This is the next part in a short series of posts about the process of changing the core software I run my business on. Part 1 was about clearing down existing workload and the overview of the project.
As before, it's mainly so help me document for myself what I've done, but done on Hive because it might help anyone else who is thinking of doing something similar.
Image by REDQUASAR from Pixabay
Any project has the potential to throw up surprises, and this one is no different. There have been two key updates in the last week.
First, the need to change the PayPal plugin on our website. We'd hoped to do it this week, but it needs our webmaster to be on hand and he's booked out until early next week. Although it looks relatively simple to do, the fact that the plugin documentation has a "troubleshooting" section immediately after telling us the webhooks will be generated automatically is a bit of a concern !
Second and more concerning is that 24 hours after our current software provider pulled some key functionality, we received an email from them advising of a significant price increase.
Something I never realised is that when an email is effectively an image (you know, the kind where an email client gives you an option to download images), it's actually an image hosted on the sender's server. If they change the image on the server, it changes the content of the email.
In this case, the first version said that the price increase was taking effect on our next billing due date (10 days away, with three of those days being a weekend and public holiday). This has now been changed to the next billing day after 30 days notice. That's still a very short timescale for a major software package we've been using for 10 years !
This increase and the way it's been handled confirms that my decision to move to an alternative provider is the right one.
The next step in the process is to extract all the data I might need from the existing software, which I'll no longer have access to once the account is closed.
Some of it is a snapshot of current status, and some of it involves downloading all 10 years of history. Quite a bit of it is data I've already got scattered around various places, but it makes sense to have another copy with all of it in one folder (which can then be heavily backed-up !)
I've broken this down by operational category. Within each, the information consists of three types;
The operational categories and reports in each are;
Reports generated were;
We've got about 10,000 products in total. Good data management is the key to keeping on top of them all. I've got all the key product data in a separate spreadsheet, on the principle that if I've got it on my PC, I own the data, if it's only in some software provider's cloud system, they own it. But it won't hurt to download it all and compare the two sets of data !
A current stock levels report hasn't been downloaded yet, this will be one we have to do right at the point of switchover.
The rules engine is actually one of the better features in Linnworks, and one I hope to be able to replicate in the new software.
What it does is look at each order and decide if certain rules need to be applied which might modify how it's processed. For example, it may look at the shipping method the customer has selected in a sales channel, and decide that the value is too high for normal post so upgrade it to courier delivery.
Some of the rules are cunning and complex. Unfortunately, there's no way to download the rules as a report, so I have had to screenshot them. An example of a shipping rule (well, part of one) is below;
Screenshot by me
I've also got rules which look at postcodes to identify addresses where we've had problems of one kind or another, to give us a chance to manually intervene and decide how any new orders should be handled. One or two of the category names are strictly for internal consumption !
Downloading all this data was very much a full evening's work - I started at about 8pm, and finished at about 2am the next day. I'm still wondering if there's anything important I've forgotten !
Next time I'll go over the next step, of selecting an alternative provider.....
