What is plentymarkets? An overview of the e-commerce ERP system

What is plentymarkets?

plentymarkets is an e-commerce ERP system for online retailers, brands and manufacturers who want to sell their products and services easily via many digital marketplaces and channels such as Amazon, OTTO, Kaufland, eBay or others. plentymarkets is a cloud ERP system and is therefore considered a SaaS (Software as a Service) product. This means that you do not need your own server or hosting environment if you want to use plentymarkets as an ERP system for your company. You simply open an account with plentymarkets and can start setting up and selling immediately.

plentymarkets is ideal for e-commerce companies of any type and industry: whether D2C, B2B or B2C, whether fashion, electronics, lifestyle or toys - with plentymarkets you can sell your products and services online.

plentymarkets was founded in 2006 by Jan Griesel in Kassel, who is still the CEO of plentysystems AG today (as of 2024). Initially, the focus was on developing software solutions for large eBay power sellers to make their online business more effective and scalable. Today, the plentymarkets software platform covers practically every area of online and offline business and offers its customers an enormous variety of solutions to link their brick-and-mortar business with their online business and to open up new marketplaces quickly and cost-effectively. 

In this article, we take a closer look at plentymarkets and examine all areas of the ERP system so that you get a good overview of the functions, advantages, challenges and prices of plentymarkets after reading it.

Advantages of plentymarkets

As a cloud ERP system, plentymarkets is very easy to integrate and users can log in from anywhere and start working in their familiar digital environment. It offers many functions that can help you to put your e-commerce business on a stable footing and set up scalable processes.

In addition, there is the wide variety of marketplace connections - so if you want your products to be found quickly and uniformly on various digital marketplaces, plentymarkets is certainly a good ERP solution for you.

plentymarkets also offers the necessary functions for all areas so that you can set it up as a single source of truth system. These include multichannel sales, automation, POS integration for brick-and-mortar stores and a variety of interfaces to third-party systems and other SaaS tools.

The most important functions of plentymarkets

plentymarkets allows you to manage your product data, customer data, order information and much more in a central interface and transfer it from there to various channels and platforms. As a cloud system, plentymarkets has a very low barrier to entry and you can get an overview and feel for plentymarkets at any time with a 30-day free trial.

With over 70+ marketplaces & channels that you can connect with plentymarkets' own interfaces and plugins, the ERP system is one of the most widespread and comprehensive ERP solutions in German-speaking and European countries. 

Thanks to the connection to local marketplaces in countries such as Poland, France or the Netherlands, plentymarkets offers the perfect basis for easy expansion into other European markets without having to accept a substantial investment and long lead times.

Multi-channel sales

With plentymarkets, you can sell on all relevant marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and many more. The system enables centralized management of product data and inventories and now connects over 70 marketplaces via ready-made interfaces and plugins. 

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Here is a selection of marketplaces that you can easily connect to plentymarkets:

• Amazon
• eBay
• OTTO
• Department store
• Limango
• Galaxus
• About You
• Decathlon
• Hood
• Zalando
• OBI

There are many other marketplaces that you can connect to plentymarkets.

Channel Layer

plentymarkets is currently working on a new technology for marketplace integrations called Channel Layer. The aim of the plentymarkets Channel Layer is to standardize the connection to marketplaces and to create the possibility to connect more than 150 marketplaces worldwide to plentymarkets in a short time.

The new technological architecture allows plentymarkets to standardize the connection of channels, which drastically simplifies the development of new integrations, streamlines maintenance and increases performance. Here is an overview of the key benefits:

• Accelerated development of new integrations: The channel layer standardizes the exchange of data so that only the connector needs to be individually configured to meet market requirements. This drastically simplifies the development process for new sales channels.
• Quick adaptations thanks to new technological basis: The updated technological basis enables quick adaptation and implementation of new functions or improvements.
• Standardized integrations, later publicly accessible: By creating standardized and uniform development processes, it will be easier to manage and scale integrations, with the possibility of opening this technology to the partner ecosystem in the future.
• Solving the maintenance backlog: By introducing these standards and frameworks, the complexity of maintenance tasks is reduced, reducing the workload and enabling smoother and more efficient updates and fixes.

You can find more information about the plentymarkets Channel Layer in this showcase video from plentymarkets.

Merchandise management & warehouse management

plentymarkets offers a powerful inventory management system that allows you to centrally manage your stock levels, orders and supplier relationships. Inventory management takes place in real time, which is particularly important for high-volume retailers. 

With plentymarkets, you can set up multiple warehouses, including your own warehouse, third-party warehouses such as Amazon FBA, repair warehouses or dropshipping warehouses. The high level of flexibility allows you to customize your setup according to your wishes.

Via direct interfaces to fulfillment service providers (e.g. JTL Fulfilment Network), you can also easily connect your service providers where you store your products and have them ship them.

Store system

plentymarkets offers an integrated store solution that can be used as a standalone online store (plentyShop LTS). You can also create and manage your own content (e.g. blog or information pages) using the integrated CMS. In our opinion, the store system from plentymarkets is ideally suited for simple stores and B2B stores. For extensive and appealing store frontends, we recommend the combination of Shopify and plentymarkets - here you can enjoy the benefits of a very powerful and intuitive store system (Shopify) and an ERP powerhouse for your internal processes (plentymarkets).

Automation & workflows

plentymarkets is strongly designed for automation, which means that you can easily automate recurring tasks such as stock reconciliation or invoicing. This saves time and reduces the risk of errors.

plentymarkets offers several options for automation: event actions, actions and processes.

Event actions

With event actions, you can control automations in plentymarkets that are based on certain events. For example, you can set up that an order is automatically moved to a status after it has been successfully sent and an invoice is generated and sent to the customer by email.

The schema for event actions is always Trigger (event) -> Filter -> Action.

Actions

Actions differ from event actions in that they are time-controlled. You can therefore say that at a certain point in time, all orders with certain conditions (status, sales channel, dunning level) are processed with a certain action.

The actions are perfect for payment reminders if an order remains unpaid for a longer period of time, the mass switching of orders from one status to another, internal notifications in the event of errors and much more.

Processes

Similar to event actions and actions, processes help you to automate complex procedures in your plentymarkets system. The processes also allow you, for example, to print order documents or shipping labels automatically and to use user dialogs with various options depending on the process.

Processes are mainly used in the plentymarkets world for processing orders in the warehouse. Here you can set up complex pick & pack processes and much more.

If you have any questions about the automation of plentymarkets, we are at your disposal as a plentymarkets agency at any time. Feel free to contact us via our contact form.‍

CRM and customer management

The plentymarkets CRM module allows you to manage your customers, send newsletters and carry out targeted marketing campaigns. You can manage different customer classes, set individual prices, store discounts for customers and much more.

plentymarkets offers a GDPR-compliant solution that allows you to fully anonymize data records.

Individual plugins and extensions

Another great strength of plentymarkets is the ability to expand the system with individual plugins. This is particularly important when standard solutions are not sufficient for special requirements.

Via the in-house marketplace plentyMarketplace you will find a number of ready-made plugins that have been developed either by plentymarkets itself or by certified plentymarkets agencies such as apoio.

If there is no plugin for your individual requirements, it can be developed especially for you. The possibilities here are virtually limitless, as the plugins can be wonderfully connected to various interfaces and other tools. Here are a few examples of individual plugin use cases:

• BI Dashboard within the plentymarkets interface
• Connection of plentymarkets to a proprietary warehouse management system
• Extension of event actions for specific requirements
• Automatic data processing

Conclusion

plentymarkets is a very comprehensive cloud ERP system that is perfect for e-commerce in many cases. The high number of integrated marketplace connections makes expansion very easy - your products are live on various marketplaces and digital channels in no time at all.

The high level of customizability thanks to ready-made plug-in solutions, individually developed apps and an open interface is also impressive.

plentymarkets is particularly suitable for companies and retailers who offer their products on various marketplaces and require a high degree of automation for daily, repetitive processes. 

Want to know if plentymarkets is right for you? Let's talk about it - as a plentymarkets agency, we advise on all topics related to plentymarkets. Simply contact us via our contact form or ring through: +49 (0) 40 524 725 660 - we look forward to hearing from you!

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