Do you really need to change your multi-channel management solution?

At the recent Tamebay Brunch, there was an interesting discussion around choosing a multi-channel management solution and their short comings. Regardless of which solution you currently use or are potentially about to pick, there will always be that one extra thing you wish it would do but doesn’t.

Online retailers at the brunch had a variety of solutions ranging from an off the shelf multi-channel management solution to a fully bespoke self coded solutions. Creating your own solution is a daunting task, but how do you tailor a solution that’s perfect for you?

Just about any multi-channel management solution will do the basics of managing your inventory across multiple channels and gathering your orders into a single place, but there are many other aspects of running a marketplace business that the solution you use may not do. It could be courier integrations to intelligently route orders to a different carrier based on value, size or weight of the total order, it could be the initial listing on the marketplace, translation, the addition of a must have overseas marketplace or niche marketplace that they don’t support or something more technical like the ability to manage your sponsored listings on marketplaces.

Insight from retailer varied from seeking solutions for particular tasks to commissioning bespoke software. For example GFS who sponsored the round table have a GFS Channel Connector tool for multi-channel retailers to import the data into GFS Selector, queue label printing and send tracking information to the consumer via the channel where they placed the order. Whilst multi-channel may have some basic functionality, tools like the GFS Channel Connector can be fully mapped exactly to your needs.

The one thing that the retailers agreed was to focus on a single function at a time rather than get bogged down fighting on multiple fronts. When you have your first solution in place, tackle your second most pressing requirement and soon you’ll either have your own bespoke multi-channel management solution or a heavily customised off the shelf service. Even those who had built their own software from the ground up started with the task that was most critical to their operations at the time and once that was in place gradually added new modules until they had their own bespoke solution.

Whether it be a listing solution to complex tax calculations for overseas sales, there are a myriad of tools available in the Tamebay Guide. What’s the one tool that you use that’s proved invaluable and you’d recommend to online sellers with similar requirements?