Ecommerce Business Consulting Services

BUILDING YOUR FUTURE E-BUSINESS TOGETHER

ECommerce businesses have traversed a long way from being subsidiary to the mainstream.

In eCommerce business consulting, Your Retail Coach (YRC) shapes up your future business, right from “Concept” to “Execution” & “Launch” in an organised way. The process is crafted into phases which are inevitable for building a successful and sustainable eCommerce business.

YRC’s team of E-Commerce experts helps clients from ideation to implementation in e-business consulting. Like doing any business is scientific, so is the eCommerce business. There are steps you cannot ignore; there are steps you cannot miss. As pulling traffic once can be done through digital spends but the real ROI comes only when those customers come back to you. Building an e-commerce business is no less than building any offline business. This is where we, as eCommerce business consultants, chip in.

E-COMMERCE BUSINESS MODEL AND STRATEGY

The eCommerce business model defines the success mantra of your venture in terms of UVP, revenue generation, value chain, and required internal capabilities. Business strategy provides direction to the company and helps in choosing the best foot forward. It includes defining your vision, mission & complete growth plan. YRC helps you in choosing the right business model for e-commerce, whether you are a B2B business, B2C business, C2C business or D2C business. YRC e-commerce business consultants identify your e-commerce niche, define your eCommerce business model and eCommerce growth strategy and your way forward in the form of a detailed Gantt chart for all the stakeholders within the organisation to be in the same league.

E-COMMERCE BUSINESS PLAN

A sustainable eCommerce business cannot be built without preparing the numbers

Ecommerce Business Plan includes your detailed financial plan while considering your capital investment in setting up the eCommerce store as well as your operating capital. Ecommerce revenue model includes mapping your capital expenditure against the operating costs to derive at the breakeven sales & understanding the return on investment. Projections for the next 3 to 5 years are extremely important to know the growth required each year to reach a point of ROC. A sustainable eCommerce business cannot be built without preparing the numbers. Cash flow is prepared for the businesses to understand their inflow & outflow for the next 2-3 years. Cash flows are extremely important to understand the number of funds required by the business before they can sustain by itself. 78% of eCommerce businesses start without cash flow planning & run out dry in the midst of operations, in a position where they can neither be funded nor they can self-fund.

E-COMMERCE TEAM ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

Define Job Description, KRAs & KPIs or internal & external team members, which help to align them to achieve a common goal.

In eCommerce business consulting, YRC eCommerce mentors define the organisation structure for the e-commerce business, the positions required in each function with their profiles, interview questions, KRAs, KPIs & reporting structure. Along with the profiles we define the level at which the team needs to be recruited with their salary range which fits into the budgeting as noted in the business plan. In e-business consulting, YRC team of eCommerce business consultants assists in eCommerce recruitment by conducting interviews of shortlisted candidates to ensure they are the best fit for the eCommerce roles and responsibilities defined. Organisation structure helps in quick turn-around-time for new employee onboarding, for assessing the performance of the existing ones, run by the tasks & follow the task calendar.

E-COMMERCE BRANDING STRATEGY

An area that has to be most thought upon as it would be giving the first impression to the customers…

An area that has to be most thought upon as it would be giving the first impression to the customers of whether the brand is affordable, luxury, value for money or exclusive. Ecommerce branding strategies include your logo, the brand colours’, brand story, e-commerce packaging, tag line, e-commerce photography guidelines & all the other tangible as well as intangible forms of brand communication. YRC Ecommerce Management Consultants define the detailed scope of the work of the e-commerce branding agency & manage the entire activity until delivery.

Responsibility of getting things done from the eCommerce branding agency would be the scope of YRC Ecommerce Business Analysts & we have been doing these activities for numerous clients across the globe.

E-COMMERCE UX DESIGN & WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

UX helps in eCommerce customer journey mapping and design thinking entire process flow.

This part of the activity is divided into 02, selecting the right platform & creating a factorial wire-frame. Selecting the right platform for developing your online e-commerce store is of utmost importance as it’s not an easy task to shift in cases you have chosen a wrong one. There are several platforms available & YRC eCommerce website development services help you choose the best eCommerce platform after understanding the requirements of the features, product as well as the service. Once the platform is chosen then the next step is the most critical path i.e. developing an e-commerce UX & wire-frame. Ecommerce UX would include finalizing the eCommerce customer journey map, website features, the browsing features, navigation features, eCommerce order management process flow, checkout cart features, catalogue management, eCommerce payment system, cross-selling features & much more. It is observed that “68% of the customers abandon their cart just before checkout”. This indicates the importance of ease of navigation & minimal steps between browsing & checkout.

YRC eCommerce specialist develops the sitemap to include the number of pages that we intend to have on our website & all the interlinking features. Ecommerce ERP Masters would be finalized, to name a few, product master, logistics master, price master, etc.

The Ecommerce consulting experts help in designing the eCommerce terms and conditions like customer return policy, warranty policies, etc.

These services are invaluable considering the time, energy & efforts to deliver as committed.

E-COMMERCE STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES (SOP’s) & BEST PRACTICES

Without SOPs in place, businesses generally tend to spend more on unplanned, unexpected & unrequired eCommerce activities and processes

Against the myth that Ecommerce businesses are cheap to operate & are a source of quick money, the truth is eCommerce businesses are capital-intensive & if the marketing, logistics, market place commission & packaging are accounted, they take up half of your profits.

In such margin-sensitive businesses, it is all the more important to keep a check over other operating expenses. Without SOP’s in place, businesses generally tend to spend more on unplanned, unexpected & unrequired things & fail to plan cash flows.

The key function in E-Commerce includes Sourcing, Warehousing, Order Fulfilment, Accounts, CRM, HR, IT & Inventory Management.

• Sourcing, covers activities right from generation of Purchase Order, inward of goods, software inward entry, product category finalization, pricing, bar-coding, put away & stacking it, ready for delivery.
• The account goes in line with purchase/ sourcing while collecting all the necessary documents like invoice, challan, Software entry slip etc. Accounts function SOP also covers the payments & reconciliation processes.
• E-commerce order management process flow includes receiving the order to fulfilling the order as per the requirements of the end consumer.
• Human Resource SOPs include defining eCommerce job description, e-commerce interview questions, eCommerce recruitment process, HR Policies for eCommerce remote jobs and onsite full-time team members, their incentive plans, performance appraisal system etc.
• E-commerce inventory management process is the heart of the business. The business cannot afford to overstock or understock, inventory having more slow movers & such equivalent scenarios which directly hits the bottom line. YRC, Ecommerce consultants from India prepare a detailed eCommerce inventory management process, from production to sales. The lead times of every activity is accounted for, along with their requirements to build a sturdy “Inventory Model”.

E-COMMERCE TOOLS AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION

Selection of the right software for the smooth functioning of eCommerce backend processes right from “order receiving” to “last mile delivery” and “customer service”

Selection of the right eCommerce management software’s and enabling eCommerce integration with these eCommerce tools for the smooth functioning of eCommerce back-end processes would be executed by YRC.

YRC’s enterprise eCommerce solution defines the eCommerce process flow chart and creates a blueprint of all the features required in the enterprise eCommerce software & help in shortlisting & selection.

Multi-channel eCommerce Integration involves connecting your offline inventories with a real-time online store so when a sale occurs, inventories get deducted real-time across offline as well as online platforms. This helps in accurate eCommerce inventory management, maintaining the re-order levels & achieving the optimum inventory levels.

E-COMMERCE ORDER FULFILMENT & INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Order Fulfilment, Supply Chain & Inventory is the heart of the eCommerce business

Ecommerce Warehouse or eCommerce Fulfillment Center is the heart of the Ecommerce Business. YRC Ecommerce Consultants help in optimum utilization of space i.e. goods receiving area, goods processing area, walk-way, damaged goods area, staff area, office area & further. Apart from space allocation, we must define the infrastructure required to perform these activities, in regards to furniture & fixtures as well as IT equipment. Rack Planning helps increased storage capacity, better inventory control, and organized operations & goods maintenance. The Warehouse layout is defined in terms of hardware as well as software requirements. The size of the warehouse is determined based on eCommerce inventory management process to ensure you take up the right side of the warehouse so you are not left with excess space or “no space” situations. Warehouse Planning and supply chain management in eCommerce is done considering the entire business plan for at least 02 years. Warehouse Planning benefits in several ways including faster processing of goods, accurate flow of inventory, the optimum number of people allocated with appropriate activities & error-free e-commerce order fulfilment process reporting flow.

E-COMMERCE MARKETING STRATEGY

Invest time in strategy before investing in ad campaigns. Striking the balance between “driving traffic on website” and “customer acquisition” is important to win the battle !!

These activities are recurring & would decide traffic on the website, the conversions, whether the right target group is tapped, the likes, the reviews, the revenues & much more. YRCs Ecommerce Consultants create a budget for e-commerce marketing strategy right from pre-launch to launch & for each month thereafter.

Building digital marketing strategies in coordination with the eCommerce marketing agency, shortlisting and selecting them to sign SLA’s would be the role of YRC.

This ensures seamless coordination, detailed interactions & desired execution as it is always advisable to work with a single agency than multiple of them. SEO for an eCommerce website is another important activity which requires an organized approach to get desired results, thus hiring the right e-commerce SEO expert who can deliver results is another challenge.

Ecommerce CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is one of the most challenging activities for eCommerce business as the customer is remote & they can be understood only by their actions like purchase, review, return, like etc. All the existing eCommerce companies would agree the difficulties in attaining the customer delight standards by communicating with them indirectly v/s a face-to-face interaction in the offline businesses. YRC e-commerce sales strategy specialist incorporates their expertise here & build a robust eCommerce CRM strategy to not only delight the customers but to also to retain them for longer.

E-COMMERCE AUTOMATION

Ecommerce Businesses willing to scale must ensure that most of their processes should be automated and system-driven, not person has driven!!

The idea of having Ecommerce Consultants on-board from the beginning itself points towards reducing the involvement of the promoters in daily operations. Ecommerce Businesses willing to be a brand reaping profits & sustaining the competition must ensure that most of their processes should be automated. The more the manual intervention, the more would be the errors. In Ecommerce business, you get only one chance to impress the customer & if you mess up there, you lose the customer for long. Ecommerce process automation in respect to all the activities pertaining to customers from order receiving to order fulfilment is a must for a seamless experience for the customers. Task Management is another grey area where most deadlines fail as 90% of the tasks are assigned manually & are forgotten, unheard, misunderstood or mistaken.

YRC Ecommerce Management Consultants help to make the maximum of the processes system-driven to ensure minimalistic manual intervention. AI in eCommerce has taken personalization for e-commerce to the next level and penetration of AI is increasing by the rapid speed in the global eCommerce market with the help of few saas eCommerce solutions. YRC suggests solutions for process automation and BPR in eCommerce that benefits them for data management, eCommerce analytics & eCommerce fraud prevention.

E-COMMERCE LAUNCH STRATEGY

Get the final touch-ups, ensure website launch checklist is ticked, getting the entire business rolling and awaiting the successful launch day. It’s the most exciting phase !!!!

At the Pre-Launch Stage, YRC E-commerce Consultants help is the final User acceptance testing (UAT) of the e-store and mobile e-commerce application, get the final touch-ups & changes done from all the vendors, trial run the SOP of warehouse, order fulfilment, logistics & customer service.

For Launch, marketing campaigns are designed in coordination with the agency, web store launch checklist is ticked through, online store traffic management, order management and people management etc. is done.

Ecommerce Consulting Services provided by YRC not only gets you their experience but also ensures a single-point contact for the getting the entire brand up & running. YRC’s enormous experience in each of the functions can be leveraged to its optimum to build a robust, sustainable & profitable brand.

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