Kassel, 02/10/2024 – plentysystems AG, a leading provider of e-commerce ERP and multichannel solutions, is further expanding its position in the e-commerce sector with the Channel Layer technology developed for the integration of marketplaces: Brands and retailers now manage their marketplace business even faster and more efficiently with the Channel Layer.
Channel Layer as an intelligent solution for complex marketplace integrations
With the Channel Layer, plentysystems once again sets standards in e-commerce and offers a future-proof solution for growth in the international marketplace business: The intelligent interface technology connects plentysystems with third-party platforms and significantly streamlines the integration of marketplaces. This is because the Channel Layer standardizes and optimizes complex system and database processes. To achieve this, plentysystems relies on an advanced microservice architecture that minimizes the effort involved in developing and maintaining new connections.
Until now, users have been confronted with complex, platform-specific interfaces and individual processes in order processing. With the Channel Layer, brands and retailers overcome these challenges once and for all thanks to standardized operations.
“Our goal is to become the European market leader in the e-commerce ERP sector over the next few years,” emphasizes Jan Griesel, founder and CEO of plentysystems AG. “With the Channel Layer, we have taken a decisive step towards the joint success of plentysystems and its retailers in a challenging market environment.”
Scalable technology creates new perspectives
As the new standard, the Channel Layer replaces the entire previous landscape of integrations, consisting of individual marketplace-specific solutions and plugins. As a result, the underlying technology significantly accelerates development times: users of the software can look forward to a growing portfolio of marketplace integrations. The resulting streamlined processes also ensure reduced maintenance efforts and enable the integrations to be equipped with the latest functions even faster in future. At the same time, the Channel Layer improves data transfer rates by applying partial updates. This ensures significantly more efficient communication between the platforms.
“With our new technology offering, we are making it easier than ever to set up sales channels. This allows us to continue to fulfill our goal: To remain a reliable partner for our customers in order to grow successfully in economically highly competitive markets,” explains Aye Stephen, Chief Product Officer at plentysystems AG.
Resilient functions in the marketplace business
Thanks to an advanced architecture, the Channel Layer also reduces unwanted dependencies on other parts of the plentysystems platform. From now on, cloud-based microservices will take over tasks such as item data preparation, order processing and the management of account information separately. By decoupling from the core environment, runtime errors can be resolved quickly and isolated without affecting the rest of the system. The result: increased stability and maximum uptime.
Communication between the channel layer and external marketplaces is carried out by a channel app, which is developed individually for each platform. This integration module ensures the creation and updating of offers as well as the transfer of order, shipping and returns data.
Centralized administration and maximum efficiency
In addition to technological advantages, users benefit from new user interfaces for their marketplace operations. The revised account overview in the “Sales channels” area serves as a central point of access. This is where users can tap into new marketplaces and manage existing connections.
The listing overview also shows all items on offer at a glance. It simplifies the creation of new listings and significantly speeds up troubleshooting. “With the Channel Layer, we are creating a completely new level of efficiency for our customers to successfully open up new markets and optimize their offers,” says Stephen.
Outlook: Channel Layer already in roll-out
plentysystems is currently developing the Channel Layer into the new standard technology, which is continuously being enhanced with features that enable users to operate multichannel strategies efficiently in the long term.
The first marketplaces based on the Channel Layer technology are already in beta phase - including Cdiscount and OBI. The new user interfaces and the optimized listing technology will soon be available to all users. plentysystems is gradually migrating existing integrations to the new standard technology, starting with the important interfaces to Amazon, Zalando and Kaufland.