This case study highlights how we addressed the operational challenges (Orders, Fulfillment, Shipping, Returns, Procurement, and Competitive Price War) faced by a retailer managing sales across multiple online platforms. It demonstrates how we resolved their difficulties with handling large volumes of data in Excel, which consumed excessive time and effort, leading to human errors. Our solution not only streamlined their processes but also helped them save valuable time and money.
Challenges:
The client faced significant operational challenges, including managing inventory across multiple marketplaces, handling orders, shipments, and purchases efficiently. They struggled with processing orders on time, often leading to missed or delayed order fulfillment.
Updating available quantities across all stores in real time was another critical issue, resulting in frequent order cancellations or delays in procurement and shipping. Additionally, tasks such as printing shipping labels, managing returns, and coordinating procurements were highly disorganized.
Although the client had an inventory management platform in place, it lacked integration with the marketplaces where they sold books, including AbeBooks, eBay, Amazon, Alibris, Biblio, and Valore.
Solution:
We took charge of enhancing the client’s system, implementing new features incrementally to address their operational challenges.
Key Features Developed:
Inventory Management:
- Integrated with well-defined APIs from marketplaces like AbeBooks, eBay, Amazon US, and Alibris for seamless inventory listing.
- For marketplaces like Biblio and Valore, where APIs were unavailable, we automated the inventory upload process using scripts.
- Assisted the client in defining and automating pricing logic, which had previously been managed manually, saving significant time and improving sales.
Order Management:
- Automated order retrieval from all marketplaces via APIs and scripts.
- Created system-generated triplicate shipping label files and procurement files based on predefined rules. These files streamlined processes for the shipping and procurement teams, respectively.
Shipping Integration:
- Integrated shipping APIs for carriers like DHL, USPS, and Newgistics, ensuring real- time updates and tracking.
- Enhanced the system to recommend the optimal carrier for each shipment, simplifying decision-making for the shipping team.
Over a two-year partnership, we collaborated with the client to develop and enhance multiple following modules, transforming their operational efficiency and enabling smooth, scalable processes.
- Inventory Management
- Warehouse Inventory Management
- PO (Purchase Order) generation
- Order Management
- Automated Order Feedback reports
- Customer Care
- Shipping Management
- External Seller products integration available
- User Management (Privileged based)
- E-mail Reports
- Inventory reports
- Order reports
- Revenue reports
- Profit reports
- Marketplace error report
- Inventory issue reports
- Marketplace Management (Commissions, fees, costs, etc.)
- Fillz API Integrated
- Fraud detection and prevention (Set of rules defined)
- Research for Books available
- Scrapping from Amazon for particular sellers
- Alert configuration available
- Error and issue alerts configurable
- Reprising algorithm
Transformation:
- Saves time by enabling simultaneous listing and updating of products across Amazon and other marketplaces.
- Automatically adjusts pricing to increase product visibility on the first page and strives to position the client as the lowest seller, driving higher sales.
- Consolidates orders from all marketplace accounts into a single system as soon as they are available, eliminating the need to manually check each account.
- Provides automated email alerts for any system issues or anomalies.
- Detects potential fraud, protecting the business from post-sale disputes with fraudulent buyers.
- Facilitates selling products on multiple marketplaces effortlessly.
- Allows products to be inserted or updated once and automatically synced across all connected marketplaces.
- Centralizes orders in one platform, enabling easy updates, including adding tracking IDs.
