Can OS Commerce do order processing, despatching etc.....
Dear All,
I understand that OSCommerce is great for Website Shopfronts, shopping carts etc. But what else can it do? Basically I am wanting to automate the complete fulfillment process from Order processing, Despatch/Picking , Stock Control and finally Accounts S/W integration. My other Sales Channels are Ebay and Telesales so there needs to be some form of integration.
Any ideas great received.
Sam
I understand that OSCommerce is great for Website Shopfronts, shopping carts etc. But what else can it do? Basically I am wanting to automate the complete fulfillment process from Order processing, Despatch/Picking , Stock Control and finally Accounts S/W integration. My other Sales Channels are Ebay and Telesales so there needs to be some form of integration.
Any ideas great received.
Sam
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There are some additional features in eBay selling manager pro, with regards to stocking etc this may also have a stock upload. not too sure has been about a year since i last used SMP.
Have you looked at all of the contributions that are available in oscommerce, if you cant find one the forum on there is amazing I always had responses in minutes on there.
Shane
Have you looked at all of the contributions that are available in oscommerce, if you cant find one the forum on there is amazing I always had responses in minutes on there.
Shane
ASKER
Yes I have posted on the OSC forum, and still waiting. Mind you it has only been an hour...... lets hope......
Thanks,
Sam
Thanks,
Sam
Hope you get an answer from that
Good luck
Shane
Good luck
Shane
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ASKER
Thanks, I like a bit of frank writing....... and yes I really appreciate the broad advice.
Yes, It is very true that you can extend some of these frameworks to do anything, but then that costs time. One would be better off buying a spot solution that solves your specific problem, and becuase these tend not to be bespoke they are better supported.
Any other views hugely welcome......
Sam
Yes, It is very true that you can extend some of these frameworks to do anything, but then that costs time. One would be better off buying a spot solution that solves your specific problem, and becuase these tend not to be bespoke they are better supported.
Any other views hugely welcome......
Sam
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ASKER
I have just had a discussion with someone more familiar with OS Commerce and I can see why it has problems with listings. As far as I understand the PHP code always generates the HTML dynamically. So of course indexing is going to be a problem. To solve this problem I suggested have some static home pages that can be search optimised which then link to OS Commerce pages.
It seems to me OS Commerce is a good option for certain problems.... Yes it does have its limitations. The important thing is to understand these and account for them. However it is cheap and your data sits in an acceptable MySQL database. The other options can cost anything upto £10K.
With regards to Ebay integration I found software such as AuctionBlox that seems to link Ebay data to OS Commerce which means that one can use the OS Commerce Database as the main repository.
Food for thought...
Sam
It seems to me OS Commerce is a good option for certain problems.... Yes it does have its limitations. The important thing is to understand these and account for them. However it is cheap and your data sits in an acceptable MySQL database. The other options can cost anything upto £10K.
With regards to Ebay integration I found software such as AuctionBlox that seems to link Ebay data to OS Commerce which means that one can use the OS Commerce Database as the main repository.
Food for thought...
Sam
yep that all sounds right. you really need the product pages to be static ones as they are the pages your want found!
you could go a little way by using mod-rewrite in php but i have seen little to show this actually works.
the good thing is that if you have time its open/s and you could write a process which takes the dynamic pages and generates static ones in vailded HTML or XHTML and uses good CSS etc this would help i lot!
i hope you get it sorted, all the best, good luck!
you could go a little way by using mod-rewrite in php but i have seen little to show this actually works.
the good thing is that if you have time its open/s and you could write a process which takes the dynamic pages and generates static ones in vailded HTML or XHTML and uses good CSS etc this would help i lot!
i hope you get it sorted, all the best, good luck!
ASKER
Thanks for all your advice. I have recently been advised about "Zen Cart" which apparently addresses some of the short comings of OSC particularly the search engine indexing and better use of CSS.
Sam
Sam
ASKER
Thanks for your quick reply. Can I provide a few more details:
My friend has 3 sales channels
a) Ebay/SellerPro/Paypal
b) OsCommerce/Protx
c) Telesales.
Currently they print off paper invoices from Ebay and OSCommercia (X2) and use these to coordinate picking and packing, retaining one copy for accounts which is currently "Typed" into Sage !! I believe he needs one command and control system to coordinate the "Fulfillment Workflow". To Date we have been reviewing specialist Mail Order software, but I suddenly thought that OS Commerce may be able to act as this "Fulfillment Workflow Engine". Obviously there needs to be a bidirectional link(???) between Ebay and OSCommerce to get the orders, and possibly to publish stock listings to Ebay from OSCommerce. What about Purchase Order processing for out of stock items etc.
Really appreciate your help, and thoughts,
Sam