IRCE - There and back again, a Liz Scott story.

by

Insight and reflection is necessary to the path of growth. As an outsider, the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) was a thrilling glance of how the Internet Retail world works. I started off my journey with clear objectives which were recurring questions and pains my e-commerce clients are experiencing. I quickly started feeling brought into conversations discussing solutions with my rapidly growing IRCE network of like-minded people.  The people I was learning internet retail from started asking me accounting questions and we began a journey to solve mutual problems.

I compare the feeling after the IRCE to how I felt before and after my very first Scaling New Heights conference. At first I felt intimidated and alone, but at the same time I was also feeling the pain points experienced by our firm and our clients. Then, in a short time, after listening and sharing, I no longer felt overwhelmed. Instead I began to team build and network by building solutions and joining forces with others in attendance to attack some of our common issues.

Just like value pricing, technology disruption and App integration are making-up much of the conversation in the accounting world, the IRCE network has similar issues which include omni-channel sales, inventory management, marketing and accounting integration.  Therein lies much of the common ground and mutual interests, because many of the things that we experience from our 'accounting side', the retailers and developers encounter from their side.

I learned business owners and developers share the same issues and desires we have, which is to create a seamless flow between marketing, hosting, reorder and shipping which ultimately feed into their accounting solutions including QuickBooks.

After commiserating together and agreeing we were on the same page we started looking to each other for expertise and guidance in our respective area of focus and agreed to team up to start creating the type of flow by which we can take the chaos and systematize it in some way so that we can essentially start to plug-and-play with it.

5 must haves areas of focus for Internet Retailers and solutions which caught my attention in each of these areas:

1) E-Commerce Sales Channels

  • Shopify Plus – E-commerce platform for high-growth, high volume merchants to sale online
  • Amazon – B2B marketplace helping retail sell to customers
  • Bigcommerce - E-commerce platform combining enterprise functionality, open architecture and app ecosystem
  • Magento - E-commerce platform and order management solution across B2B and B2C

2) Order Managements Solution (OMS) – E-Commerce Shopping Carts, Inventory and Shipping Management 

  • Skubana – The Operating System of Commerce. End to End system with shopping cart built into the order management system. Automates reorder points creating purchases order pending approval, calculates profitability, forecast inventory for strategized demand.
  • Orderbot – order management system (OMS) combining inventory, warehouse, product, customer and sales management

3) Accounting Integrations

  • FlowLink – Versatile E-Commerce integration system platform. Unlimited integrations to help you manage workflow including E-Commerce to QuickBooks, Netsuite and many other Accounting platforms.  
  • MobilityeCommerce – Automate B2B & B2c Omni-channel Sales and Marketing. Integrating Intelligence into your Retail Business including detail and summary options.
  • Bold Commerce - Shopify’s largest development partner for apps and integrations

4) Marketing

  • MailChimp - Email marketing, automated messages and targeted add campaigns
  • LoyaltyLion – loyalty and engagement software for customer engagement, retention and customer lifetime value  

5) The Fun Stuff isn’t just extra it keeps you and others engaged and excited  

  • Stickerbeat – 3M vinyl stickers customized to fit your brand
  • International Paper – fulfillment and delivery service, drop ship, returns and creates custom packaging
  • StickerMule – Creates fun branding and even custom packaging tape for order fulfillment
  • Ameson – Better cushion, better protection bubble wrap packaging machine and materials

"Now I lay me down to sleep..."

At the end of the day you must love what you do and feel like progress is being made to go to bed with a smile on your face. All the problems can never be eliminated but still, many smile worthy victories are made. My good friend Ann told me, “don’t fall over dead stressing over your to-dos instead just know the 'to-do list' will never be completely cleared and when you do eventually die there will still be to-dos on the list. “

The moral of the story is together we are better through friendship and teamwork. Through collaboration we can partner to create marvelous masterpieces. 

In the weeks and months to come I will be writing more on these 5 target E-commerce areas. 

By the way, be sure to stop by and see the people from FlowLink (one of my featured vendors above) while you attending this year's Scaling New Heights conference.  They will be making their very first appearance in 'our space' and we want to make certain to show them just how much fun we can be.