4 Signs That You Need To Implement Drop Ship And Marketplace Automation

Your brand is growing, and you’re thinking of expanding to new channels such as Nordstrom, Kohl’s, Farfetch, Urban Outfitters or others. 

Higher-order volume is always the goal, but the result is greater processes and overhead for your team. Each channel adds more inventory to track and manage across channels, along with invoicing orders. They require different image sizes, background colors and unique product description requirements and so much more. 

This is when you start to feel the weight of manual processes and integrations. Your staff is spending most of their days manually entering data from one system to another. And you’ve stopped focusing on growth and more on how to fix order errors made by your team.

YOU’VE PAINFULLY REALIZED THAT IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO AUTOMATE YOUR DROP SHIP AND MARKETPLACE OPERATIONS.

Yes, we know.

Manual 1:1 brand-to-retail connectivity and integration is long and can sometimes take 4-9 months for just ONE. SINGLE. INTEGRATION. Currently, if a brand wants to start selling on any given retailer, the process is to:

1. Hire an in-house team 
2. Create a relationship with the retailer 
3. Get accepted to begin the integration process 
4. Manually set up products and inventory per channel – unique product identifiers, product descriptions, update images (size, color, shape) 
5. Enter multiple times daily to update inventory manually
6. Accept orders 
7. Add tracking information per each order
8. Manually make sure you are meeting all SLAs
9. Ensure your own inventory is up to date, so you don’t oversell

DO THESE PROBLEMS SOUND FAMILIAR?

1. Too Many Manual Data Entry Errors 

• Your business relies on staff members to manually enter data from system to system
• Your team is spending most of their day entering data. The room for error is too high (inconsistent billing, inaccurate orders, and incorrect shipping addresses)
• Spending hours inputting online order invoices into ERP, OMS etc.
• Typing errors can cause inventory discrepancies between what you have in stock and what is available throughout each channel
• Manual data entry slows down the process of getting each item shipped on time
• Product information becomes messy since each retailer has its own requirements

2. Overselling Products

• When systems are not connected automatically, errors occur between them 
• Mistakes are made. In some cases, you have to explain to a customer that you can’t ship an item because it is out of stock
• Marketplaces and Drop Ship retailers will indefinitely suspend your brand if you consistently oversell 

3.  Inability to Scale & Grow

• You want to grow your brand and sell on many channels, but the overhead is just too high
• The time to manually manage each channel is simple not scalable for growth
• If you are not meeting SLAs, you will be unable to continue selling on that particular channel

4. Customer Satisfaction

• With errors caused by manual input, customer satisfaction suffers from lost orders, slow delivery times, and inaccurate order information

Wrap Up

If you are experiencing any of these problems, then marketplace and drop ship automation is most certainly your only option for scale and growth. 

With automation, you’ll be able to efficiently sync data: ERP, WMS, OMS, IMS, PIM, to all systems, eCommerce platform and back to the retailers platform.

Brands that start automation eliminate the stress of long 1-1 integrations, manual operations, and daily management of brand to retail connectivity. Cymbio’s B2B automation platform enables seamless connectivity for brands and your retailer counterparts. And the only of its kind to automate ALL processes to ANY retailer, including the complete set-up, onboarding and daily management of streamlined product data, imagery, mapping, inventory syncing, taxonomy, orders, billing, tracking, returns, reports and more.