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If there’s any industry that is thriving in India at the moment, it is eCommerce. Thanks to the large-scale internet penetration that was brought about by Jio, India is now home to the second-largest internet user base in the world. Ranging from basic amenities to luxury goods, a major part of this demographic now relies on eCommerce platforms and marketplaces for fulfilling their requirements.
Setting Up An Online Store: Challenges Involved
In the current scenarios, the Indian eCommerce industry is directly influencing the trajectories of various micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in the country by facilitating the means of technology, financing, and training. In the process, it has also managed to have a favourable cascading effect on other industries as well. The rise of eCommerce has also resulted in the online marketplace model gaining immense popularity among the masses. Subsequently, this has opened the eyes of multiple small businesses to the benefits of setting up an online store. Nevertheless, this process is not without its own set of difficulties.
On one hand, the presence of an online store allows the seller to reach a wider audience and saves them from the costs of maintaining a physical store. At the same time, however, it introduces other expenses such as shipping, warehouse, and inventory. Moreover, in cases where the sellers have multiple marketplace accounts, the need for acute vigilance announces itself as well. Running independent and non-overlapping accounts across multiple marketplaces requires sellers to constantly log in to each account in a bid to supervise inventory, orders, returns, and complaints. Performing all of these tasks in the absence of accounting online software becomes a herculean affair.
Need For A Multi-Channel Software
In order to handle data in a cost-effective manner, most sellers resort to using spreadsheets. However, such an arrangement only provides short-term returns and is extremely unviable in the longer run. To harvest long-term returns, sellers must look into avenues that enable them to scale up their businesses. This is where multi-channel software comes into the picture. The concept of multi-channel software is still relatively unknown in India. Despite that, it continues to receive lavish praise from the few patrons that it does have over here.
A multi-channel software allows sellers to streamline their multiple sales channels, making life a lot easier for them in the process. It helps them keep a track of their orders, oversee consignments and inventory, and take real-time updates from their courier partners. And because it does all of this across multiple marketplace accounts, it takes a great deal of burden off the sellers’ shoulders. The right multi-channel listing and accounts software provides you with a unified IT solution for all your sales channels and integrates different verticals of your business such as customer handling, inventory, marketing, social media, accounting, customer handling, order management, analytics, and customer management.
However, before you opt for a multi-channel software, you must keep a few parameters in mind. They have been discussed in detail below.
How Do You Choose The Right Multi-Channel Software?
Besides allowing you to put together all the different aspects of your business, a multi-channel software should ideally also be flexible enough to accommodate business growth. The factors stated below cover broadly the various checkboxes that multi-channel software is supposed to tick off.
With time, every business aims to increase its market share and penetration, and consequently its user base. Hence, as your business grows from a single warehouse setting to a global enterprise, you must ensure that the accompanying software suitably scales up as well as scalability of the software.
Along with being scalable, the software should be extremely flexible as well. Depending on the nature and scale of its operations, every company revises its business processes periodically. Thus, sellers must make sure that the software they opt for is flexible enough to keep up with the constant revisions. Moreover, it should present companies with the scope to implement business rules and customisations in line with their requirements.
The payment model that is adopted by the software must support multiple channels and options including net banking, UPI transfers, debit and credit card payments, and the kind.
It must be user-friendly in nature. The seller should be able to navigate the user interface without facing any complications and carry out all necessary operations efficiently.
Take note of the business solutions and channels that the software integrates with. This will give you a fair idea regarding whether the software will be a suitable fit for your operations or not.
Last but not the least, forage through customer review and feedback forums to find out what existing users have to say about the software. In many cases, this gives you more insight into the software than any other resources out there.
Benefits of Multi-Channel Software
The various benefits of using a multi-channel software have been stated below.
Streamlining the business processes and workflows of your multiple marketplace accounts enables you to drive up your sales numbers. As a result, you get the opportunity to take your business to more prospective customers and scale up your operations while you are at it.
A multi-channel software takes the administrative burden off your shoulders, thereby increasing the overall efficiency of your business in the process.
As it automates critical aspects of your business such as inventory management and order fulfillment, it eliminates the scope of human error to a great extent.
It allows you to channelise your time and resources into planning the growth of your company rather than managing the daily tasks.
By ensuring timely order fulfillment, and customer service, multi-channel software allows you to provide an improved user experience to your customers.
Powerhouse91 To The Rescue
While using multi-channel software allows sellers to efficiently manage their multiple marketplace accounts, they must be careful enough to opt for one that aligns best with their business. This is where Powerhouse 91 comes to their rescue. With a combined experience of more than 30 years across eCommerce, marketing, technology, and supply chain, Powerhouse91 exists to help eCommerce brands achieve their true potential by creating delight in the lives of millions of customers. We use significant growth capital, paired with extensive eCommerce expertise in order to take these acquired merchants to the next stage of development. Join hands with us to choose the right software for your multiple marketplace accounts and iron out your operations like never before!