Service for the exchange of requests between suppliers of goods and online stores

I’ll tell you about the service we developed. This is just a hypothesis test. But, I hope, many representatives of online stores will appreciate our brainchild, especially since the service is free.

Part of our team participated in the creation of several large online stores. We have extensive experience in working with suppliers and, accordingly, in online trading. It all started with small online stores, a meager assortment and a small number of suppliers.

Most business processes have not yet been automated. The key step in the automation of processes was the transition to 1C.

By that time, the company had over 50 employees. Among the enormous amount of work to improve the content, train staff, build the company’s structure and expand the assortment, there were insignificant at first glance problems, the solution of which we left for later.

One of these problems is the daily operational interaction with suppliers. Let me explain: this is work with requests that the online store creates daily for suppliers during the working day. Inquiries such as clarification of availability, questions about the product, putting the product in reserve.

Examples of requests made via ICQ or Skype:






In the online store, either the sales manager (a consultant on the phone) or someone from the procurement department deals with requests, it depends on the size of the enterprise. But with the growth of the company, the problem does not go anywhere and there are more requests. Therefore, the staff of managers has to be expanded. This can happen both from suppliers and from online stores.

The entire cycle of the exchange of requests, as a rule, occurs via e-mail, ICQ, phone. As it turned out during a detailed review of the process, employees have to perform many unnecessary actions in order to fulfill a simple request.

Here is a sample list of actions:

• Constantly changing browser windows;
• Transition from one dialogue in ICQ to another in mail;
• Search for the beginning of correspondence in the archive;
• Opening leftover files and searching for the desired article there, etc .;

And all this happens for each person according to a different algorithm and with a different speed. In addition, not many people can configure, for example, mail for their business tasks. And ICQ is by no means intended for business tasks, especially operating ones. As a result, the whole picture with endless correspondence is presented to the manager in an uncomfortable and incomprehensible format for perception.

It was decided to come up with some kind of software solution in order to facilitate the everyday life of operational managers. We looked at the logic of communication between managers of online stores with suppliers and came to the conclusion that we need to offer a standard for the exchange of such typical messages (requests).

For several months, work was underway on the service, there were a lot of corrections and improvements. Now you can start using the beta version of the service .

A few words about the service

• The online store creates requests for a reserve, clarification of availability, a question on a product, always using a single request form, then sends it to a specific supplier.
  
  
  
• The supplier receives a request from all of its online stores also in a single format.
  
  Communication with contractors is simplified, the speed of request processing is increasing, the quality of processing is improved due to the use of a single data format.
  
  
• All correspondence is stored in the service, you can quickly find or sort the necessary record by the fields “article”, “supplier”, “manager”.
  
  
  
• You can see what time the request from the counterparty arrived and how much the answer was given to it.
  
  
  
• The supplier can store the balances and update them as many times as necessary during the day so that online stores always have up-to-date information.
  
  
  

Dear readers, everyone who represents an online store or a supplier company that works with online stores, please express your opinion on this tool. And for those who need it, I suggest starting to use the beta version of the service for free and for as long as you like. All offers can be written here or by e-mail info@tradetab.ru .