Last week SalesWarp had the privilege of being asked to speak to the X.Commerce Merchant Council along with three other Magento Industry Partners – Bronto, MyBuys and AheadWorks. Now, the purpose of the Council is to share insights and identify trends that, not only, help merchants succeed, but helps drive new paths at X.Commerce. It was a great forum with some very valuable Q&A not only for the merchants but for us as a provider to these merchants as well.
The focus of the presentation was on multi-channel managagement – specifically how merchants can increase sales while reducing costs by using a storefront management system like SalesWarp. From discussions with merchants, we have found some areas of concern that, either, keep merchants from a initiating a multi-channel approach or cause them to struggle with managing more than one online channel. I wanted to briefly discuss these points in case you are having some of these same concerns managing your online business.
1. Managing Inventory – With one store and one supplier, the process of managing inventory can be manageable without a complete E-commerce platform like SalesWarp. But, as your business evolves to multiple channels and orders increase, so do the chances for out-of-stocks and cancelled orders. SalesWarp’s Inventory Manager lets you sync up all of your suppliers while allowing you to set rules that manage inventory levels across multiple channels. This is a great tool for the brick ‘n click retailer as it integrates POS systems as well.
2. Time – Many retailers are trying to manage selling on multiple channels with spreadsheets, emails and systems that are not integrated. This drives the need for additional resources needed to manage this process. Not only is it time-consuming to manage orders from multiple channels, but to manage inventory across multiple suppliers is just as laborious. Automated systems like SalesWarp help to drastically reduce the need for additional resources while eliminating any chance for human error. Your operations run efficiently while reducing the costs to manage dramatically.
3. Order Processing & Fulfillment – The need for an automated real-time process becomes imperative to ensure every order from every channel is fulfilled and shipped on time. With a system that can manage your orders from your Web Store, POS, eBaby, Amazon and other third party marketplace removes the need to manage these channels individually and hope you can stay up-to-date without missing any orders.
4. Managing Customer Data – In today’s E-commerce world, customers are purchasing from you on multiple channels. You need to make sure you can consolidate your customer order information into one system. This helps understand buying patterns and behaviors which allows your sales and marketing teams to create targeted campaigns that will generate the most success.
To sum up multi-channel management, you need to look at your process and identify what areas are causing you the most pain. Then, if you are not currently using a multi-channel management system like SalesWarp, look at the options out there that will best fit your business needs. Here’s a quick checklist of things to consider:
- Scalability – make sure the system can grow with your business
- Open Source – in our opinion, this is the most advantageous to every merchant as it gives you the ability to specifically tune the system to precisely your needs and not force you to accept less than optimal solutions
- Off-the-shelf vs. Enterprise – this is interesting. Many merchants immediately think to go this route as to save money. On the surface when comparing pricing, that appears correct. But what many forget to consider is determining whether or not they have the in-house capabilities to drive the off-the-shelf solution. In many cases, when you weigh the off-the-shelf cost with internal resources needed to manage, the total ends up being very similar to an Enterprise solution. Make sure you evaluate these options carefully.
- Features – identify what is important to your business and make sure the system has these features. There is no need to settle for something less than what you need. There is a system out there for you.
- Cost – this is always a big consideration for every size retailer. Make sure you include internal resources needed to manage the system as this can vary greatly depending on provider and type of solution.
I hope this helps you become a more efficient multi-channel retailer and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at david.anderson@saleswarp.com. I would be more than happy to help.
Let’s all Sell More, Make More and Manage Less.