Workflow: Retail and Wholesale

Sync your pricing structures and inventory data from your ERP to both your wholesale and retail sales channels for better efficiency.

Does this sound like you?

You have a predominantly wholesale business (B2B) that also retails direct to consumers (B2C) via a physical store and an ecommerce website. You send your wholesale customers (retailers) updated stock sheets on a regular basis with the latest prices and quantities. When a customer wants to make a purchase, they call your head office to check that the items are still available before confirming the order by email.

You may have reps who check in on your key accounts to make sure that stocks aren’t running low. When a customer wants to place an order, the rep writes it in their notebook so they can email it to head office at the next opportunity. In your physical store, customers browse your shelves and checkout at a point of sale (POS) which captures orders into your accounting system.

Your ecommerce website is becoming a more and more lucrative source of revenue, but keeping your product information accurate can be labour-intensive. Once a week you export pricing and stock level data from your accounting system, and compare them to your website to ensure it’s up to date. Someone in your organisation is tasked with receiving telephonic or email wholesale orders from customers and sales reps, as well as collating your retail online orders, and manually capturing them on your ERP / accounting system.

Wholesale (B2B) challenges you may be facing:

• The customers often don’t have an updated stock sheet handy.
• Customers phoning in to check stock levels and pricing may get frustrated if they have to wait for assistance.
• Customers wishing to place orders outside of your office hours have to wait until the next business day.
• Your reps don’t have the latest stock availability at their fingertips.
• Your reps may not be aware of which discount structures apply to their clients.
• Manually re-capturing orders is hugely time consuming and prone to human error.

Retail (B2C) ecommerce challenges you may be facing:

• Your website is not showing your latest inventory information, so you are at risk of overselling or selling at the wrong price.
• Customers’ orders are not captured immediately in your ERP / accounting system, which could result in fulfillment delays.
• Your admin staff is required to manually update product data, as well as input online orders on your ERP / accounting system. This can expose your company to human error.

How Stock2Shop can help you:

• Inventory and product information is synced from your ERP / accounting system to both online channels - the Stock2Shop B2B Trade Store and your ecommerce website.
• Wholesale customers can login to your B2B Trade Store and immediately see relevant pricing and stock information.
• B2B orders can be placed on this platform, any time day or night, and automatically raised in your ERP / accounting system against each customer’s debtors account.
• Reps can log in to the B2B Trade Store to check customer-specific pricing and stock levels, and immediately place an order into that customer’s account.
• Retail customers can place orders on your ecommerce website.
• As soon as an order is placed on either online channel (B2C or B2B), it syncs to your ERP where stock availability is affected. This reduction in inventory is then communicated to your other online channel, dramatically reducing the risk of overselling.
• Your admin staff is notified as soon as an order is received.
• You get to manage vital product data for both online channels in one place - on your ERP / accounting system.

In short, Stock2Shop has reduced human error, reduced duplicate data capturing and increased efficiency.