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10-step guide to launching ecommerce for manufacturers

Achieving online success as a manufacturer can seem very difficult. Manufacturing and ecommerce often feel like worlds apart, making it hard to combine them in one company. However, I had the chance to develop an architecture to do just that, and I want to share the steps I took.

It does take some time and investment. But by keeping company processes simple and using Odoo, it becomes quite doable. In this article, I will outline 10 steps for manufacturers to become an online sales powerhouse.

Step 1: Install and configure Odoo basics

Let’s start with the very beginning. Buy a subscription at odoo.com/web/login. You need the most expensive one. The good thing is it will only cost you around EUR 40 a month for the first user and the hosting package included.

Choose languages, fill in your company details such as name, address, contact information, and logo. By default there will be 1 user, the admin. You might configure other users and roles.

Choose an industry which suits your company best. Based on this a predefined set of apps and some data are prefilled to give you a quickstart. As you probably choose the Manufacturing industry you also need to install the Website and ecommerce apps

And oh, why Odoo is your best option? Bas Koenen: Maybe refer to another article here.
It’s flexible, the user interface is very simple and easy to learn. Forget about SAP S/4Hana Oracle/Netsuit or Microsoft/Dynamics-365. Odoo has the same or better capacities. It’s easier and it has the largest community by far.

Do you think your manufacturing company is unique and it requires a software solution built for your industry. Yes, your company is unique, but please avoid the mistake a lot of companies make in your industry: Choose an industry solution and get vendor locked. Your company development becomes totally dependent on this vendor. New out of the box developments are not in your influence and for customisations they can charge whatever they want because you are hooked on them. The longer the software vendor exists the larger this problem becomes. It's a death row.

Better choose an ERP. If not Odoo, then any other and own your customisations and avoid a vendor lockin.

Step 2: Get ready for the first sale

So now you are ready to configure Odoo for your company. It starts with the product configuration. Any product can be configured, it offers a wide config variety. The question is not if it's possible with Odoo, the question is how to configure it. At first you might think you create new custom fields at product level. Please don't. The only approach is to create new attributes that meet your product needs. If you might think otherwise, please investigate further or hire a specialist. It saves you future iterations around step 7.

To get ready for the first sale you also need to configure the Sales app. Choose the desired options for invoicing and discounts. Set email and quotation templates to your needs. Configure the Outgoing and Incoming mail server. If you like clients to be able to pay online you can configure a payment provider. You might also need to configure shipping options. There are apps available  for the major parcel companies.

For every need there is documentation available and AI can be your best friend to find answers. Thanks to the huge community there is tons of information available on the web.

Step 3: Let’s store and manufacture products

When a sales order is confirmed it creates a demand in inventory. If the inventory is insufficient it creates a demand in manufacturing. This simple logic can be helpful to configure the inventory app. The inventory app does nothing but move inventory. How it is moved can be configured by routes. Routes can be enabled on products so you have maximum flexibility.

Before you can start moving products, you might also have to configure one or multiple warehouses, locations, lot's or serial numbers, barcodes and reordering rules. You can anything. The most advanced warehouse management is possible.

Simultaneously we can configure Manufacturing. The manufacturing app has a wide variety of possibilities. It's very much dependent on the plant and products.

In general you can say there are component products and there are sellable products. In between there is manufacturing. To manufacture something you need a recipe which is called a Bill Of Material (BOM) per sellable product. The BOM tells which components are used and which working steps have to be completed. Also a working step or work center can be defined.

Also routings, (external) subcontracting can be defined. You can also choose the Make to order option. By choosing you have more freedom in the manufacturing process. Last but not least you can add quality control in the process

Step 4: Don’t forget about the books

The financial administration is the heart of every company. Together with the Sales and Purchase app the Accounting app makes your life a bit easier. Invoices are created automatically for sales. You can define when the invoice will be created. Upfront, partially upfront or when the product is ready.

You might also register payments, abbreviations, and different (foreign) companies. Also payrolling can be configured in many countries. Together with other apps, the Odoo accounting app is very powerful. It simply saves loads of time and avoids mistakes. 

Step 5: Start ecommerce website V1

When you look back after 10 years you will probably notice the most configuration was made on your website. The webshop has to fit your customer needs perfectly well, your product is unique as well as your clients needs. As this part of your infrastructure is most configured, it also needs the largest investment.

Each customer compares your website with the best experience they ever had on any webshop. So the user experience (UX) on your website has to compete with the very best and largest webshops out there, B2C webshops included. Any small misunderstanding by your customers results in your customers wandering at your website. The missed revenue can be huge.

Although this seems very obvious at first hand, most CEOs focus on optimizing processes rather than optimizing the frontend. This is what always created success in the past. As you want to become an Ecommerce powerhouse the rules are a bit different. Previously salespeople created the link between products and the customer needs.

When online becomes your most used sales channel, your website is most important. The company identity in the minds of customers is created online primarily. B2B customers are no exception. The website function changes from beijing like a business card card only to a place where people find your catalog and investigate products.

An important and hard to change decision is which frontend you choose. By default Odoo offers a complete website solution. Odoo itself has a very nice built-in frontend. The What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor is easy to use and it seems you can do anything with it.

If Ecommerce is intensive (100K+ revenue or 400+ orders per month) I recommend to build a frontend shelf around Odoo, a so-called Frontend solution. The front is a frontend only. It serves web pages to clients. All business logic like the database and queries are in Odoo. It's beneficial because it makes the website customisable.

If you choose this robuust and yet flexible solution now you can save investments in the long term. Rebuilding a website is a costly thing. Not only in terms of direct investment, also in lost revenue. It takes time before a website operates really well.

Step 6: Improve client communication with CRM

The CRM system can become beneficial for sales. Before it's beneficial it can be a painpoint for salesmen who are used to another workflow.

To introduce CRM you don't need much configuration. You do need to introduce it well to salesmen. It's good to make them part of the the introduction but in the end decisions have to be made and customisations have to be avoided at all costs.

Change is never easy for people but is necessary to develop the organisation. Remember that all customisations on top of the Odoo codebase works like a heavy block on your legs. It's there forever.

When people are familiar with Odoo CRM the fun part starts. You can automate things using Automated actions and the Alias function. You can do whatever you imagined.

Step 7: Redesign Odoo customisations and improve website

Along the way you’ll notice you made mistakes in the past. You build too many customisations. New insights let you see you took the wrong path.

This is inevitable, it happens at all organisations who integrate an ERP system. So take the loss and clean up as you don't want rubbish in the core of your organization.

Although a custom made website will need less core cleanup as it is custom designed for your clients you will also have new insights and you do want them as the website is your new gateway for new and existing clients. Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity can be your best friends here.

You might also notice the workfield from your employees differs more and more. Marketing people are totally different from manufacturing people. It's important to notice the change and manage it accordingly.

Step 8: Start advertising

Now that your website works well you can start advertising. In general in 2024 it means you start with Google Ads, Meta ads, LinkedIn advertising, TikTok, etc. 

If this field is new for your organization it's best to hire external professionals for it because it requires specific knowledge. Maybe you even need to hire separate externals per advertising platform. Although maybe hard to find, professionals who know your clients a bit are the best fit is my experience.

For Google and Meta advertising a xml feed containing product information can thrive advertising. Enrich the xml with every piece of information you have. It's worth the investment. The algorithms for the tech giants like to be loaded with information and pictures.

You might also organize client events workshops, etc. For this the Odoo event app can be helpful.

Step 9: Setup landing pages, marketing automation

By this time you will see the first real results. Yes it takes a very long time and patience, loads of patience. But hey, the results are there, and it is sweet. You created the beginning of a marketing machine with continuous growth. It's very hard for competitors to come on par.

The marketing agencies hired at step 7 will ask you to get the highest website conversion possible. They will ask you to optimize the website with details you didn't know existed. You have difficulties understanding them as this is new for you.

They will even ask to create landing pages on your website where traffic can land acquired from advertising. You need to create a landing page for every campaign they create.  Although it seems ridiculous to you, please listen carefully to what they are saying. They have experience in acquiring leads.

So please start creating landing pages. a landing page contains a form where potential customers fill in some contact information.

This is where Odoo Automated actions or Marketing automation becomes very valuable. Based on specific conditions you automate anything. Create a lead or opportunity, send a mail/whatsapp message now or after some time, send reminders to salespeople, etc.

Step 10: Continuous improve, measure and grow

You come to a new era. The effect of the investment is proven and the sky looks bright. However the investment in digitalisation hasn't fully paid back. The investment was huge and also today the costs are higher than before you started this adventure. However the revenue and profit are higher.

The profit is higher because of higher margins. The reason can be because of advertising you can cherry pick the products you like to sell. As you choose the most profitable ones the profit climbs. The profit can also benefit from sales directly to consumers (B2C). Because the automation is maximized you can handle large orders amounts. Although the average order amount is lower, you are able to handle it with a minimum of time per order and yet profitably.

To continue the growth, you need to be very alert. Keep up the good things, automate, enable new possibilities and more. Measuring processes and website conversion becomes more important than ever. You are ahead of your competitors. But also don't stand still. You have to improve. But as the company is growing you are in a good vibe. Congratulations, you have done something amazing!