Making your ecommerce stick with your business complexity

When looking for an ecommerce partner, understanding and documenting your business rules is a crucial step toward getting your platform working well for your own business needs. Too often, organizations give up on their ecommerce project because they are unable to replicate their business model with self-serve ecommerce platforms. 

At Ciao, we love working with these businesses! We’ve adapted our ecommerce platform for several customers and implemented standard solutions for others.

Our first step when starting a new ecommerce project is to understand the business:  

• How are the products sold? In bulk? In units? Another way?  
• How are the products purchased? By credit card? Though a purchase order? Another way?
• How are the products delivered? Onsite pickup? Customer delivery? Shipping partner? All of the above? 
• Who purchases your products? Individuals? Businesses? Business partners? All of the above? 

Through a collaborative workshop, we’ll map the customer and the delivery journey together with you, so we can make sure that we truly understand the business rules to implement. 

With this in mind, we’ll build the first iteration of the ecommerce platform with your business rules, so we can test it out and ensure it works correctly. 

Often, our customers have a hard time identifying their complexity because to them, it’s all normal! 

Here are a couple of examples where business rules matter: 

Unit Conversions

First, it’s essential to fully understand how the product is sold. Do you sell products in bulk—by volume, by weight, or by square inch? Minimum order volumes? Maybe all of the above is true?  

Our customer, Groupe Richer (read the story here) sells their products by the pallet, unit and linear dimensions. It sounds weird but when you sell grass, it makes complete sense!  

Understanding the conversion rates between different product units is key when setting up and integrating your ecommerce system. We work with you to ensure Addio Commerce is set up to support your business rules, not work against them. Too many times suppliers tell their customers to change their business practices to fit the system. 

Using Geo-location 

Letting customers know where you deliver can be as simple as offering a way to verify your delivery zones—think geo-location! 

Incorporating geo-location functionality helps clients understand exactly where your services are available. An interactive map that lets users search their address and instantly see delivery options can greatly improve the client experience. It sets clear expectations and reduces friction in the buying process. 

This seems all simple and straightforward, until you sell products that cannot be shipped by traditional means! Our customer, Piscines Soucy sells pool supplies. One cannot ship chemicals such as chlorine through most shipping companies. We worked with them to ensure adequate shipping options were configured.   

In Groupe Richer’s case, some of their products (think grass!) are too bulky and they have their own delivery services, in some areas in their market space. This means interfacing with their truck route management for some products, and a more standard logistics supplier for other products. And for some customers in some locations, pick up options! 

Taking time to understand speeds up integration later 

We have everything to gain by taking the time to fully understand how we can make the ecommerce platform work with your business rules.  

Clearly defining your business rules and validating your systems will make it much easier for your e-commerce partner to support you effectively. A good partner will guide you through the process, helping you identify opportunities to simplify or implement rules that serve your operations better. 

These complexities can make system integration feel challenging, but with the right partner, like Ciao, the process becomes much easier! 

What’s next? 

We’re here to help you get your e-commerce systems integrated with ease!  We’d love to speak with you about your project!