1

Managing Complexity in eCommerce

Can’t see the wood for the trees?

How etailer XS Stock got ahead

ContentsIntroduction Areas of Complexity Summertime Sadness Controlling Complexity About XS-Stock A Decade of Complexity Maximum ROI

The Benefits of Control

Collaboration Cures Complexity

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

1

IntroduCtIonOne of the ancient guiding principles of business for companies of all shapes and sizes is K-I-S-S, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Simplicity is your friend, and the key to a good night’s sleep. Complexity is your enemy, giving you the sleepless nights. The trouble is, simplicity is not easy, otherwise everyone would have a successful online business that pays them well and gives them time off.

Things may start simple, but when you introduce more people and more items into the equation, complexity inevitably – and organically – creeps into your business. Achieving and retaining simplicity in business is something we all have to constantly work at. As the well-known phrase goes, which is usually attributable to Mark Twain, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Not being able to see the wood for the trees in the online garden sector is not just a metaphorical problem, it’s a literal

one too, at least when you factor in the furniture, plants and shrubs that might be in your

average merchant’s inventory. The problem is magnified for companies who sell across many sectors. This ebook is about managing complexity, so let’s take a look at some of the areas that court complexity.

2

areas of ComplexItyFirst, systems. The more systems you have to run your business, the more the complexity, especially if these systems don’t ‘talk to’ each other and reliably exchange information. Having to check in multiple places to track existing orders and inventory is a recipe for disaster, especially when you’re trying to respond quickly to a customer complaint.

Second, parties. Not the ones with drinks and festivities, but third parties with whom you do business. The more parties involved in your business processes, the more moving parts there are and the more the possibility that one of the parts may fail. Third parties include suppliers, payment gateways, couriers, to name but a few. It’s obvious and true: the more of them you work with, the more complicated it gets. Many merchants use drop ship relationships, and if third parties are providing you with stock and dispatch facilities, you really need to know what’s going on.

Third, data. Information is power, and the more sources of information you rely on, the harder it is to get accurate, robust and timely data and the more powerless you become. As you grow the business, the data supporting your decisions naturally tends to become disparate, unwieldy and unclear, rather than streamlined, flexible and insightful.

1

Summertime SadneSS

Call +44 (0)207 268 3045www.esellerpro.com Page 3

Fourth, seasonality. The peaks and troughs of seasons add another layer of difficulty to your business planning. Anticipating seasonal changes to your business is vitally important, otherwise you’re responding to events and it’s really hard to get out of catch-up mode. Seasonality can really hurt you even when you’re successful, and the last thing you want to do is to trip up during peak season. Here’s a horror scenario: there’s a spell of glorious warm weather; on the Thursday before a bank holiday you sell 1,000 inflatable swimming pools; your inventory updates can’t cope and are not coming in quickly enough; you oversell by 50 pools; you get thrown off eBay; your woes go viral. It can happen so quickly; all that great feedback and customer equity you’ve built up over months and years, shattered in a few hours.

The surest path to managing complexity – and to achieve the simplicity and power that every business craves – is to unify your business. The act of bringing together your people, processes and technology gives you two vitally important benefits: control and visibility.

3

4

ControllIng ComplexItyWhen you unify your inventory, you can post to different channels easily and confidently. When you consolidate your data feeds from different parties into one place, using a flexible system for receiving and transferring information, you can see what’s going on and can spot the problems early. When you bring your systems and processes together, you save time and improve your customers’ experience of working with you.

The more advanced ecommerce platforms can provide you with the ability to integrate your entire business into one slick, automated machine. These platforms are designed to truly unify your business, so you can grow your business profitably, prevent overselling, and protect your customer ratings. They’re also backed up by people who are experts in their field and whom you can trust to guide you through the journey from complexity to simplicity.

When you’re bogged down in the details of your business, you’re stuck in the undergrowth. You can’t see the forest from there. To get the bird’s eye view of what’s going on you need to be up in the canopy. Unifying your business is the only way to get up there.

5

about xs-stoCkXS-Stock is an etailer that has grown its

revenue 25-30% year-on-year, every year. How did it achieve this sustained growth as the business grew ever larger and more complex? Control, efficiency and collaboration are the secret to its success. Read on for the XS-Stock story.

XS-Stock.com Ltd. is a family-run business based in Irvine, Scotland. Established in 1994

by its managing director Adrian Hodge, XS-Stock aims to offer its customers an outstanding choice of quality products at the lowest possible prices. Committed to providing an exceptional level of customer service, the company’s range of product categories rivals a department store, including home & garden, Christmas, toys, fancy dress, electrical and sports & leisure.

6

a deCade of ComplexItyMark Gregory is ecommerce manager for XS-Stock and is well placed to give us the history on the company: “We got started in ecommerce in May 2005 when we started selling on eBay. I’ve known Adrian the owner since we were literally knee-high, and later that year he asked me to join the company, which I did on the 1st of November. We were listing via Turbo Lister and a couple of other tools. The Christmas period was good, there were loads of positives, and the growth was very quick after that.

“The chief pain for us was the complexity of managing multiple channels. It was too time-consuming to list everywhere and manage our inventory ourselves, and it was too prone to error. From the early days we identified that our success was tied to the range of products we could offer and the range of marketplaces we could be in. It was the complexity of business that multi-channel brings with it that prodded to us to go external for a solution that could grow with us over the long term. This was in 2007.

“We reviewed all the major players at the time. Other vendors were quicker to integrate, but we saw them as a bolt-on which would need a third party to do the integration, and that would cost you the earth.”

7

ROImaxImum roIMark is a strong advocate of getting the most out of your investment in technology and people: “We were keen on ease of use, integration into eBay and a comprehensive inventory system that could allow locations to be pickable or unpickable depending on the situation. We wanted to have products in various locations, on different height racks and still be able to find them quickly and efficiently, so the chosen vendor’s inventory management model was really important to us. The cost of running the software was important to us too.

“You want to maximise your expenditure, in order to make life as easy for you as possible. We use the Volo Commerce platform to its maximum, down to every single feature. They have a really customer-centric development approach, and their infrastructure is focused on the customer experience and what they believe the market needs.

“When we started with Volo Commerce we had 3 or 4 eBay accounts and 1 Amazon account. Right now we have something like 13 eBay accounts, 11 websites, we’re on Play.com and we’re on Amazon UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. All of this runs on the Volo Commerce platform. That’s what I mean by using the platform to its maximum!

“We’ve got a 25,000 square foot warehouse, and we’ve just done a 750 pallet space increase. We’re at 21 core staff, and this can expand to 49 for peak periods. We operate a 2-shift system for packers, and they’re all part time, which allows us to expand extremely quickly when we have daily or weekly deals, for example.”

8

the benefIts of ControlMark went on to outline the chief benefits of taking an organized approach to dealing with complexity. “Complexity is part and parcel of our business and as a successful company we have to constantly manage the complexity. Our creative team, for example, have to deal with all the master listings and create listing SKUs for all our products. We’ve around 10,500 items and 35,000 listing SKUs. Variations come in with the same bar code and we have to allocate a unique bar code for each one and organise the printing and the labels. The system needs to be able to deal with all of that, which it does, no problem.

“The three main things that make me the happiest about the Volo Commerce partnership are the multiple marketplace control via one interface, the huge efficiency gains and Volo Commerce’s adaptability to the needs of its clients and the market. They were always super strong on eBay. They’ve also raised their game on Amazon, Rakuten and Magento. These are big pluses.

“There are so many things that the Volo Commerce platform gives us that we take for granted. It’s removed the need for manual intervention in so many areas. We have 21 staff; we’d need 30 staff if we didn’t have Volo Commerce.

“We’ve managed to grow 25-30% year-on-year every year. The chief focus for us now is growing our international business. We’re working really hard in this area and doing a lot of work with eBay in countries as far afield as Brunei. There’s huge potential for us overseas and I see it as our key growth area.”

9

CollaboratIon Cures ComplexItyMark outlined a good example of how working together is crucial to sustained success. “Collaboration is vital for dealing with the complexity I referred to earlier. Here’s how Volo Commerce come up trumps for me. We’ve taken the opportunity to remodel our warehouse space with all this expansion. What we found was that the pick and pack process was prone to human error. The picker had to go to a location with an order, pick the right item – let’s say a pink highlighter pen among lots of other colour pens in other orders – and then the packer has to get the right item out of the trolley, the right colour and so on. We wanted to use Peoplevox software to make our pick and pack processes more natural, more free-flowing and strive for 100% efficiency in this area. Volo Commerce could see the selling and business potential for us of adding Peoplevox to the platform, so they worked really hard to integrate it into the platform to give us this end-to-end automation.

“They’re prepared to go the distance for the customer if they possibly can. We had a visit from the Chief Technology Officer and our

Account Manager a couple of weeks ago. It was a hugely beneficial visit for us, and for them too, I think, as they were able to see for themselves the changes we’ve made.

“Volo Commerce is a great tool. Without a doubt it’s the best on the market just now. No doubt Volo Commerce will

be part of our future.”

About VoloAt Volo, we’ve set ourselves one core mission: to get merchants and brands flying high in the world of ecommerce. We want to take the administrative and managerial headaches away from trading online, and get you focused on what you do best - spotting and embracing new opportunities for growth.

That’s why we’ve built the world’s most useful and easy-to-use ecommerce service. A complete combination of technology and people that brings together your entire online sales process, and helps simplify and automate core tasks from inventory management and product scheduling through to payment and dispatch.

With Volo, you can scale your business up whenever the time is right, and make the most of sales opportunities across multiple channels such as eBay and Amazon. Our platform processes more than 40 million sales orders annually and our customers achieve over a 50% revenue increase in year 1 and 100% in year 2.

Are you ready to see your business fly?

Share this ebook socially

www.volocommerce.com • + 44 (0)207 268 3045enquiries@volocommerce.com