Multi-channel Sales

Grow your business by adding new stores and business partners.

Multi-channel sales is selling your products through more than one venue; store front, web site or affiliates. The Internet makes this easy, almost too easy. The idea is to make your presence known to a larger audience, thereby increasing sales. If executed properly, the idea is sound, providing numerous benefits, but it also has many pit-falls that can be avoided with proper guidance.

Whether you are considering opening one or more brick-and-mortar stores, or additional web sites, there are special considerations that must be addressed.

• Inventory - this is the most significant and frequently overlooked aspect of multiple sales channels. How do you know what items are for sale at each location, especially if you have a mix of physical and virtual stores? How do you coordinate inventory across multiple web sites? More importantly, how do you know when an item is out of stock so you are not selling items that you don't have?
   
• Order Volume - will your systems and processes handle wild and erratic swings in order volume? The goal of increasing sales channels is to increase order volume. However, more sales channels also adds complexity, and complexity leads to volatility. Consider what will happen if, over night, order volume goes from 100 orders to 10,000 orders. It can happen, consider black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) or two weeks before Christmas. These are peak order times for many retail operations that can increase volume a hundred-fold.
   
• Customer Service - in retail (or e-tail) customers are your greatest asset, and strong customer service is your most valuable tool to keeping happy, long-term customers. Your customers need to be able to contact you and expect a timely response and consistent support. Whether your customer is across the country in London, Ohio or around the globe in London, England, they each need to receive a high level of customer service.
   
• Global Reach - the Internet makes it easy to reach customers around the world, but is your business prepared to support customers from areas of the globe where prime shopping time is 2:00 a.m. for you? How will you ship these items? What are the customs requirements? Currency exchange rates? Language barriers? Can your store support multiple languages?

Failure to plan for and handle these situations and others can mean disastrous results for your business. Improper inventory handling leads to lost sales. Business processes that can't scale to meet demand lead to poor customer service. Inefficiency is magnified resulting in significant increases in overhead cost.

TMG has the expertise to help guide your retail/wholesale/ecommerce company around the pit-falls on the road to business expansion. Start off your growth plans with the confidence that comes from expert guidance.

Contact Technology Management Group today for a free consultation.^* There's no risk, call today. What do you have to loose but more sales?

^{* Travel restrictions apply.}