ChannelAdvisor – How to Centralise Managing Order Fulfillment, Inventory & Product Data for Multichannels

It might be okay if you manually list and change the product data, which includes the product, inventory, and shipment information on a single channel when you just started selling a few items online. However, your enjoyable days must go away along with your transaction volume going up on multiple online channels because if you are still handling by manual, you will get frustrated in the massive error of inconsistent product information across channels, heavily time-consuming to handle inventory in stock, or out of stock, and logistic for customer order delivery, order refund.

Also, manually managing those data connections is both cumbersome to maintain and dangerously prone to error, because requirements vary from each ad network or a retail marketplace, a web store destination. Once the data feed gets an error or very slow to respond, refresh and update on the destination, you could miss out on a huge chunk of sales and revenue. 

Thus, if you want your products to stand out on Amazon, Lazada, Rakuten, Google Shopping, Facebook, ShareASale affiliate network, and others, you’re going to need high quality customized product listing data, inventory data, and order fulfillment data feeds in an automatic format across channels. Today’s most successful sellers maintain a well-oiled machine of feed syndication and data harmonization — with strong pipes and paths that always send the correct data to each and every destination. 

It might be okay if you manually list and change the product data. It includes the product, inventory, and shipment information on a single channel when you just started selling a few items online. However, your enjoyable days must go away along with your transaction volume going up on multiple online channels. It’s because if you are still handling by manual, you will get frustrated with the massive error of inconsistent product information across channels. It’s heavily time-consuming to handle inventory in stock, or out of stock, and logistics for customer order delivery, and order refund.

Also, manually managing those data connections is both cumbersome to maintain and dangerously prone to error. It’s because requirements vary from each ad network or a retail marketplace to a web store destination. Once the data feed gets an error or is very slow to respond, refresh and update on the destination, you could miss out on a huge chunk of sales and revenue. 

Channeladvisor

You might want your products to stand out on Amazon, Lazada, Rakuten, Google Shopping, Facebook, ShareASale affiliate network, and others. You’re going to need high-quality customized product listing data, inventory data, and order fulfillment data feeds in an automatic format across channels. Today’s most successful sellers maintain a well-oiled machine of feed syndication and data harmonization. It’s with strong pipes and paths that always send the correct data to each and every destination. 

In this article, we will introduce one of the most popular platforms – ChannelAdvisor. It is a platform you can leverage and centralize to manage all product data in a flexible and scalable format. By the end of the article, you can learn how to syndicate your Shopify product data with the Amazon store, and fulfill multi-channel orders by using FBA.

What’s ChannelAdvisor

ChannelAdvisor is a leading e-commerce cloud platform whose mission is to connect and optimize the world’s commerce. It holistically helps retailers and branded manufacturers worldwide improve their online performance. It does this by expanding online sales channels and optimizing its operations on inventory management. Also, it can do this by optimizing order fulfillment for peak performance and providing intelligent and actionable analytics to improve competitiveness. It can power their customers’ sales such as Shopify, Lazada, Rakuten, Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, Walmart, and hundreds more. And then it centralizes multi-channel order fulfillment, like saying using FBA or FBM to fulfill orders from Shopify, Rakuten, Lazada, etc.

Product Data Feed

“Product and marketing strategy is one thing, easily and accurately listing them to buyers is first thing first”

I remember what Jack Ma said before. If he had to select either a creative talent or a solid execution talent to work with, he would have no doubt preferred working with a seasoned and solid execution talent.

Ensuring the data to the destination can be immediately and accurately reflected is very important. In particular, we run multi-channels in which the product listing regulatory is varied. Even if you have a brilliant product and marketing strategy ahead. However, your product can’t be executed to show buyers correctly in time. If it can’t be optimized in the right digital format for SEO purposes, you will still lose the game.

ChannelAdvisor marketplace has the tools to support both first-party and third-party selling strategies on over 100+ retail and marketplace networks. They are such as Shopify, Amazon, and Shopify. You can create custom templates and add on attributes for different destinations and through the templates and attributes manage all of your product title, description, enhanced product content, product images and video content, pricing product URLs, across multiple channels on one platform to maximize your effort, reach and results. Like saying, your Amazon SKU URL might include an ASIN number in the URL, which is not helpful on the SKU Shopify URL. If you put the Amazon SKU items’ information as the original, you can custom the Shopify URL structure and ensure the URL only includes keywords you prefer, and exclude the ASIN numbers.

Basically, it can transform your product data to meet the needs of any merchandising and marketing destination with compliance.

  • Transform a single stream of data into a different format for each destination
  • Optimize your product content across large and small retail channels
  • Instantly identify and fix any data feed errors
  • Automatically adjust templates any time a channel changes its requirements

Also, ChannelAdvisor Product Feed Management allows you to stay ahead of the product pricing management. After all, pricing modification is an online seller’s daily mission. It’s for the purpose to ensure the SKU pricing is attractive enough in the target markets. It would be a nightmare if you have to modify the same SKU across all online channels and change it again in a day if it’s necessary. For ChannelAdvisor, it can facilitate from below several features.

  • Pricing Console 
  • Pricing Strategies 
  • Product Feed Management Demand Forecaster 
  • Velocity Repricing 
  • Benchmarking

Inventory Management

“Listing a single SKU is one thing, forecasting inventories and creating fulfillable SKU bundles with dynamic pricing is a key way to increase sales and conversion rate”

First thing first, non-syndicated SKU inventory across online channels increases the cancellation rate of a customer order. In particular, you are not aware your SKU has been out of stock. Amazon FBA (fulfilled by Amazon) can allow you to fulfill multi-channel and show you the inventory status in the Amazon warehouse. It’s not efficient if you are also using FBM (fulfilled by merchants), and having warehouses (OAS, etc) in different corners worldwide. So in this case, you need a further centralized dashboard view like ChannelAdvisor. It can real-time reflect all SKU’s inventory status. It helps you forecast the SKU sourcing for different markets, and refill the stock of specific SKUs in different warehouses. And also it lets you understand the storage cost and a way out to find the best optimal way to store.

Secondly, inventory management is dealing with product selling strategies. It’s because if you are bundling different items into one SKU, basically you need to consider the lowest cost and fulfillment time by looking at the distance between the destination and the warehouse locations of different items. So you need to formulate a strategy, how to make sure it can be fulfilled meanwhile it’s cost-effective. Basically, you are not able to make it happen if you don’t have a data record in a centralized view. It supports you to learn intelligence.

Order Fulfillment

“Selling products is one thing, getting them to the buyers is another”

Order defect rate, Return Dissatisfaction Rate, and Late Shipment Rate are not that welcomed by you and you dislike to see their figure arising up. ChannelAdvisor’s software can relieve your stress and help you improve your performance. It’s because it integrates with most shippers whether you’re dropshipping, self-fulfillment, or using third-party logistics (3PL). Experience complete integration with the Enhanced Fulfillment Network including Amazon Seller Fulfilled Prime, OAS, FedEx, UPS, USPS, Stamps.com for USPS, etc.

  • Distribution Networks 
  • Third-Party Logistics 
  • Seller-Managed Fulfillment 
  • Shipping Management Suite 
  • ChannelAdvisor Fulfillment Services

ChannelAdvisor provides you to create shipping templates. It includes the shipping method, the SKU weight and size attributes, shipping rate, etc. Like saying if you use OAS for FBM, you can integrate with OAS and store the SKU items in the OAS warehouse]. You can refer to the OAS delivery rate to create the template in Channeladvisor.

Thus, no matter how many online channels, such as Shopify, eBay, Rakuten, Lazada, Amazon, Facebook, etc you’re running and how many markets you are targeting to sell. You can leverage ChannelAdvisor to fulfill orders to the destinations, such as the USA, Japan, Australia, and European countries via FBA.

3PL

Or you can select to fulfill by yourself, like saying integrating with a third-party logistic company and creating the fulfillment template for SKUs. It’s for the purpose to ensure the cost calculation, and the fulfillment warehouse is correct.

Last but not least, if you are selling bundle SKUs for an increased conversion rate, you can fulfill them by using two different fulfillment methods. For example, the device is fulfilled by FBA, and the accessory is fulfilled by yourself. All these combinations and strategies are decided by your strategy and calculation.

I hope you enjoy reading How to Centralise Managing Order Fulfillment, Inventory & Product Data for Multi Channels. If you did, please support us by doing one of the things listed below, because it always helps out our channel.

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FAQ:

Q1: What is ChannelAdvisor?

A: ChannelAdvisor is an eCommerce platform that helps businesses sell their products on various online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.

Q2: How does ChannelAdvisor work?

A: ChannelAdvisor integrates with your existing eCommerce systems to streamline and automate the process of selling products on multiple online channels. It provides tools for inventory management, listing optimization, pricing intelligence, and order fulfillment.

Q3: What are the benefits of using ChannelAdvisor?

A: Using ChannelAdvisor can help businesses increase their online visibility, reach a larger customer base, and optimize their sales performance. It provides access to valuable data and insights, helps automate repetitive tasks, and offers support for international expansion.

Q4: Is ChannelAdvisor suitable for small businesses?

A: Yes, ChannelAdvisor caters to businesses of all sizes, including small and medium-sized enterprises. It offers scalable solutions and pricing plans tailored to the specific needs and budgets of different businesses.

Q5: Can ChannelAdvisor help with marketplace advertising?

A: Yes, ChannelAdvisor has features and integrations that allow businesses to manage and optimize their advertising campaigns on various online marketplaces. It provides tools for keyword research, ad creation, and performance tracking.

Q6: Does ChannelAdvisor support cross-border selling?

A: Yes, ChannelAdvisor supports cross-border selling by providing tools and integrations for managing international listings, translations, currency conversions, and compliance with local regulations. It helps businesses expand their reach and sell globally.

Q7: What kind of analytics and reporting does ChannelAdvisor offer?

A: ChannelAdvisor offers robust analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing businesses to track key performance metrics like sales, conversions, traffic sources, and inventory levels. It provides real-time data and customizable reports for informed decision-making.

Q8: Can ChannelAdvisor integrate with other eCommerce platforms?

A: Yes, ChannelAdvisor is designed to integrate with a wide range of eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. This allows businesses to leverage their existing systems while benefiting from ChannelAdvisor’s additional features.

Q9: Does ChannelAdvisor provide customer support?

A: Yes, ChannelAdvisor offers customer support through various channels, including phone, email, and live chat. They have a dedicated support team that can assist businesses with technical issues, onboarding, and general inquiries.

Q10: Is ChannelAdvisor suitable for businesses in any industry?

A: Yes, ChannelAdvisor is a versatile platform that can be used by businesses in various industries, including retail, fashion, electronics, automotive, and more. It provides industry-specific features and integrations to meet the unique needs of different sectors.

1 thought on “ChannelAdvisor – How to Centralise Managing Order Fulfillment, Inventory & Product Data for Multichannels

  1. Hey Louis, Well said “Product and marketing strategy is one thing, easily and accurately listing them to buyers is first thing first”. I really enjoy this blog while reading and appreciate you for sharing such an informative blog with us. Thanks

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