I’ve spoken many times before about the power of integration and what it can bring to businesses. I’ve also whined about the inefficiencies caused by separate, integrated services – one of my own businesses is a good example of this pain – having to receive e-commerce orders, manually enter them into and accounting package, manually process the payment and manually update the e-commerce engine is annoying, inefficient and just plain dumb.
Hoping to help some of that angst is Carry The One, a UK startup formed only a couple of months ago that already has built connectors for a number of shopping carts including osCommerce, Zen Cart, Magento, CRE Loaded & Shopify. Carry The One links online store with accounting and bookkeeping software - so all orders are automatically imported in real time. The supported carts are integrated with a bunch of accounting/invoicing applications including Xero, KashFlow and FreshBooks with e-conomic soon to come.
Carry The One is priced at $20USD/GBP12 per month – a not insignificant sum but justified by Carry The One director Ed Saper for two reasons:
- Until now this shopping cart integration has been cost-prohibitive for many, as using developers to build a bespoke integration costs anywhere between £10,000 and £100,000
- The time savings alone to be found from an integrated solution greatly outweigh the cost of the product
A Carry The One beta customer, Pai Skincare, comments that:
Internet sales delivered strong growth for our business in 2009. This rapid increase in direct sales necessitated the hiring of new staff which was costly in itself. As orders grew, invoicing errors started to creep in which were an expensive aggravation. CTO has transformed our internet retail offering and enabled us to redeploy staff where they can really add value and drive growth.
The Carry The One setup looks pretty easy as the screencast below shows:
Carry The One are bullish about their offering, especially given that it’s the holiday season when some statistics show 60% of total annual turnover being generated – the ability to smooth and speed the back office process is of real benefit to businesses.
Cross posted @ CloudAve
Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergance of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users. 