ChannelAdvisor Repricing

Challenge

Bells Bike Shop (BBS) uses ChannelAdvisor to manage their product listings on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc.

Due to the dynamic and competitive nature of the bike business dealing with so many manufacturers, distributors, and vendors, they found their product and ship cost were changing frequently.  Managing these price changes became an enormous challenge for BBS staff so they looked for ways to streamline their repricing process.

BBS needed a process to check the lowest cost vendor, calculate the average ship cost for the item, include box cost, and estimated market fees to recalculate a new selling price for the item.  Once the recalculations were complete it had to be uploaded to ChannelAdvisor so the new pricing can be sent to all marketplaces the item was listed.

Processing 100’s of thousands of products daily and uploading those to ChannelAdvisor was very time consuming requiring a lot of staff time to complete.  Unfortunately, these uploads did not occur as often as they needed to keep up with the dynamic nature of modern-day marketplaces.  They found after the sale many products were selling below costs, or products were priced to high, so they missed opportunities to sell.

BBS realized something had to be done to streamline and automate this process so they could price their products competitively in real time.  They asked us to develop a system to automate repricing their products using the current cost, average ship cost, box cost, estimated market fees, and upload those recalculated prices to ChannelAdvisor in real time.

Solution

We created the Repricer Synch which checks every 10 minutes for products requiring price recalculation and upload to ChannelAdvisor.

We included a variety of user input options to allow BBS to set certain parameters for calculating a new price.  For example:  a “Min Shipments” option is included so they can set the minimum number of shipments required before actual shipping costs are used instead of a preset shipping value.

As part of the process, triggers were created to detect when product or shipping costs have changed.  If a change is determined, then the product is added to the repricing queue for subsequent repricing and upload to ChannelAdvisor.  Employing triggers targets only those products which require repricing making this process much more responsive.  It is no longer necessary to process the entire product catalog.

The Repricing Synch is designed to operate 24/7/365 automatically checking for product cost and shipping changes every 10 minutes by default.  Any products in the repricing queue are automatically recalculated and uploaded to ChannelAdvisor.

The Repricing Synch is a native windows 10 application running on BBS’s server.  Though it runs automatically in the background, it contains controls to allow for user configuration as necessary.

Bottom Line

The Repricer Synch we created for BBS performs the recalculation of prices automatically without the need for staff or human intervention.  As product prices and ship cost change, the new price for the product is automatically recalculated and uploaded to ChannelAdvisor.

This process is one less concern for BBS staff allowing them to focus on other aspects of operating their business.  This project is good example where automating is the right answer and best course of action.

To learn more about how we can help with your business automation, 3rd party integrations, custom development, and reporting, contact us.