Great day everyone!
Third-party marketplace selling has become a very viable option for business to expand their market reach. eBay has reported that in 2012 alone, third-party sellers sold $19.1 billion worth of goods already1. Amazon have also reported growth among the number of third-party sellers in their platform: online retailers experienced $38.8 billion growth during the holiday season in the United States2.
And these numbers are growing, and third-party online marketplace selling will remain to be a viable business extension for as long as eCommerce is alive in the market. Connected Business' Inventorymodule is equipped with the latest technology to gear you towards selling thru third-party marketplaces. With its latest partnership with Solid Commerce, an established centralized inventory management service provider, Connected Business' Inventory lets you sell items via Amazon, eBay, Overstock and other third-party online marketplaces without worries.
SolidCommerce.com offers a myriad of services helping sellers with product and inventory management, pricing, bulk listing, order consolidation and fulfillment as well as shipping processes.
As Connected Business is integrated with Solid Commerce's Inventory Manager, you can now be able to upload inventory items(including item free stock and costing information) to Solid Commerce and download completed orders back to Connected Business.
Please note that the integration of Solid Commerce and Connected Businesss is still in BETA version.
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You need to create an account to access the Solid Commerce and start creating seamless transactions back to back with Connected Business. Upon registration and subscription to their services, an AppKey will be given to you and use this key when registering your Solid Commerce account into Connected Business.
You may access Solid Commerce dropdown menu by navigating to the eCommerce module > Solid Commerce(Beta) > Account. A small dialog box that prompts you to input your AppKey will be displayed.
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After logging in your AppKey, you may now set up Connected Business within the Solid Commerce website to accommodate integration of services.
But for now, let's first set up your Solid Commerce account. From the Solid Commerce Dashboard hover over the Products menu optionand select the Inventory Manager option. You will then be directed to the Inventory Manager panel which lets you configure your Solid Commerce warehouses and marketplaces in which you will sell your products in.
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To add warehouses and market lists, click the Add button on the left side of the Inventory Manager panel, and select whether you want to add a new warehouse or a new market list. Otherwise, you can rename or delete created warehouses and market lists by clicking on the respective buttons.
The next step is to set up our Connected Business solution to handle our integration with Solid Commerce. From the Solid Commerce dropdown menu, let's select the Data Mappings option for us to properly match our Connected Business locations with Solid Commerce warehouses, and configure our shipping carriers and carrier services.
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Let's match our inventory locations with our created Solid Commerce warehouses. If we haven't mapped any of our locations yet, they will be available in the Unmapped Locations tab. Display our locations and click on the respective dropdown button to bring out the available warehouses we can select from. Once we're done, let's click Next or if we'd prefer not to configure our shipping options, let's click Finish to end the wizard.
The next page will let us match our shipping carriers to the supported carriers of Solid Commerce. The last page will let us match our carrier services with carrier services accommodated by Solid Commerce.
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Next, we'll need to set up our market lists for the respective marketplace we want to sell our products into. For our example we will only create one for Amazon, but as long as we have different items we want to sell thru different marketplaces, we can create as many market lists as we need.
from the Solid Commerce dropdown menu, let's select the marketplace option to bring out the marketplaces form. From here you can create market lists for all your catered marketplaces.
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From the Marketplace form, let's select New to bring us to the Detail tab of a new market list. Specify the following details to configure our new market list.
| Field |
Description |
| Marketplace |
Choose from all the available Marketplaces. |
| Order Download Type |
Select either Batch Downloads or Individual Downloads.
- The Batch downloads option sets all the orders downloaded from the marketplace at one given time are consolidated into one order when downloaded to Connected Business. The values set in Default Customer,Source and Payment Type options in the Marketplace form are used in the consolidated order.
- The Individual downloads option sets all orders from your marketplaces are downloaded as individual orders to Connected Business. Customers' email addresses will be used to create orders and new customer entries will be created.
|
| Default Customer |
Whenever your Market Place choice makes this field available, orders downloaded from Solid Commerce will use the Default Customer information set to define which customer to create the sales orders to. |
| Active |
Select or deselect the checkbox to enable or disable the market list. |
| Source |
Select from the available sources in the dropdown menu. |
| Payment Type |
Set the payment type for the orders downloaded from this market list. |
After setting up these information, click Save and Close from the menu options to create our market list. Create as many as you need to accommodate your third-party online marketplace selling.
Automated Uploading and Downloading of Item and Order Information
Now here's what actually happens when using both the solid commerce and Connected Business.
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The Job Service engine is a powerful new addition to the Connected Business powerhouse features. We've revolutionized how we can perform customized and automated workflows and better perform our tasks. It is also the feature that we will use to create our automated uploading and downloading of Item and Order information.
From the System Manager, select the Job Manager dropdown menu and select Manage Job Plan. The Job Plan form will be displayed, showing us the available job plans. Let's create a new job plan by clicking the New button from the menu options.
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The New Job Plan Wizard will be displayed. Let's enter the needed information to proceed. The next page prompts you to define the triggers of when to execute the job plan. Set execution dates and end dates of your job plan and define run days.
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Once done, click Next to continue. The next page lets us indicate which job items to include in the execution of this job plan. Job Items are plug-ins that perform a specific task inside Connected Business. In our case, our job items are upload and download item and order information from Solid Commerce to Connected Business.
Let us first create a job plan that lets us upload our items to Solid Commerce. Select the Upload Items job item from the Available Job Items pane and move it into the Selected Job Items pane. Right-click on it and select Settings to configure.
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The Settings dialog will let us define further configurations on the job item. Define Pricing information from the Pricing tab - configure which Pricing scheme to use and if the job item will use a Price Listupon uploading your item information to Solid Commerce.
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The Warehouse tab lets you choose from which Solid Commerce warehouse the items will be uploaded to.
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The Criteria tab lets us filter which specific set of items will be uploaded once the job item is run.
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The Marketplace list lets us define to which Solid Commerce market list our items will be uploaded to.
After setting up the job item settings we can now finish the New Job Plan Wizard. Let's now view our Calendar by selecting the Job Manager dropdown menu and selecting the View Calendar option.
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Our newly-created Upload Items to Solid Commerce job plan will be displayed as Not Yet Approved. Let's double-click on it and its Job Plan form will be displayed.
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Let's make sure all the information about our job plan is verified and when we're done, click Approve Job Plan to set it running.
Our job item will be shown as On Queue inside our Calendar. We'll have to wait for its execution, depending on the trigger parameters we've set while setting up the job plan.
Keep in mind that in order to properly utilize the integration of Solid Commerce with Connected Business, we must also set up a job plan that uploads Free Item Stocks that updates the item quantities available for third-party marketplace selling, and a job plan that involves downloading of completed orders from Solid Commerce. Setting up these job plans also require the same process, we just have to select the correct job item plug-in for the job plan we are creating.
See the Job Service Engine running in real-time through our webinar on Third Party Marketplaces.
You can also view our feature ad video on Third-Party Marketplace Selling.
You can also read more about this topic with the Solid Commerce Integration online documentation.
Sources:
1 https://amazongenius.com/tag/ebay-third-party-sellers/
2 https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2013/1/1357144772.html