How to Cut Costs and Boost Revenue with Ecommerce Process Automation

By David Rastatter, Sr. Director, Product Marketing
Originally published July 27, 2022; updated January 12, 2026

The Importance of Ecommerce Process Automation in Modern Retail

Ecommerce has grown exponentially over the last few years. Experts predict that by 2028, retail ecommerce sales will exceed $7.8 trillion globally—up from $6.4 trillion in 2025—and make up 22.5% of retail sales.

Ecommerce companies must evolve their technology to keep up with growth, industry trends, and ever-changing consumer behavior and demands. However, many ecommerce businesses still rely on manual processes and disjointed systems and applications to engage with customers, and to sell and deliver their products. Many of these manual processes include processing orders, updating inventory counts, and shipping out products. Unfortunately, the end result is slower deliveries, error-prone order fulfillment, and less reliable service.

In order to meet consumer demands and keep up with the competition, retailers must leverage the best ecommerce integration solutions to automate their processes and create better customer experiences.

What is ecommerce Process Automation?

Put simply, process automation uses digital technology to automatically perform and complete tasks that are traditionally done manually. Common retail examples include processing orders, updating customer records in ERP systems, printing shipping labels, and automating purchase acknowledgements.

Some retailers try to scale their business by hiring more staff rather than relying on API solutions for ecommerce due to cost. However, it is nearly impossible to scale this way because the overhead costs will outweigh the benefits. This is why leveraging automation is key, as you can grow your business without taking on unnecessary personnel costs; plus, you can give your team more time to help customers with urgent matters that can’t be automated. After all, today’s consumers expect a fast, reliable, and frictionless online purchase experience.

If retailers continue to rely on manual processes rather than process automation, they’re putting their entire business at risk: 67% of consumers say they won’t shop with a brand again after one poor delivery experience.

Examples of Ecommerce Process Automation

Order Processing

When an order is placed in an integrated ecommerce system, API-driven workflows coordinate payment validation, check inventory availability, create the order record, and route it to fulfillment systems without manual intervention.

The key is connectivity—when ecommerce platforms, payment gateways, ERPs, and fulfillment systems are integrated, data can flow between systems in real time, making true order to fulfillment automation possible.

Updating Customer Information

Ecommerce process automation syncs customer records between ecommerce platforms, ERP, and CRM systems automatically, ensuring details like contact information, order history, and billing data are always up to date. This creates a consistent view of the customer across teams and systems.

Printing Shipping Labels

With automation in place, shipping labels can be generated automatically as soon as an order is confirmed—using predefined rules for carriers, shipping methods, and destinations. This accelerates fulfillment while reducing the risk of incorrect labels and delayed deliveries.

Purchase Acknowledgements

Automated purchase acknowledgements provide customers with instant confirmation that their order has been received and is being processed. These notifications can be triggered automatically across email, SMS, or customer portals, improving transparency and trust while eliminating the need for manual follow-ups from support teams.

3 Ways Ecommerce Process Automation Drives Revenue & Cuts Costs

1. Increases Productivity

Process automation significantly reduces manual data entry and the time employees spend validating information between multiple systems. This enables retailers to shift their employees from repetitive manual tasks to helping customers and improving their product.

2. Drives Greater Efficiency

Process automation streamlines processes, such as quote-to-cash, order-to-fulfillment, and supply chain management. As a result, retailers are able to process things faster, like shipping and product updates, which helps to keep the customer journey seamless – and customers will come back for more.

Inherent to API solutions for ecommerce, process automation eliminates work silos by providing all teams with access to the same time-sensitive data.

3. Reduces Data Errors

Leveraging process automation means that data is bi-directionally exchanged between multiple systems, platforms, and marketplaces such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Amazon, and BigCommerce. This eliminates errors and creates a single source of truth for data, eradicating data silos, manual prone errors, and inaccurate information.

Get Started with Jitterbit’s Unified Platform for Retail & Ecommerce Automation

Process automation is the key to unlocking ecommerce retailers’ ability to exceed customer expectations, stay competitive, and grow revenue while cutting long-term costs.

Jitterbit provides a powerful automation platform for retailers that combines AI-infused integration (iPaaS), API management, low-code application development, and EDI in one enterprise-ready solution. And with our Agentic AI Services, retailers can work with AI and machine learning experts to create and deploy custom AI agents to automate complex ecommerce processes end-to-end.

To get started, request an expert-guided demo of the Jitterbit Harmony platform, or explore our self-guided product demos to learn more.