smaller scale suppliers and retails would be a massive efficiency improvement.

The Brightpearl API looks clean enough so it shouldn't be too much of a mess for someone to produce an integration to your suppliers.

[DSLiverpool]

If this helps anyone arriving here from a google search the fall down issue with Brightpearl was it couldn't handle mass bundles being uploaded, it fell over constantly or went nuts. The answer is to use the thing and map bundles to brightpearl as they sell which is a ballache for the first month but as you sell you reduce the amount needing to be done.