Selling through multiple channels

Omnibus is an integrated, end to end sales platform that enables sellers to drive their sales through multiple channels like eCommerce website, brick and mortar stores, mobile app and marketplaces like Amazon. You should probably head down to our website to learn more about our platform and its features. In this introductory post, we thought of taking you through the journey of a typical seller, their challenges and where Omnibus fits in this journey.

The Seller's Dilemma

Let us consider a bookstore in the heart of Bangalore, Sri Venkateshwara Books (SVB). The bookstore was established in the 90s, a simpler time, when the internet had not yet permeated every aspect of our lives. Sales was easy - Customers would walk into the store, and the proprietor used to record sales in a large register. A handwritten chit would suffice for an invoice.

Traditionally, brick and mortar stores have provided customers with unique experiences. Most importantly, customers are able to get a feel of the products - They can touch them, they can try them on and get instant answers to their queries from the sales executives. The store owners can also decorate the space to reflect their brand and provide unique customer satisfaction that is hard to reproduce.

As the years rolled by and the internet successfully captured the imagination of the general populace, the idea of making purchases online was no longer a wild idea. Multi-million dollar funded startups started springing up around every corner, and eCommerce soon started capturing significant sections of the market. The idea of being able to procure products that were unavailable locally became a blessing and people from remote areas were able to gain access to a vast selection of products.

Brick and mortar stores have conventionally served customers who walked into their stores, and a few have ventured into posting advertisements in local newspapers. However, the number of customers that they can potentially serve is quite limited by geography. Online stores have no geographical restrictions and can potentially service orders from across the globe. Managing eCommerce stores also means lower rents and higher margins, and sellers can pass on these benefits to the customer to potentially create a virtuous flywheel and scale easily.

Getting started with an online store

Seeing the clear value proposition of having an online presence, Sri Venkateshwara Books (SVB), decided to ride the online wave. It should be fairly straightforward to get started, thought Ravi Kumar, the proprietor of SVB. He had a couple of discussions with his friend, Guru, and discovered that he could go ahead with two approaches - Work with a technology partner and get an online store set up, or opt for a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. 

The Technology Partner

Guru introduced  Ravi to Joseph, a web designer, who has set up a few online stores for other clients. During the discussion, Joseph showed a few sample sites that he had set up in the past and explained that he could easily set up a website for Ravi. When Ravi enquired about the pricing, he was taken aback. There were too many zeroes in the quoted price, and Ravi was not sure if investing a large sum into this venture would yield returns.

Ravi is not alone - Getting an online site set up through technology partners, often freelance developers, have multiple problems that are not apparent at the outset. In addition to the high upfront costs, they do not offer services beyond setting up the site. Partners generally use a free, open source platform like Magento and PrestaShop, and are often not aware of the platform internals. This can get challenging when the seller requests additional features - If a plugin is not readily available, the partner often makes an excuse or charges a huge amount to dissuade the seller from pursuing the request. Infrastructure management is another concern for sellers. Most partners like Joseph are well versed with setting up a website but often lack technical depth to manage infrastructure like servers, storage and security. This can introduce a risk to your site as it may be unable to handle increased traffic.

Unless you have a formal agreement that defines the nature of support with clear SLAs, that can be another challenge. To summarise, went on Guru, most technology partners treat setting up an online store as a one-time assignment and may not be able to provide support on a continuous, ongoing basis. 

SaaS platforms 

Comparatively, Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms are a safer alternative. For starters, the licenses cost significantly lower. This enables sellers to safely venture without high upfront costs or getting locked into a vendor. Also, these companies often have dedicated DevOps engineers to maintain the hardware infrastructure like servers and storage, and ensure that they are set up to automatically scale and handle variable traffic.

Since SaaS platforms work with multiple sellers, they provide an array of value added services like integrated logistics, chat integration and more. Setting up online stores is quite easy, explained Guru. If you have created an account Gmail or Facebook, this is similar - They typically have wizard workflows that collect information, and complete setting up the store.

Marketplaces like Amazon

Is creating a custom online store worth the hassle? Is it not easier to just sell on Amazon? After all, they take care of maintaining the website, scaling, acquiring customers, payment and logistics. I just need to add my products and I am done, isn’t it? It may look so at the outset, and is probably the right approach for some sellers. However, selling on Amazon also has its fair share of challenges. For many businesses, the high margins charged by Amazon makes it a non-viable option. As a marketplace, your products compete with other sellers, and building a brand is almost impossible. [Read more here]

Fragmentation

Ravi was convinced that the path forward was to continue selling through his brick and mortar store that had earned the trust of his customers over the years, but to also add his own online store and Amazon to his list of channels. When he tried to understand how his operations would change, Ravi was flustered.

Ravi realised that his team would now have to work on three different platforms, one per channel. Amazon provided access to their Seller Central console through which Ravi’s team would have to update prices and inventory, and track orders from Amazon. While his brick and mortar store would continue on his existing POS system, his online store had a different admin panel to manage prices, inventory and orders along with the website itself.

In addition to the duplicate (triplicate?) effort of adding new products and updating existing ones, he also realised that his inventory would go out of sync. If Ravi had just 5 pieces to sell, how should he distribute them across the three channels? Should he list them as 2, 2 and 1? While that could work, a channel that had more interested customers would not be able to fulfil it as it would see only limited inventory, despite having additional inventory that is apparently locked up with a different channel.

He also felt that generating and consolidating reports would become highly challenging. As each channel was backed by a different platform, the reports that they provided were not directly compatible with one another. Certain reports had additional columns while others had missing columns, and the ordering was also not uniform. This made it challenging for Ravi to analyse his sales and slice and dice data. Each time, there would be challenges to merge the reports into a single file and manage the missing data - Ravi was not tech savvy, and this was not his forte. He wanted to spend his time on analysing his business, not building reports.

Omnibus

Omnibus is a multi-channel sales platform that enables a seller to drive sales through multiple channels - eCommerce website, Point of Sale (POS), Mobile App and marketplaces like Amazon from a single console. Sellers can manage their products, inventory, orders from the admin panel, and even fulfil their orders with integrated logistics. Since it is a unified console, your inventory is always in sync, and generating reports across multiple channels is simple. If you think this sounds interesting, check out our website for more information.

Are you a seller with similar issues? Leave us your comments and tell us how you are addressing these problems.