February 22, 2018 
What is MultiChannel Selling?
If you are an eCommerce seller there are good chances that you have heard about the phrase “Multi-Channel Selling”. Some people think that selling online on multiple marketplaces refers to multichannel selling but there is more to it. In concept, it refers to expanding your channels, and such channels can be online marketplaces, webstores or brick, and mortar stores. The purpose is to get maximum exposure to your products and attract customers over the globe.
Multichannel selling has already shown a sharp growth and no Seller wants to be left behind. According to a survey conducted by Web Retailer, 77% of Sellers who sell on Amazon also sell on multiple sales channels.
Multichannel selling definitely offers numerous possibilities, but also renders challenges for an online Seller. Peer competition is just a single line from the story.
Here are 4 major challenges faced while selling on multiple channels:
- Catalog Management: Uploading products to sell on multiple marketplaces can be a tedious task especially if you have to meet different data and image standards for each marketplace.
- Inventory Management: If you are selling on multiple channels, keeping the synchronization and consistency across all the channels can be a challenging task. If not managed properly, it can result either in receiving orders of the products which are already out of stock or a false stock out.
- Order Management and Fulfilment: Inefficient order management can hinder the growth of an eCommerce business. According to research conducted by Harvard, Retailers lose up-to their 50% of customers to the competitors, just because their products are out of stock.
Processing Orders and handling the Fulfillment while selling on multiple Marketplaces is a task highly prone to human errors. - Marketplace Reconciliation: As marketplace Seller, there will be hundreds of transactions occurring in a month. Typically, those will be new orders, fulfilled orders, returned orders, payments received from marketplaces etc. Keeping the track of all the transactions and reconciling every transaction manually in accordance with the different policies of the channels can be exhausting.
To overcome these challenges and to stay focused on the business growth, eCommerce sellers need to have an agile cloud-based Multi-Channel Order/Inventory Management Software which streamlines all the operations.
Here are some benefits you can avail using SaaS-based Order/Inventory Management Software to sell across multiple eCommerce marketplaces:
Catalog Management: Upload your hundreds of products to multiple marketplaces by formatting it once using the standardized templates. Get upload ready sheets and images transformed according to the standards of multiple marketplaces. This can reduce your manual effort and cost dramatically.
Centralized Inventory Management: This means you can track and control the inventory across multiple marketplaces from a single screen. Once you receive an order or a return from any of the integrated channel, product count will be adjusted into the centralized inventory accordingly. Thence it can offer consistent inventory management and can prevent false stock-outs as well as receipt of orders which are not present in the actual inventory.
Order Management and Fulfilment: Aggregate all your orders from multiple channels and process them seamlessly from a single screen. Avail the feature of choosing from multiple fulfillment channels according to your needs and preferences.
Marketplace Reconciliation: Reconcile all your transactions and get the reports ready in a single click, no need to go through the complicated marketplace policies and reconcile every transaction manually.
To know more how Vin eRetail can help streamlining these operations and boosting your Multichannel retailing business you can request a demo now!
