We are looking into CS-Cart as perhaps a solution for a wider need
Could CS-Cart be the sensible platform for these needs? (With/without custom programming,)
Our needs:
To have one central database in which all of our ‘commercial/marketing related’ product info would reside.
This database we then use for exporting to Adobe Indesign for paper-based catalogs (‘Database Publishing’)
Same database for website catalog publishing (without prices = catalog function)
In the near future, website catalog with shopping cart. (All of our sales now are B2B via mail, phone, fax using MS Dynamics as ERP).
I realize CS-Cart was not designed for points 1 & 2, but given its power and functionality on 4, it would seem possible?
Our current solution is not great, the database is inflexible, changes are expensive, technology seems outdated, and their shopping cart (not tried yet) appears quite primitive as compared to CS Cart.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to set up a standard CS-Cart installation to work as described in point 2. You can consider our custom development service or third-party developers in order to implement it. As regards points 3 and 4, you can use the “Catalog mode” add-on. In order to set up this add-on, you should follow instructions in the “Setting up the 'Catalog Mode' add-on” article of our Knowledge base: CS-Cart Documentation — CS-Cart 4.15.x documentation
Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear what you mean in point 1. We would be grateful if you sent us a more detailed explanation.
[quote]Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear what you mean in point 1. We would be grateful if you sent us a more detailed explanation[/quote]
Allow me to try:
We (probably most companies?) have various digital places where we keep ‘product information’ (PI):
A. Basic PI in our ERP. Just enough to enable Purchases, Sales and Inventory management. Such as article number, brief invoice description, bar code, gross price
B. Commercial PI goes somewhere else since ERP’s are normally not designed to hold such info.
C. Typical Commercial PI is made up of; photo’s in different sizes, images of technical drawings, sales/marketing texts, technical specifications,tags, links to related articles, etc…
D. Commercial PI + ERP PI is what you would need to have in order to make a paper-based catalog, newsletters, price lists, but also an online catalog and/or webshop
E. Typically, commercial PI is kept all over the place. Partly in spreadsheets, some previous Indesign files, Word doc’s, ERP systems, …
F. The concept of ‘Product Information Mgt’ came about to resolve this housekeeping mess. One database to keep all the Commercial PI + copy of ERP PI in one database. From this one database, one could export (via Excel if need be) to Indesign for paperbased output ('database publishing) or to some online webshop/catalog software.
Thank you very much for the clarification. You can specify most part of this information for your products in a standard CS-Cart installation manually using its standard functionality and add-ons. However, if you want to convert your databases into a single database that will be used for a CS-Cart store, you can consider our custom development service or ask third-party developers to implement it.
This service helps us to give an impartial estimation of the necessity to create a certain feature. Any CS-Cart user who is registered on CS-Cart Forums can vote for a feature and offer their own one. The most popular features have good chances to be developed and added to the nearest CS-Cart releases.
We would like to ask you to post your suggestion to the CS-Cart forum at uservoice.com . The detailed information and explanation why this feature is important to be implemented will help it to earn more votes and probably be among the top features that might be added to CS-Cart.
