![The Velocity of Ecommerce and Sales: Part 1 [Interview]](/img/blog-placeholder.jpg)
The Velocity of Ecommerce and Sales: Part 1 [Interview]
Interview series with Conrad Rohleder: Part One
If you’re selling on an ecommerce platform, you want to do it right. Integrating intuitive, automated systems to handle your accounting and inventory is a must for your business.
Programs such as Clearinity and A2X will save you time and money, paving the way for accelerated success.
Clearinity is a cloud-based inventory management and operations optimization system, designed to make running your ecommerce business simpler and more successful. The founder of Clearinity, Conrad Rohleder, is the star of the following video.
In this video, Conrad discusses:
- The meaning of velocity in an ecommerce setting.
- Balancing incoming orders and their fulfilment.
- The importance of automation for eCommerce businesses.
- The challenges of sourcing and using affordable enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools.
For more of Conrad’s invaluable insights, check out parts two and three of the interview series: Business Intelligence and Summary Accounting and The Velocity of Ecommerce and Insight.
Early teleshopping in France, in the 1970s, paved the way for today’s ecommerce store, and now 51% of Americans now prefer to shop online rather than in-store. Despite this less personal approach, a memorable brand experience and gaining long term customers remains the objective for any seller.
Social media has proven to be a powerful tool for marketing products and pushing people to purchase online. However, the urge persists for many shoppers to seek out real human interactions.
Brick and Mortar Stores
High Street still holds customer loyalty for one-stop, theme and specialty shopping.
Owners and managers can sample the customers’ wants, needs, and concerns in-person, and guide the customer in making a purchase. Customers can test, or try on, and glean in-depth product performance information.
The brick and mortar approach can leave a lasting impression on buyers, encouraging loyalty and repeat business.
Global Ecommerce
Despite the hands-on approach of brick and mortar stores, ecommerce has some clear advantages. These include lower operational costs, and 24-hour selling capabilities.
Customers, across global markets, can compare prices and buy the selected product at the best prices - from anywhere, at any time.
The creation of marketplaces, affiliates and third-party sellers, social media, and reviews, enables faster buying. This is achieved by reaching large audiences 24/7 through the creation of a shoppers’ multiverse, including B2B, B2C, C2C (e.g. Etsy and Craigslist).
Omni-Channel
Simply put, Omni-channel (OC) is ecommerce that is integrated with retail from High Street specialty stores. Omni-channel customers spend two to three times as much, on average, as a single-channel customer buying from in-store-only or online-only.
For OC to work well, it requires adapting inventory management methods and marketing campaigns. These adaptations are worthwhile, however, as OC is a very potent, cross-channel, content strategy that allows customers to research, browse, shop, and purchase seamlessly on different platforms.
The Future of Ecommerce
By 2022, ecommerce revenue in the US alone is expected to reach $707 million. Mobile sales will top 50%.
Sellers capitalizing on this trend experience an increase in pressure, demands and complexity - a known side effect of scaling up. Automation helps to offload these factors, improving productivity and reducing stress and errors.
Adaptability, Integration and Automation
One of the latest significant events on the horizon, which is putting pressure on third party sellers, is Amazon’s branding. This was formerly a lucrative and creative niche for entrepreneurs and established companies alike.
For Amazon sellers, this brings the importance of crucial decision-making to the fore.
To succeed, they must have as much of a competitive edge as possible. This requires real-time analysis of metrics, inventory flow, and cash flow predictions. One of the most effective ways to stay on top of this is by using an integration platform.
A2X is a leader in business intelligence for accounting, ensuring you stay on top of your game and ahead of the curve.
Automating the most time consuming and complex parts of your business is what we do best; ensuring you can scale up your profits, but not your stress levels. Sign up for A2X today and enjoy intuitive, automated and perfect reconciling of your accounts.
Transcript
Intro: Whether you’re on the go or in the office A2X will save you time and money. You’re selling on an ecommerce platform, and you want to do it right. This video is an interview with Conrad Rohleder, founder of Clearinity, a premier integration company.
Conrad Rohleder: When you had brick-and-mortar stores, a customer had to stand in front of you and you had to sell them a product. With ecommerce, you’ve got 10,000 orders a day and you don’t even need to talk to customers on Amazon. It’s huge!
The velocity of ecommerce and sales
Businesses for the last several thousand years have really kind of been stuck in what I call “stage 3”, that there’s some evolution that can happen.
But eventually, they were topping out at this very real-life thing, which was that in order for you, Karen, to be able to sell to me, Conrad, we had to be in the same place at the same time, looking at the same products and agreeing on a sale right then and there, you know?
And yeah, sure there was some evolution in some intercontinental trade, but that still involved people, it was a very slow process. You know, we didn’t start to see real changes until things like mailers came out or you could scribble your order and mail it away, but then we saw a huge change when ecommerce started.
You know, the concept of the internet and this technology boom, it really changed its dynamic because now, I could sit in my PJs at 2:00 AM and you, Karen, could sell me something, and you could be on the other side of the world and never have… even have to talk to me, you know? So, that… It’s really increased the velocity of orders, but it’s kind of comes at a complexity cost too, you know?
Karen Brady: Right. Well, let me catch you right there because I’m dying to know, what is meant by velocity in this context?
Conrad Rohleder: Right, good question. And… and velocity in this context really does refer to the fact that it is the speed of orders being generated, but also the speed of orders having to be fulfilled.
And that altogether would be business velocity. Yeah, so velocity in this context really is the speed of orders coming in and being generated, but also the speed of fulfilment of those orders. So, that together is like business velocity, right?
But the huge challenge here is that, in order to do it at the scale that can happen today, even small businesses have to consider automation and outsourcing, and that has its own problems, it goes back to this complexity question, you know?
Karen Brady: So, we’re taking that model of brick and mortar and then showing how that has expanded into the ecommerce profile and how it’s impossible to keep thinking or doing things the same way anymore, you have to think, “Okay, now I need to automate all these things, and I can’t possibly hire that many people.”
Conrad Rohleder: Right, right. And… and like you said, there’s outsourcing and that involves bringing in… especially something like… like a third party logistics company that will do your fulfilment for you, it makes intuitive sense, “They’re very good at this, they can do the warehousing, let’s just use them.”
But that has its own problems because now, you don’t touch your inventory, but somehow, you… your business needs to know how much inventory it has; it’s just kind of a crazy paradox. So, this is where people turn to tools like the ERP, enterprise resource planning tools.
The famous ones are NetSuite, SAP, etc. In my experience, companies don’t really afford that very well though until they hit about 50 million dollars top-line revenue.
Karen Brady: Okay.
Conrad Rohleder: It is a huge challenge, of course, you know? And… and if you talk to SAP and NetSuite, they’ll say, “Oh, no, we can do a lot lower in that.”
And 6 million is a benchmark I heard from someone else, and I said, “That’s fine, but it still comes at a cost because the cost of integration, the cost of onboarding,” the point is that there’s no such thing as a perfect solution here. And businesses today have to make huge trade-offs between, “Does it work?” or, “Can I afford it.”
Karen Brady: Exactly.
Conrad Rohleder: Yeah, yeah.
Karen Brady: So, naturally, sellers will try to go with the tools available on the apps market today, and logically ERPs would seem high on the list, but obviously, they have to understand, you know, what you just need to live without.
And so although automation can definitely be a boom to ecommerce, the reality is that many businesses rely on outdated models. So, many thanks for your time and the benefit of your experience.
Conrad Rohleder: Thank you, thank you.
