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One of ParityFactory’s core functions is secure, real-time communication of data with 3rd-party business management software systems, also known as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. ERPs are the most common type of software that businesses use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from their day-to-day business operations and processes. ParityFactory currently integrates with more than 10 different ERPs, including NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Sage100, Microsoft Great Plains and Microsoft Business Central. Integrations allow us to provide our customers with the full benefits of running their warehouse and inventory operations through the highly specialized ParityFactory software, as well as their preferred ERP for business accounting, reporting and planning. Integrations typically help ease the transition when onboarding a new client to the ParityFactory system because a portion of their day-to-day operations remains familiar to them and they can “seed” ParityFactory with their suite of products, customers and vendors automatically. Additionally, integrations open new functional doors by allowing data and information to pass between other systems that interface with ERPs, further expanding the functionality and value of ParityFactory.
Expanding functionality beyond the major ERP players
A majority (approximately 70%) of our new clients already have a preferred ERP in place, and we integrate with the most popular and common in the diverse industries we support. However, in some cases their preferred ERP remains either unsupported by the existing suite of ParityFactory integrations, or the ERP itself has limited ability to ingest and share data. For these situations, we’ve developed a new tool to allow ParityFactory to integrate with any business platform using CSV files. CSVs are the most common, easily generated, non-proprietary text file and the basic atomic unit of data exchange used by systems from Microsoft Excel to training the most complex Machine Learning algorithms in use today. They are ubiquitous across both software and business systems. This new tool provides potential and current ParityFactory customers a standardized method for importing and exporting data, making their preferred ERP’s ability to communicate data directly with our software irrelevant.
The CSV Uploader enormously expands the capabilities of ParityFactory, as it no longer matters what the original source of the data is: if it can be written to CSV in our designated format, ParityFactory can import the data and display and interact with it in our native applications. ParityFactory data can also be exported into a predefined CSV format for easy ingestion by any ERP, proprietary customer databases, or for our tech-savvy users, custom-built reporting based on the data in those files directly. Our goal in designing this tool was to lower the barrier to entry for using ParityFactory by making this process as standardized and simple to use as possible, and to support a broader range of use cases across our increasingly diverse customer base without the need for complex software setup and configuration.
Our new tool can also be useful even for customers already using the sophisticated ERPs like QuickBooks or NetSuite. One example is for initial data loads: when many products need to be imported into ParityFactory all at once. We have existing tools for this process that ParityFactory staff use to do this, however by utilizing the CSV Uploader import tool, this can be independently by our users with the click of a button. As we further expand the capabilities of this new tool, we hope to empower our customers even more to manage their own data as they see fit.
ParityFactory already has plans in motion to add more functionality to this tool to support an ever-growing user base and their individualized business processes and workflows. We strive to make our software as accessible and extensible as possible to ensure that we are providing a suite of tools that meet the requirements of all our customers, and CSV import and export support is one critical piece of that company-wide initiative. Accommodating our customers both large and small, with as many variations of ERPs/accounting systems as possible, is a core goal of our software engineering team, and we plan to continue expanding our tools as we onboard more customers in an ever more diverse set of business verticals around the world.
Do you think your business could benefit from ParityFactory’s suite of warehouse management tools? Have a question about the CSV Uploader or any of our products? Then reach out today and schedule a demo! You’ll get one-on-one time with our food industry experts, and learn exactly how ParityFactory can help you reach your production goals.
