Dropship Management Software | SaaS | Case Study

DROPSHIP MANAGEMENT AND PIMONLINE RETAILER DOUBLES NEW PRODUCT OFFERINGS IN 3 MONTHS WITH MERCHANTRY SAAS DROPSHIP MANAGEMENT AND SUPPLIER CATALOG ONBOARDING

JUNE 23, 2015

CONFIDENTIAL, MERCHANTRY © 2014

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An innovative online retailer built a thriving business creating a marketplace with daily and weekly product deals across a wide range of categories, including fashion goods, electronics, home goods, health & beauty, kids and pets. Success hinged on onboarding dozens of new suppliers and thousands of products monthly

RETAILER OVERVIEW: MULTI-BRAND ECOMMERCE SITE

About the Retailer

• Online only business

• Daily & Weekly Deals

• Multi-brand retailer

• Fashion, health & beauty, electronics, kids & pets, home goods

• Dropship program management challenges

• Supplier catalogue onboarding challenges

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Dropship Program DisorderThe company launched a dropship program to scale the business quickly without having to manage inventory. However, they hadn’t anticipated how manual the program would be to manage.

Chaos Became the New NormalThe dropship program, proved to be highly manual and consumed nearly 100% of the time of three staff members.

The company’s staff was spending all their time on the clerical tasks of data entry and detail chasing, instead of the higher impact work of sourcing new vendors and products – the company’s true source of differentiation.

RETAILER CHALLENGE: RETAIL OPERATIONS MAYHEM

Dropship Challenges:

• Order

acknowledgement

• Managing returns

• Tracking shipment

status

• Keeping pulse on supplier inventory

• Reconciling invoices with shipments and returns

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Slow to Launch New Offers

A secondary problem was onboarding new suppliers, products and deals – a process that was equally manual.

Merchandisers and buyers spent too much time shepherding supplier and product information with spreadsheets being handed off between disparate teams, introducing errors and backlogs.

The Bottom Line Suffered

Operations couldn’t support the business: • Customers could not find out

order status • Returns management was

painful for all • Buyers were consumed by

spreadsheets and could not buy

• The buyer team was over 40% behind in bringing new deals to market

RETAILER CHALLENGE: MORE MAYHEM

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Dropship ManagementOrder from Chaos

Merchantry’s dropship management solution created a smooth fulfillment process that kept all buyers, suppliers and customers informed throughout. Covering order transmission, fulfillment and tracking, returns management and reconciling payments, the solution turned a cumbersome manual process into a fast and scalable area of excellence for the retailer. .

THE SOLUTION: CLOUD BASED DROPSHIP MANAGEMENT – SUPPLIER CATALOG ONBOARDING – PIM SOLUTION

Merchantry’s SaaS dropship management and product information management solution addressed the company’s core dropship challenges and their secondary supplier catalog onboarding and self-service PIM challenges.

Product Information ManagementEmpowering Suppliers

Existing suppliers transitioned to “self-service product information management”, giving them control to ensure their information was correct and up to date. New suppliers enjoyed a logical, repeatable onboarding process for their offers and deals.

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Software as a Service (SaaS)Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Merchantry’s cloud-based solution enables a pricing model based on usage based with minimal upfront implementation expenses. The solution was designed specifically for retailer needs and requires no custom programming and limited implementation support, resulting in a low total cost of ownership (TCO).

A New Sense of Order

• End-to-end, “out of the box” dropship management, PIM and supplier onboarding

• Automated order management • Satisfied customers and employees • “Self Service PIM” with suppliers

onboarding their own product catalogues

• Low total cost of ownership (TCO) Low upront expenses

• Fast “time to impact” with rapid implementation and adoption

• No hardware to manage

THE SOLUTION: SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS) AND LOW TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP (TCO)

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Higher Customer Satisfaction

Offering customers smoother,

better informed and more accurate

service, with the right items

delivered quickly, enhanced the

company’s reputation—a word-of-

mouth benefit that is particularly

valuable for an online retailer.

RETAILER RESULTS: RETAILER GENERATES RESULTS WITHIN ONE MONTH OF CONTRACT SIGNATURE

The Merchantry drop shipping and PIM solution was up and running within a month, allowing the company to start realizing a return on their investment quickly. Within 3 months, they had onboarded nearly 200 supplier catalogs, on their way to managing over 700 suppliers and 28,000 products today.

Improved Supplier Relationships

Just as important was the impact the

solution has had on supplier

relationships. Better processes and

connected systems eliminated

headaches, errors and bottlenecks

making the company easy to do

business with.

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Dramatic Productivity GainsEliminating time-consuming processes and errors cut the onboarding effort by a third and freed staff to focus on growing the supplier base and improving customer service. Cost saving is one thing, but scalable growth is even more important. The company is continuously adding 80 suppliers and 3,500 productsper month. And the company has nearly doubled the number of deals they can launch in a month, from 3,500 prior to Merchantry to over 6,000 new deals and products per month today.

RETAILER RESULTS: RETAILER GENERATES RESULTS WITHIN ONE MONTH OF CONTRACT SIGNATURE

Success by the Numbers

• 1 month from contract to supplier onboarding

• Within 3 months onboarded nearly 200 supplier catalogs

• Nearly doubled number of new deals per month – from 3,500 to 6,000

• Adding 80 new suppliers every month

• One-third less time spent on dropship order management and supplier onboarding

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Dropship Implementation Phase

No hidden costs outside contract

• No hardware purchase or configuration

(vs. time and money spent purchasing servers and DBs, configuring, etc.)

• No PIM software customization or outside tech resources required(vs. large professional services contract)

• Rapid PIM deployment and adoption

SAAS PIM RESULTS: MERCHANTRY’S CLOUD-BASED DROPSHIP MANAGEMENT SOLUTION SAVED TIME AND MONEY

Ongoing Dropship Support

No IT infrastructure or software upgrades to manage

• No FTEs for internal IT management

(vs. ½ FTE for server and software maintenance)

• Upgrades managed by Merchantry

• Dedicated account manager and support team for client users

• Supplier support for catalog onboarding

Low Total Cost of Ownership

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MERCHANTRY: SAAS PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT FOR MULTI-BRAND RETAILERS

About Merchantry

Based in NYC, Merchantry is the world's only cloud-based enterprise Product Information Management solutionDesigned by retailers for retailers, Merchantry's SaaS PIM delivers speed, flexibility and scalability:

• Robust dropship management• Fastest dropship management and PIM

implementation• Fastest supplier onboarding• Configurable enterprise-strength

product information management (no custom programming)

• On-demand PIM scalability without hardware purchases or management

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LEARN MORE ABOUT PRODUCT INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AND SUPPLIER ONBOARDING

Links to Additional Free Resources

• Case Study Webinar: The Future of Ecommerce -How Bluefly Excelled at Supplier onboarding

• Case Study Blog Post: Merchantry SaaS Product Information Management Accelerates time to Market For Online Retailer

• Blog Post: Product Information Management (PIM) Software Overview

• Demonstration: Schedule a SaaS Product Information Management solution demo