The TOP Sellers Guide to:

Choosing Multichannel Management Software

What is Multichannel Software?

Multichannel software allows you to manage product listings, stock and orders across multiple online sales channels. These channels may include marketplaces like Ebay, Amazon and Etsy, and shopping carts like Magento, Shopify and many more.

Instead of logging in and out of your individual ecommerce channel sites constantly trying to juggle stock levels, fulfil orders and check the consistency and quality of your product listings, you do it all within one piece of software in real time.

This means you can manage your eBay, amazon, etsy and shopify website all from the same dashboard and software screens.

Multichannel management software is at the back of the list for many small business owners, and yet it can offer a great deal saving time and reducing mistakes.

Find out what features to look for, what licencing limitations to beware of, and how pricing models work in this thorough guide.

Why might I use it?

Multichannel Management software is a great time-saving tool, reducing the administration time your business spends managing online catalogues across Ebay, Amazon and your website cart.

Most businesses are actually way beyond the point where multichannel management software could help them when they first think “there must be a tool out there to do this”.

Answer yes to one or more of the questions below and your business is almost certainly ready for Multichannel software:

• Are you selling products through at least 2 channels, per-haps including your own website or bricks & mortar store?

• Do you struggle to keep your online catalogues and listings up-to-date across all channels?

• Is it a daily struggle keeping track of your order activities across your various sales channels?

• Do you find it a burden to have to log in to multiple channel sites such as ebay and amazon?

• Do you find you are constantly paranoid you will have stock shortages?

What could it do for me?

Save Time Multichannel Management products help businesses that sell online save time. This means you have more time to spend on profitable activities, or simply relaxing!

Reduce your Listing errorsThey help reduce listing mistakes which in turn makes seller ratings better. Businesses generally see a great improvement in the consistency and quality of their product listings as they can quickly change the way a single product is listed across several channels. This is great as it means the business is less likely to change the price or to modify the description of an item on ebay and forget to change it on Amazon.

Stop OversellingThey reduce stock handling errors and issues making your business more reliable. Synchronising your stock levels across platforms and centrally managing stock updates means that you can’t sell the same item twice! Errors associated with manual updating of stock are also reduced.

Even the smallest multichannel ecommerce businesses can see a very good return on using a management tool that is specifically designed to support small businesses.

It is just the case of choosing the solution that meets your needs at the right price.

Remember:Feature-rich software doesn’t have to be expensive.

This guide will help you find the right software at the right price.

Is our business too small?

“If you are selling your products on 2 or more sales

channels including perhaps your own website or a

physical shop, then you are ready for multichannel

management software.”

FEATURES

Listing & Product Management

There are a lot of multichannel solutions on the market that do not have listing capabilities.

This is a serious limitation. Opting for a solution with no listing management facility and means you will still need to manage your listings and products on a channel by channel basis.

Look for software that allows you to:Create kits/bundles and product variations Create products in bulkCSV upload to create products from Excel spreadsheetsQuickly create channel-specific listings using customisable templatesView all active and historic activity. Revise active listings. Relist ended listings, using the same listing settings.Import existing products, listings and templates from sales channels

The order management functions in multichannel software work by collecting all the orders from your sales channels and displaying them on a single screen where you can fulfil them.

You work within this screen to pick, pack and mark your orders as shipped. The software then returns the required information to the individual sales channels.

Look for a solution that:Automatically collects your orders for youDisplays all orders from all your channels on a central screenAllows you to bulk process order confirmationsAllows you to create and print crosschannel picklistsLets you prepare your orders for shipping including printing your order confirmation slips, invoices and shipping labelsUpdates your channels in real-time

FEATURES

Order Management

FEATURES

Stock Control

From the very day you added a second sales channel to your business, you have probably experienced the headache of keeping your stock levels up to date across your business.

Either you are super alert and super hot at constantly managing your stock levels and instantly adjust the stock on all your other channels when something is sold on one channel or you know and understand the pain of overselling.

Good multichannel software has automatic real-time inventory control. As a minimum software should allow you to:

View a central, realtime record of your total cross-channel stock levelsDitch your manual stock calculations - a sale on one channel triggers an update of stock levels on all other channelsSell your products as kits or bundles knowing the interface will automatically deduct the individual items from stock.

You may additionally want to integrate your ecommerce management software directly with your shipping carriers or small business accounting package, such as Xero.

Full accounting integration can offer significant benefits as you don’t have to manually retype orders into your accounts saving you hours each month.

It can be hard to find multichannel software that supports your current accounting system. Many small businesses are happy with their existing accounting system and don’t want to change to Xero or similar. Instead they look for a multichannel management solution that allows them to export a CSV of their orders which they then import to their accounts package.

You may choose to look for multichannel software that integrates with your shipping carriers. Again, sales carrier integration can be patchy. If your carrier is not supported look at the potential for CSV export/import between your carrier and the sales channel.

Shipping and Accounts

FEATURES

Integrations

When looking at a multichannel solution, one of your first questions should be “does it support my marketplaces and shopping carts?”

MarketplacesYou will find that the majority of good multichannel software will support the big three marketplaces in the UK and USA: Ebay, Amazon and Etsy. If you are selling on these marketplaces in other territories, make sure you check that these territories are available.

Common Shopping CartsThe majority of multichannel management sofware supports the common shopping carts including Magento, Shopify and WooCommerce. Do check explicitly that your cart is supported.

Less Common Shopping CartsIt is possible to find support for the less common shopping carts but you may need to look around a bit. Expandly, for example, supports many of the more niche carts.

When selecting multichannel management software you’re looking for something that isn’t going to break the bank. Afterall, you don’t want to spend all your hard earned profits on computer software and admin.

Consider the following as you evaluate the options:

Can you realistically afford to be tied-in to the pricing month-on-month throughout the year? It may be OK at peak times, but is it going to be OK on average? What restrictions does the pricing model place on you? Are you likely to quickly outgrow these restrictions and be forced to go for a more pricey solution?

Do you get free support if you need it?

Which software really offers the best value for money when functionality and pricing and licence restrictions are all taken into account?

Pricing

One of the hardest things to understand when assessing multichannel software options are the details of the licensing models. One company may offer you 500 SKUs, 3 users and 1 marketplace in their entry level pricing band, whilst another is offering you 50 skus, unlimited users and unlimited marketplaces.

What does this all mean, how do you choose and what do you really need?

SKUsSKUs or stock keeping units are the individual purchasable item in a store or catalog. One purchasable item = one sku. If you’re running a small business with a small stock holding 50 or 500 SKUs might seem like a lot. However, SKUs can add up pretty quickly especially if you are stocking items with multiple colour variants - each colour will be a single SKU. 5 mobile phone cases, each in 10 colours is 50 SKUs straight off.

Entry-level pricing that allows a handful of SKUs you will quickly outgrow.

Pricing that offers unlimited SKUs leaving you free to grow.

Licencing Limitations

Beware of:

Look out for:

UsersMany multichannel ecommerce software providers place a limit on the number of users in their entry level offering. For those at the larger end of the small business bracket, you may find your headcount already exceeds the maximum limits of the basic pricing models. This will push you up to the more expensive packages from the start. Smaller business should be wary as a limit on your headcount reduces your future scalability. Most businessess like to know that when their business grows they have some wiggle room to get in some help, and that computer software licences won’t hold them back.

Options that offer only 1 or 2 or 5 users before hiking the price.

Software that doesn’t penalise you for headcount growth.

MarketplacesMany pricing models place limits on the number of marketplaces or channels a business can integrate with at the basic level. Two ecommerce marketplace integrations may seem like enough to you now but you may quickly find that you want to augment your Amazon and Ebay stores with a webshop or vice versa.

Software that places tight restrictions on the number of marketplaces.

High or unlimited marketplace and shopping cart integrations.

Beware of:

Look out for:

Beware of:

Look out for:

Annual Tie-InsAll small businesses need to remain flexible in their financial commitments in order to remain capable of responding to changes in circumstance. Pricing plans that lure you in to signing up to an annual fee by offering significant pricing discounts can leave you saddled with a cost you can’t afford if something happens to you or your business.

12 month tie-ins if you want your cost base to remain flexible.

Month-by-month payment plans that don’t lock you in.

Keep these 3 thing in mind:

Beware of:

Look out for:

SKU Limits: Can I viably work within the SKU limits? Even if I grow?

Marketplace Restrictions: Are the marketplace restrictions reasonable? In a year’s time?

User limitations: Are they realistic for my business now and in the future?

Multichannel management solutions come in two forms. Those you download and run on a single computer and those you access and use through a web browser.

So which would be best for your business?

Broadly speaking most small businesses want the flexibility and immediate access that is associated with a browser-based solution. The major advantage of such solutions are that you can log in from anywhere, as long as you have internet access.

Many of the benefits of desktop applications such as outright software ownership and security questions around storing sensitive financial information on third-party servers are not applicable when it comes to multichannel managment software. Most desktop solution sellers charge ongoing fees today meaning the costs are comparable. There may be arguments to say that desktop-based applications are faster than web-based ones as they are not reliable on internet connection quality. However, for this type of real-time application to work, the reality is that you need a reasonable internet connection anyway.

Most of us are now used to being able to access business tools from wherever we are, whenever we want to and multichannel management software is no exception.

Browser or Desktop

Summary

Look at the following as you evaluate Multichannel Software:

Cross-channel Listing & Product Management tools

Comprehensive Order Management tools that allow bulk processing of orders

Inventory Management tools that allow real time cross-channel stock monitoring

Integrations to support your Marketplaces, Shopping Carts, Shipping and Accounts

Licensing limitations that don’t hamper business growth now or in the future

A pricing model that is flexible and great value for money

About ExpandlyExpandly are the provider of multichannel management software for small ecommerce businesses.

The Expandly platform was built with the small business in mind, right from the start. It is simple, easy to use and focussed on helping small ecommerce businesses go from home-office or unit to warehouse and beyond.

www.expandly.com