Common Challenges of eCommerce Business and How Skywell Software Helps Overcome Them

The e-commerce industry has experienced a significant boom this year, with more and more people shopping online since they are reluctant to make a trip to a physical location. Retailers have capitalized on this opportunity by increasing their website activity level and selling on other platforms. Skywell Software’s project manager talks about how the team helped one of our clients solve some technical difficulties and other retail challenges that were preventing them from reaching their true potential and helped them increase their overall activity and revenue. 

A Little About the Client and What is Product Range

Our client is a large retailer that sells some of its merchandise through an online store, including more than 70,000 products located in 27 physical warehouses spread all over six cities within one country.

The online store is built with Magento 2 as its base using the Multi-Source Inventory module to control the warehouses’ goods. Magento is an order management system that receives orders from our client’s native mobile application and website. In the future, it should aggregate orders from marketplaces as well.

Issues Experience by the Client 

Our client was looking to expand the assortment of items in the online store by connecting 50 new suppliers within six months. Since the client sells merchandise on other platforms as well, we also need to organize the process of selling the client’s goods on three local marketplaces, similar to Amazon and eBay, within three months, since any delays in the project would result in lost revenue for the client. Let’s take a look at how we approached creating a technological solution for business issues. 

Understanding Our Role

Since Skywell Software has extensive experience working with retail clients, we understand the pain points they are experiencing. To launch a serious project, our client needs to set up steps in the selling process: 

•  Create a new department for working with external suppliers;
•  Hire several managers to interact with marketplaces;
•  Make changes to the flow of work with orders through ERP;
•  Launch a new system that accepts orders for suppliers from Magento, transfers them to all internal systems. As you can imagine, for large companies, each order goes through 3-4 departments before it is delivered to the buyer;
•  Conduct employee training for at least 100 employees who will be involved in working with the order.

This puts our work in proper context since we understand that the work we do is only part of the puzzle, and we see where we fit in. Since the client has been in business for quite some time now, they know how to sell on Amazon and how to be a seller on eBay. They just needed to have the right solution in place that would allow them to scale and streamline processes. All of the work must be done on time and in the amounts specified since any delays result in lost revenue. 

Understanding the Scope 

The Magento developers from Skywell Software understood that Magento is the link between online orders and client’s back-office systems. Thus, we see that it will be necessary to transfer additional parameters to the ERP and separate each order for merchandise located in the client’s warehouses and merchandise that’s with suppliers. We will also immediately note the delivery time of such orders will differ from usual orders. We must not forget that the order can be partially canceled by the client or the order fulfillment department.

To actualize the project, we needed to develop a transparent plan that will show the customer how we expect to achieve the necessary results within the specified time period. Take a look at the project plan sample!

Project Breakdown 

Inventory software development can be divided into the next stages, each of which has a specific problem that needs to be addressed: 

• Create a mechanism for interacting with suppliers;
• Create a new flow establishment for new merchandise and updating of existing ones of the suppliers. Magento 2 multi-source inventory would be very useful here;
• Implement the importation of balances and supplier prices every morning;
• Implement changes in the integration with retail ERP software;
• Integrate with the new system receiving orders for suppliers;
• Create a process for connecting new suppliers, so that we can connect any supplier in 2-3 days;
• Collect the integration with the first marketplace and prepare a template for the future integrations;
• Create an interface for working with marketplace orders for our client’s managers.

Results Delivered for the Client 

As a result of the Magento ERP integration, we were able to achieve the following results: 

• The range of the online store expanded to 90,000 products and continues to grow;
• Sales increased by about 10% due to orders from marketplaces and better supplier relationship management;
• We received a lot of new marketplace integration experience.

If you are a retailer experiencing similar problems, feel free to contact the Skywell Software team to see how we can help you.