In today’s economy, marketers are looking for ways to get information faster, streamline existing processes and most of all reduce operational costs. One area marketers should review is their marketing execution process. Specifically, e-stores or sales portals where partners, the sales force or retail stores are able to order marketing materials, POS/POP, samples, fixtures, displays and other sales support tools. Having a single centralized e-store can drive communication between corporate and the field to reduce operating expenses, improve total program visibility and deliver focus to your marketing execution and fulfillment strategy.
What is an e-store?
Also called an online inventory management portal or catalog, an e-store is an online portal where businesses are able to manage the order and fulfillment process. From a corporate push to a customer pull, an e-store can help manage marketing fulfillment in a way that makes sense for each business and industry.
What is the benefit of using an e-store?
The obvious benefit is ease of ordering for end users. Beyond that, if the e-store is robust enough it can provide many benefits including being a centralized location to streamline the marketing fulfillment processes for all channels. In addition, an e-store can provide complete visibility into the marketing execution process through executive dashboards, inventory and order reporting, shipping confirmations, and trends with team/products.
Five Key E-store Attributes
To realize the maximum benefits of e-stores look for the five key indicators below to ensure program success. Many companies will offer an e-store but not all e-stores provide the same functionality or capabilities.
- 1. Integration with Client Systems: An e-store needs to completely integrate with the inventory and order management. E-stores can have multiple order fronts but they all need to integrate into a single back end for inventory and order management. This is the only way to easily capture transactional data across all channels and eliminate manual processes for looking at the complete marketing execution picture. It also ensures the flexibility to change systems or vendors on the front or back end.
- 2. Third Party Integration: Seek out vendors that offer e-stores with the flexibility to integrate with third parties. This ability allows orders to be placed in one single system and eliminate the need for users to utilize multiple systems. In this model, orders can be placed on the e-store and a drop ship order is placed with the third party vendor. Once the order is completed, the third party sends back order confirmation containing tracking information and the e-store closes the order. Vendors should also be able to integrate e-stores with customer care systems, client bank and financial institutions, regulatory agencies, web sites and client ERP applications.
- 3. Reporting: Although most e-stores offer reporting, it is important that the e-store selected offers business specific modules to help with demand planning, forecasting, auto-replenishment, vendor management and more. Look for vendors that offer standard reporting and executive-level dashboards. Standard reporting allows management to access general inventory and order information. Dashboards are generally customizable delivering executive level information with drill-down capabilities for detailed information and trend analysis.
- 4. Brand Customization & Product Flexibility: Designed to meet specific business rules, as well as adhere to industry requirements and regulations, e-stores should have the ability to be completely customized to a business’ brand. Additionally, the e-store should allow your brand managers to add new products easily and provide search capability that gives users a familiar Amazon-like format. This lets a user search products by type, brand, or promotion. Another crucial feature is template ordering that can be set up by a brand manager and pushed to the field for editing/updating. This will simplify the ordering process for users and save time by always having the bulk of what is needed by users prepopulated in the e-store for future use.
- 5. User Control and Security: A best practice in e-store systems is providing product and user security based on user groups. This allows groups to be defined hierarchically while user logins determine access to information, products and functionality. Setting user-controls helps to avoid misorders, can limit product hoarding, be set by territory and provide the ability to report based on user or user group to eradicate abuse.
Want to learn more? You can contact Kathleen Carter at ask@archway.com.
About the Author:
As Vice President of Business Development at Archway, Kathleen is responsible for the delivery of marketing fulfillment and execution services to the company’s Fortune 500 clients. With more than 20 years of marketing experience developing national campaigns, driving strategic initiatives that improve client’s marketing programs and deliver the desired return on investment.