3 Strategies to Automate Ecommerce Workflows

Originally published Feb 23, 2023; updated Oct 24, 2025

Today’s consumers are digitally empowered. With a multitude of shopping platforms, applications, shipment options, and communication preferences, it’s crucial to create a connected commerce experience—a personalization strategy that allows retailers to integrate in-store, online, or a combination of the two—to enable customers to shop, purchase, and receive goods via their channel(s) of choice.

For modern retailers, creating that connected commerce experience is only possible through automation. By automating key ecommerce workflows like order processing, shipping, inventory tracking, and customer communication, customers can enjoy a seamless, personalized experience regardless of how or where they choose to shop.

Benefits of Ecommerce Workflow Automation

Fewer repetitive tasks = more time

By automating ecommerce workflows and eliminating manual processes, teams can focus on creating personalized experiences for customers.

Stronger trading partner relationships

When data exchange between trading partners is automated, the right information gets delivered at the right time—that means fewer headaches caused by errors and delays for both parties.

Better customer experiences

When ecommerce workflows are automated, customers benefit from faster order processing, more accurate tracking data, and consistent, personalized experiences across every channel.

3 Ecommerce Workflow Automation Strategies

1. Integrate your commerce systems to automate data exchange

First, fill the gaps in your supply chain and eliminate fulfillment issues with ecommerce integration.

By connecting commerce applications, 3PL solutions, and back-end systems, businesses can automate the exchange of data and create a single source of truth for customer, order, inventory, and tracking information. This enables retailers to process commerce data accurately, so customers won’t receive inaccurate product or tracking information; and it ensures 3PLs receive accurate pick and pack checklists.

Through an integration platform, or iPaaS, retailers can ensure information is accessible across internal and external teams and departments in real-time, eliminating data silos and improving trading partner communication.

2. Leverage AI agents to automate complex tasks

AI is rapidly evolving beyond ask-and-answer chatbots and generative AI tools like ChatGPT, and AI agents are the next step in that evolution. AI agents are intelligent systems that don’t just provide answers—they’re able to autonomously carry out tasks.

In ecommerce, AI agents can use data to forecast demand, dynamically adjust pricing, and automate inventory management. They can also handle routine customer interactions, route orders, and trigger workflow actions across integrated systems without human intervention. AI agents can even be customized to carry out processes unique to your business.

3. Adopt an EDI platform to automate document processing

To effectively manage supply, fulfillment, shipping, exchange, and return issues, many ecommerce businesses partner with reliable third-party logistics (3PL) providers. These 3PL providers take full or partial ownership of the order fulfillment process, optimizing and accelerating shipping and logistics operations.

When 3PLs and retailers team up, they transfer large volumes of transactional documents—such as purchase orders, shipping notices, and invoices—back and forth. If these documents aren’t formatted in the same way, however, the data may not line up correctly, creating inaccuracies and delays.

An EDI (Electronic Data Exchange) platform automatically converts this information into standardized document types that can be seamlessly exchanged between systems, reducing errors, eliminating paper-based transactions, and enhancing data accuracy.

Streamline ecommerce workflows with Jitterbit’s retail automation platform

To automate key ecommerce processes—and processes across the entire enterprise—Jitterbit Harmony combines integration, accountable AI agents, EDI, low-code application development and more, all in one powerful platform.