4 preparation gaps to fix before Q4 peak season hits

Speaker introductions and agenda

00:00:35 Niels Floors: Welcome everybody to this session today about holiday season readiness for peak season. I think it's something that everybody focuses on every year, right? We need to get ready. It's that time of the year that all systems will need to be checked, need to be prepared, and that stress tests will need to be done beforehand, that you are ready to really get those sales in.

00:01:31 Niels Floors: So we're going to go on, let's say, the next 45 minutes and take you to the topics today. And of course, I'm not doing this alone. I have the best speakers with me that are going to tell you all about the different pillars that we're going to focus on. But who best introduce themselves? Well, Julia, take it away.

00:01:53 Julia Flood: Thank you. Hi, my name is Julia Flood. I've been working on e-commerce market spaces for 12 years. Both in the past six years in particular, there's been such a huge rise in expectation and therefore requirements for syndication. I've had the opportunity to work with many different syndication platforms. But I'm here today as a consultant for InRiver supporting their syndication efforts. If you're not familiar with InRiver, it's a PIM platform. They have a very deep PIM network and they also offer syndication through their APIs and flat files. In terms of that PIM piece, it's a complex structure so that even the most complicated products and large SKU volumes can be handled. So it's been a great opportunity to work with them and I'm happy here today to share some syndication knowledge and help you prepare for your Q4.

00:02:51 Niels Floors: Thanks, Julia. And well, my colleague Tim in the room as well. Tim, can you introduce yourself?

00:02:58 Tim Smit: Yep, thank you. So I'm Tim. I've been with ChannelEngine Support for seven years now, last two years in technical support. So yeah, hopefully I can tell you something about the issues that we see in the run up to the busy holiday season.

00:03:17 Niels Floors: Great, thanks. And so I'm myself. So I'm Niels Floors, VP of Strategic Developments within ChannelEngine. So responsible for our global partnership ecosystem, our emerging markets, and new things that we have on our roadmap going forward to make sure that we can also help you sell on any marketplace, social channel, or future generic channels.

00:03:41 Niels Floors: Taking you a bit about ChannelEngine. So we are a global marketplace management suite, right? We support 1,300 marketplaces and other third party sales channels. Founded in 2013, 200 professionals around the world, but a huge partnership ecosystem that also supports our sellers, offices around the world, so that we can also support you 24-7 as e-commerce never sleeps these days.

00:04:11 Niels Floors: And as I said, we support global channels. So every region that you can think of, we have the local heroes, of course, the horizontal marketplaces, vertical specific marketplaces, the ones that really matter for your business.

00:04:48 Niels Floors: And as we've said, so today we want to focus on four different topics that we've identified as key preparation gaps that need to be covered before Q4. We've done an analysis of over 2,000 tickets that we received last year during our Q4 season. And these were the main gaps that we saw that people really needed to catch up and were not prepared for. So this year we proactively made a white paper to focus on these topics. But today we're also going to double down on these topics. The first two topics are the biggest two we're going to run down on together with Julia. And then it's about listings, promotions, stock, orders, and then a final wrap up of the key things that you need to take away from this session.

00:07:52 Julia Flood: From these, I do focus on product information on the listings. That's kind of where my expertise and my focus lies. So I think it makes a lot of sense that we've got a couple of people that want to know more about that area. They're also the first thing that the customer sees. So in a way, the stock and integration, the order and fulfillment, they only matter if the information on the page leads to conversion. So in my mind, what's on the page is the most important because if they're not going to order it, then it doesn't matter if you can fulfill it.

00:08:26 Tim Smit: Yeah, I do agree with that. I think that's a nice way to look at it. Of course, at support, we see all the issues that can arise here. I have experience with all of them and I think we can definitely dive into some of these topics. For me, I think I deal with integrations a lot. I also think that's interesting. So hopefully I'll be able to answer some questions.

Product data readiness and marketplace listings

00:08:52 Niels Floors: Good. Well, let's then dive into the first one. And I think that's also where we're going to look into the product data readiness here. So right, your product data is ready, but the marketplace listing is not, right? And this is something that we see a lot happening. So Julia, we're kicking off with you. How should teams decide which products need close attention right before Q4?

00:09:18 Julia Flood: Yeah, so I think that prioritization should really start before Q4. Once the season starts, it's moving very fast. So your attention needs to be on the top sellers, right? The easy answer is the top sellers. But I'd like to think that those would be in a good place at all times. So once you move past that, you're really looking at those seasonal items. Whether you have things that are specific to Christmas, to the holidays, or just items that make sense for the end of the year. The heroes should always be in a good place. Double check them, of course. But there are so many items online that you can really get lost in the shop. There are 12 million items sold by Amazon and then 580 million sold by third parties. So it is a very packed marketplace. From an Amazon perspective, you really do need to broaden that horizon and not look just at the top sellers. Your whole portfolio needs to be optimized. And that's where products like ChannelEngine and InRiver can really help you get ready for the season. But yes, top items are always the first thing I check.

00:10:31 Niels Floors: Yeah. And would you then say also looking at the top items, because you have, let's say, a bit of the required attributes — a lot of sellers focus mainly on required, right? How do I get my products with the minimal viable product on the channel? And then you have the optional attributes there. So look at that top segment of your sellers and get everything online to 100% there, or focus on the full catalog, just getting them live?

00:11:03 Julia Flood: I would focus on the former. There are a lot of optional requirements with most retailers. But it's kind of a black box in terms of the impact that they have. It's hard to tell. If you have the scent or some additional backend keywords, does it make a difference? It's hard to tell in terms of a real A/B study. But if you're leaning into Q4, that's where you're putting your dollars, that's where you're putting your efforts. I would definitely focus on the top items and make sure all of those optional attributes were filled out to the best of your abilities. Obviously, it depends on the catalog and the time and the resources, but those are the areas I'm looking into — the seasonal items, your top items, making sure that they are as filled out, as optimized as possible.

00:11:53 Niels Floors: Nice, yeah, nice. And maybe Tim, taking to you, because right, you see a lot of these error messages in our platform coming back on content feedback. What do you see happening when people are launching products and trying to get everything online?

00:12:10 Tim Smit: Yep, I think the absolute first thing that springs to mind is when products are mapped. So we do have the content mappings. We have an attribute for, let's say, to fill the description. So we spend time — or you, the merchant, has spent time — on making sure that this data is available and it's also imported into ChannelEngine and then it's mapped so it can be exported to the marketplace. So we map a row with, let's say, description English, and then we get an error message on maybe 10% of the catalog where it says your description is missing. Well, if you go to the mappings, it sometimes happens that even though the attribute exists and it's been filled from your PIM system, maybe it's not been filled for all items in your catalog. So I think it's really important to check that the data that you sent in is complete and properly mapped as well.

00:13:15 Niels Floors: Yeah. And of course, marketplaces and retailers keep on adding attributes as well. So they can throw a curveball at you from time to time there. So maybe also connecting to that, Julia, back to you on this one. What needs to be verified before product information is sent to a marketplace?

00:13:33 Julia Flood: So all the basics, again, is the easy answer — making sure you cover all your bases. But the things that I see trip people up are any changes with legal. So if there are certain claims that you can or can't make, I see that kind of change come up a lot. Another is talent usage. So with most content used by agencies to make images or video — assuming it's not AI, if it's real people and talent, there are usage limitations and terms for those. A lot of the time there is turnover of that talent, so changes need to be made so that you're not in violation. Then there's also the seasonal things, like calling out FSA or HSA available or approved products. There are a lot of different things, but those are the ones that I see most. Those legal claims and call-outs need to be updated and verified before information is sent out. And then again, the talent — just making sure that the content you're using is approved. With AI, I don't know how that changes some of the talent usage requirements, but I think this is the area I would focus on.

00:14:47 Niels Floors: And that compliance part also — it's different for every country and region, right? I think the biggest mistake that a lot of sellers make is just a copy-paste approach, thinking they can copy paste all the content from one Amazon channel to another or just from one marketplace to another and then think they're ready to go live. And I think that's one of the biggest dangers of launching on the marketplace, because it's not your own channel. It's their requirements. You need to adhere to them and you need to make sure that, one, you fit those requirements. But next, you also need to see that it has been accepted on the front end as well, because getting a good confirmation back doesn't always mean that it's published on the front end of the channel.

00:15:41 Niels Floors: Looking at the marketplace specific things — Tim, which marketplace specific categories, content, and listing requirements should teams really take into account when submitting?

00:15:57 Tim Smit: Yeah, I think this also loops back to what you said before. So specifically on things like brands and categories that are specific to certain products. We try to import that every week from marketplaces. But it can sometimes happen that a seller has a new brand that they wish to sell on the marketplace. And so they've reached out to the marketplace, asked them to add that brand as an attribute. And then we have to import that. So I think it's really, really important to check that stuff like this is in order before the peak season starts. Because if we then still need to check whether we actually imported it, whether the marketplace actually added it — that's some back and forth that then keeps happening. I also wanted to mention that for most of these, for example brand mappings in ChannelEngine, those are called option mappings. So you can map your brand to the brand that's known at the marketplace. We now have the sync option in the mapping — the little two arrows. If you click on that, it'll sync the brand from the marketplace. So I thought that was good to mention.

00:17:07 Niels Floors: Yeah, nice addition there. And I think that's the most important part — making sure the content is sent to the specific specifications of the marketplace, making sure that the brands are known, that it will be accepted on the marketplace in time before Q4, before the peak season starts.

00:17:29 Niels Floors: But let's say we're sending it via the requirements of a marketplace — that's what we all do our best with syndication tools, with ChannelEngine, with everything we can do to send the content in the right formats. But maybe going back to you, Tim — how do teams confirm that the submitted product attributes have really become live on a live listing?

00:17:56 Tim Smit: Yep. So we try to update sellers as accurately as possible on that. In the listed products page, we have the status — so it can be published, not published, under review, etc. I think it's really important to also take a section of your catalog and verify on the marketplace itself. We try our best to give that information as accurately as possible, but not all APIs do return that as accurately as we would wish. So you don't have to check 10,000 products, but make sure that at least for a sample of your catalog, you do actually go to the marketplace and see the offer for yourself — that it's online with all the attributes that you wish to have on there.

00:18:46 Niels Floors: And of course, look at your top sellers first. Start top down where you put most of your budget, where your campaigns are going to be running, because if you don't have a listing and you have your campaigns running on them, there's a loss of money. Julia, looking at downstream marketplace feedback and governing recurring data — how do you use that feedback that you get from the marketplace?

00:19:18 Julia Flood: Yeah, so there's often a lot of troubleshooting with the marketplaces. I would want to echo what Tim said in terms of checking things — scraping tools, platforms that audit, manual checks. But yeah, it's definitely a big piece of it to double check everything because the eligibility can be really easily affected by small things in the back end, or languages you add in with seasonal content that may violate some forgotten guidelines.

00:19:51 Niels Floors: Yeah, and this may be a follow-up question on that, right? Because we see some sellers who think they just need to fix some content attributes and they'll update it fully upstream on the marketplace itself — put it in, update it there — but then their source systems still have outdated content. So what would be the right approach if we look at the content funnel, from where you manage it in your PIM system to where it should be listed on the front end — how should we go through this entire content stream? Where should you manage what?

00:20:30 Julia Flood: So you definitely want to utilize the technology that you have that you're paying for. So I'm always going to say that you start with the PIM and make sure that the information in there is correct. But from there you go out to the mappings — that's what Tim was referring to, making sure that everything is mapped correctly. And then from there, is the API pushing out correctly to the retailer. And then from there, is the retailer actually displaying the information that was pushed to them through the API. So unfortunately, it's not a quick journey for content to go from creation by your team out to the retailer. And in many cases, I find that you have to follow up with things even after the API has been published and the information has gone out. There could be reasons why the retailer is rejecting it or not pushing it live. So that troubleshooting piece definitely needs to be part of your plan. Buffer some cushion time estimated in there. And that's why talking about this now is important.

00:21:30 Julia Flood: Because it's not a quick, set it and everything will push out beautifully and everything's live. There are often little pickups here and there. So making sure that you're focusing on the top things, and the earlier the better in terms of making sure that content is where it needs to be.

00:21:47 Niels Floors: Yeah, great. Because I think we've seen it from time to time that people are also updating things on the front end because they think they just need to quickly fix something — if they go through all of their downstream systems, it's going to take way too long to update everything upstream again. But the issue that happens at that time is that they don't update downstream. We keep on syncing things throughout the entire journey of the content flow, and then they update something on the channel, but we override it again through all the systems that have already been set in place there. So you're back to square one.

00:22:23 Julia Flood: It's just a band aid, you know. If you go into the back end and you make a change, it's just a band aid that's not going to help you in the future.

00:22:32 Tim Smit: It's a very short-lived band-aid as well. I think in some cases it only lasts 15 minutes before we override it again. So yeah, would not recommend.

00:22:41 Niels Floors: No, and sometimes it's an issue because then the marketplace doesn't accept the first override or the second override, but then your promotion starts, Q4 starts, and then it starts overriding things, and then you need to start hot-fixing things, and then you're too late to get back on it.

Promotions: configuration and verification

00:23:01 Niels Floors: Great. So I think that was the topic of content and making sure that you are ready for peak season on that one. Moving to the next topic — preparation gap number two was promotions. The promotion is configured, but the customer sees the wrong result. Promotions are key for the peak season. Everybody, all consumers, are looking for the best offers in those periods of time. And right, you also prepare those promotions together with the retailers, together with the marketplaces. You submit them in time, because if you do it last minute, you're too late, and you will not be taken into account for those promotions. So kicking off, I think this one with you, Tim. What should you verify before submitting a promotion to a marketplace?

00:24:02 Tim Smit: I would definitely recommend checking how you actually get a strikethrough price on that specific channel or marketplace. And is it even possible? Because not all marketplaces support strikethrough pricing, but it's of course very attractive for sellers to have it because it immediately shows that there's a sale, a discount, and this is how much it is. But it differs a lot per marketplace how you actually set it up. I think Bol marketplaces are a bit notorious for this because you have to have a discount start date and a discount end date. If you don't have these, then the Bol API will not accept the discount. So we have a lot of documentation available. And of course, at support, we're also always happy to help setting this up. But yeah, first thing — check how you actually set up these discounts and promotions. And then once you've done so, our new pricing V2 tab has a very nifty button that shows you an example of your discounted price rule. So always good to verify that. In ChannelEngine, you can verify whether this is actually the price that you want. One thing that also comes to mind is when we are dealing with currency conversions — a mistake is easily made and easily overlooked. So always check the output of these rules. And then of course, just like with the content, always verify if it has the intended effect on the marketplace as well.

00:25:29 Niels Floors: Yep. Yeah, and then Julia, do you have anything to add on that one, on the promotion?

00:25:36 Julia Flood: Yeah. You know, again, it's making sure that you're not wasting money pushing advertising or promotions to a page that won't lead to conversion. So making sure everything's ship-shape. And then obviously eligibility for coupons and discounts can be affected by the specs in the back end. So if there is some kind of flag on the product, that can affect whether or not you can set up the promotions. I would also caution that with the marketplace platforms, changes happen all the time in the way the promotions are set up. I have a terrible anecdote for it where Amazon recently changed — instead of you listing the amount of dollars that you wanted to take off in a promotion, it changed to the dollar amount you want the product to be sold for. So I set up some coupons thinking I was setting it for $2 off, when in actuality it went live as the product now selling for $2. So it's one of those things that you've done 50,000 times and then a small change in the back end affects how you set up promotions. So always checking is my big advice.

00:26:54 Niels Floors: Yeah. And then during the promotion — it's the setup, making sure pre-promotion that you know what's going to go into promotion, you know all the promotion tools and availability that you have in the back ends of every marketplace, because every marketplace has a different setup. And essentially also checking it once the promotion goes live. Because just like the anecdote you just shared, we've heard it a lot that sales have gone live for a very low price product. And you're too late in recovering once it's gone live. Once the consumer has found it and there's a hype going on about that sale, yeah, that's a bit of a too little too late, and then you're taking your losses on that one.

00:27:46 Julia Flood: It's sold a lot.

00:27:49 Niels Floors: Well, that's the positive thing about it. You just didn't make a margin on it. But looking into that — maybe how do you test promotions so that the promotion appears correctly before applying it widely across your catalog? Tim, can you maybe take us through that?

00:28:19 Tim Smit: Yeah, so again, the pricing tab should give all this information, especially the price rule example. It'll show you a very nice overview of what rules are applied, if there's any conversion going on. Even if there's an unexpected outcome, you can go to that tab, click on the price rule example button, and kind of retrace what steps the software is taking and why the outcome is as it is. And you can make adjustments based on that. And besides that, in the listed products page, it's also visible what your products are selling for.

00:29:02 Niels Floors: Nice. Anything from you, Julia, on that topic? What would you advise before moving to a full-fledged wide promotion across your portfolio?

00:29:15 Julia Flood: Yeah. Double-checking the setup, running the coupon. Definitely checking the pages again. I hate to keep going back to the pages, but what the customer sees is so important. And even in the back end, a lot of retailers have what they would describe as retail readiness — things that if you don't check those boxes might affect your ability to even run the promotions in the first place. I mentioned that earlier, but it varies from platform to platform. Some like Walmart have a scorecard in the back end so you know where your listing is versus where it should be. And then some like Amazon will suppress an item if there's an area that's missing or needs to be filled in. With the changes on the sites happening so regularly, it can be easy to have a product — even your hero, that's been great for years — but all of a sudden there's one requirement that you didn't know was a problem that could cause it to be suppressed or not eligible for promotions. So that would be my advice — just again, to double check not just how the pages look, but the backend specs, making sure they're all consistent, that ratings and reviews are in a healthy spot, and that you've checked scorecards or issue flags where retailers offer them.

00:30:33 Tim Smit: Yeah, just to add on that — those rules and requirements are very important. I just remember a case where a merchant set up a whole promotion and nothing came through. The prices were not being updated, no sale, no discounts. It turned out that — I think it was Newegg — the marketplace doesn't allow discounts that are either bigger than $30 or like 20 to 30% of the price. So the merchant was trying to do maybe 35 or 40% off and everything was blocked because of that. So yeah, very important to read the rules regarding promotions.

00:31:14 Julia Flood: Yeah, Amazon has some tough rules too, because the amount you discount is in relation to the past 12 months of your sales price. They basically don't want you to inflate your price right before discounting it, but they can be really sticky when trying to do a discount because they can reject it, saying you need to do more or you're offering too much. So there's a lot of back and forth sometimes with promotions. Even once you've laid out a nice plan, it doesn't always go the way you planned.

00:31:44 Tim Smit: No, and I think that's so important. If you don't verify and you think everything is already working the way it should, and then right before peak season you run into this issue, then yeah, it's going to be hard fixing that on time.

00:31:59 Niels Floors: Yeah, it's one of the key ticket categories that we got — they mentioned that the price check is kicked in. If you do unusual things with your prices for promotions just before peak season, you launch your promotion, the price check kicks in from the marketplace, it doesn't check out, and then it takes the entire product offline just before peak season. And then you have to start working with the channel, try to get in touch with Amazon before peak season — you're talking to bots at that moment — and then trying to get your listing back online there. That's the nightmare I think every seller wants to stay away from.

00:32:51 Niels Floors: But it was a good one. So Tim — how should teams be monitoring these kinds of things? How can they monitor that the promotions they have set and prepared for peak season are live and running and converting?

00:33:20 Tim Smit: I think from a technical support perspective, I always love when I see our users test this out with one product first. Just go through the approach of testing, verifying, getting the whole flow from the beginning to the end. So we have the content, we verify with at least one product that the flow is working correctly. And then we go to the next step — the discounts. We verify that when we set a discount exactly like this, but maybe we change the date from peak season to, let's say, now until tomorrow. And then it's not exactly in real time — most of our price exports run every 15 minutes — so you should be able to see it pretty fast, but maybe wait an hour or two and then check that one product or that group of products that you've tested with. Check on the marketplace if the prices are as you want them to be. And then that allows you to make any adjustments and changes and still get in touch, like you said Niels, with support agents from the marketplaces.

00:34:24 Niels Floors: Yeah. Julia, do you have any best practices from your side? How should teams be monitoring this post go-live?

00:34:34 Julia Flood: Obviously it depends on the marketplace and the amount of information they share, but most at this point have at least views on the page, add to carts, conversion rates, things like that. Also, with certain promotions, you can get a little more detail — how many Prime users have added to their cart or reserved an item. So I think monitoring those as the promotion goes on — assuming that it's holiday so it's going to be running for a little bit of time — checking in on it daily and understanding, is it converting? And if it's not, then there's time to make a change. Maybe a deeper discount needs to be tested with one of your items, or maybe you offer a two-for-one deal, worst-case scenario. But I think just monitoring as it goes, not assuming that it's all running smoothly, being really vigilant during Q4 is important.

00:35:26 Niels Floors: Yeah. Never assume — that's I think the key takeaway here. Test, test, test until you're, well, you're never going to be 100% sure. There are systems in between and you never know what kind of curveball these channels are going to throw at you. But try to be as prepared as possible.

Stock availability and inventory syncing

00:35:47 Niels Floors: Great. I think we've gone through the two biggest topics on marketplace pre-season readiness here. But then we come more into the operational part — staying live on these channels. The stock exists, right? Everybody's buying and making sure they have the stock in their warehouses. But it's not reachable for the correct marketplace offers. So we need to make sure that the stock we have in our warehouses is available on the channels we want to sell it on. And we have the stock available for the promotions that we're doing, because you don't want to oversell, you don't want to undersell — you want to keep that balance. So Tim, I think this is your wheelhouse here. What should teams verify across stock flows before peak week or peak season?

00:37:01 Tim Smit: Yep, I think a very important one. And just to loop back to the whole upstream, downstream thing — so of course, first we have the physical warehouse where your stock is. There we know that the information is pretty much correct, hopefully, if there's not been any theft or damages. But from there on, it goes into the software systems and it needs to flow downstream through ChannelEngine eventually to the marketplace. Let's say there is an issue somewhere down the line. On Amazon, we're not getting the stock that is available in your warehouse. So I would say at that point, don't panic, just go through the flow. In ChannelEngine, we can now see — last year we added, on the product detail page, a little tab on the top that says logs. And if you click on that, you can see for price and stock when they've been updated and with how much. So let's say for this particular product, we're expecting 5 stock to be online on Amazon. The first thing I would recommend is seeing whether this five stock has actually made it into ChannelEngine. And that can now be very easily done by going to this tab. So let's say the stock is in ChannelEngine — well, then we have to go to the channel. In this case, Amazon, and we can check listed products for any errors that are there. The validation and feedback section, especially.

00:38:39 Tim Smit: In my experience, what happens most is that there is some kind of offer error, and this can prevent ChannelEngine from updating stock. So if there is, for example, a price dispute — like the example I mentioned earlier where Newegg was not agreeing with the discount — sometimes this also blocks us from updating stock. So that's one example that springs to mind. But I think the main takeaway here is that you verify the flow. We go all the way from upstream to the downstream and use the tools that are available to you to check this. Then in terms of preparation, I think it's important to realize that things can go very fast during peak season and we really want to prevent overselling. Overselling leads to penalties from the marketplace, disappointed customers. So definitely want to prevent that. And again, tools for this — you can set a stock buffer. For example, we can set a buffer for, let's say, 10 to make sure that there's always 10 more items available in your warehouse than can be sold on the marketplace. And this means that you have a bit of leeway in case there are more orders coming in from the marketplace than expected. And at the same time, I think we also have stock limits. So if you want to prevent huge amounts of orders coming in that your team will not be able to keep up with, you can also limit that. So really use the tools that are available to you — that's my advice.

00:40:18 Niels Floors: Yeah. And I think the tools — look into where you set your buffers, because every team has to be in sync with this one. Because if you have, for example — and we've seen it a lot of times — buffers in both systems, for example, sometimes we see it in your warehouse management system including a buffer, and then in a middleware like ChannelEngine or whatever tool you're using, and then you're double buffering and you're not selling your full stock on a channel. And then the product will start going offline on any other channels that you don't have stock for. So check those settings as well, because we've seen that happen from time to time. And for the overselling part, make sure your syncs are set correctly, because sometimes it's about how you sync your backend systems with the marketplaces. Make sure they're in check, because otherwise things will keep building up over time. And then you'll see products going offline and assortment going offline mid-peak season. But your warehouse is still full of stock. And that's just a shame.

00:41:37 Tim Smit: One more thing, Niels, if I can add. Something just came up in my mind — you have this buffering, and if you buffer in multiple systems, that adds up. And then at some point, you maybe have 40 stock that you're not selling. I think it's also important to mention that if orders are not properly processed — so in ChannelEngine, they can have different statuses — I think we're also going to talk about this in the next topic. But in ChannelEngine, stock is reserved for an order if it's in progress. And that's to make sure that we don't oversell. But if your system or the merchant plugin that you're using to connect to ChannelEngine never manages to actually close off these orders — set them to status shipped — that means that the stock is always reserved. So I've had a few cases where people suddenly saw their top products going offline in peak season because they were doing hundreds of orders, but they were never properly closed, which meant that at some point there were like 400 open orders that were still reserving stock, even though they were already shipped to the customers.

00:42:47 Niels Floors: Yeah. No, there's a lot of complexity here. It sounds like an easy flow — stock and those kind of things, we're just sending a number to a marketplace, that's my availability and that's what I can sell. But actually it's a complex matter to really get that balance right between what do I have in stock, how do I buffer myself, how do I not set the thresholds too high as well. And that's also going into our next topic with availability and your delivery promises — to be able to compete on the marketplace, have a competitive offer, and get the products to the consumer as quickly as possible.

Order flow and operational readiness

00:43:41 Niels Floors: So then I think that's also the last topic we want to focus on during today's session — the order is accepted, but the operational flow is not ready for it. So Tim, I want to dive into this one again with you because operations, stress testing your operation, making sure that you can, one, deliver on your promise — you've put an offer online, you have promotions running on those products. Your business teams just want to sell the hell out of it, hit their numbers, get their budgets closed for the year. But then the operations break down. What should be the complete end-to-end order test include? How should you do that test end-to-end for peak season?

00:44:28 Tim Smit: Yeah, so I think it also kind of depends on — have you been live at this marketplace for a long time? If you have, then probably your supply chain and everything on that part has been battle tested. I would say if it's a new channel, we do offer test orders in ChannelEngine. So you can create test orders and then see how that flow goes. But I think that's really one of the simplest things — actually getting that order data to your system. What is a lot more complex, of course, is the physical handling of everything. I would recommend checking if anything goes outside of the normal flow. So let's say you need to generate shipping labels, or you need to get shipping labels from Bol or other platforms that do shipping via them — make sure that, again, you verify from beginning to end. Maybe even go as far as to place an order directly on the marketplace and then cancel it afterwards, of course. But really make sure that from beginning to end, everything works. Your teams are ready, they know where to print the labels, they know where to get them. Because again, with an anecdote — at some point about 40 orders came in for one of our users, and they couldn't get the labels. So then you start to get this stressful situation where you really need to get these packages out of the door before end of day, otherwise you're not going to be able to make good on your shipment promises and you might run into, again, penalties from the marketplace and disappointed customers. And at the same time, it's not been set up correctly and you cannot get the labels. So then it's a lot of ad hoc, stressful troubleshooting. But if this was tested a week, a few weeks even before, then that could have been prevented.

00:46:28 Niels Floors: Yeah. I think every new process flow needs to be end-to-end tested live, because staging is nice but in the real world, things happen that we can't all replicate there. And we've seen it many times that packing stations have just filled up with orders because one of the flows or one of the syncs was not tested. And it's also one of the things that we've done most within ChannelEngine. I think on every channel that we've integrated with, you'll find ChannelEngine merch — a t-shirt and a sweater — because those were the ones that we use for test orders all around the world in every business model and every model that we've tested on the marketplace as well. And it was the only way that we could really test a marketplace because there are no testing environments on marketplaces. It's live or offline. And that's what we have to live with in the marketplace world. And that's what you unfortunately need to live with as well to be able to go live on these marketplaces.

00:47:47 Niels Floors: And yeah, that's why I think — don't go live on a new channel just before peak season would also be advice here. Make sure you've tested it, you know how the channel works completely, so that you can also comfortably run through peak season. So then actually the last one for you, Tim — how should teams prepare to detect and resolve if an order stops moving throughout the funnel?

00:48:16 Tim Smit: So the main point — and again, my perspective is very ChannelEngine based. But if you want to check the status of an order, definitely go to ChannelEngine in the orders overview. You can filter by the status of those orders. So like I mentioned before, in progress means that it's been already acknowledged by your system. But if it's on new, that means that it's still in ChannelEngine — it only exists on the marketplace and ChannelEngine, which means that your complete system is not aware of this order. So your people in the warehouse are not receiving a message, nothing is being picked, nothing is being sent to the customer. So status new is one to look out for in ChannelEngine. Then there's in progress — again, if it doesn't move from in progress to the next step, which is shipped, that means that your warehouse may have picked and sent the order, but no tracking details were shared with ChannelEngine. So no tracking details will be shared with the marketplace and the customer, which can result in penalties. So checking these order statuses is very important. This can also be automated through our API, but it's also possible to just view this in the ChannelEngine interface. So yeah, during peak season with enormous amounts of orders coming in, do try to check the orders overview. Filter on new, filter on in progress and see — do we have any late unshipped orders? That's also a little flag that your orders will get in ChannelEngine when we notice that they are past their usual shipping date. We'll add that flag to let you know, okay, perhaps something went wrong here — check your systems, check if the sync is still working correctly.

00:50:08 Niels Floors: Yep, good one. And on top of that, of course, knowing what your systems can handle — knowing what your systems and operations can handle, so that way you can optimize your delivery promises across marketplaces. Be competitive on those marketplaces, because if you're just going to safeguard yourself by putting delivery promises out there with a week's lead time, people are not going to buy products that are delivered in a week. That's just not the consumer's expectations these days. So you need to be competitive, but you need to know what your operations and your systems can handle at the same time. And you need to be nimble in adjusting when you see that the operations are struggling and systems are breaking down — to adjust your settings so that you can recover as well before all hell breaks loose and a channel starts closing down on you.

Final readiness checklist and key takeaways

00:51:21 Niels Floors: That is actually a bit of a segue into the final part of this webinar — the final readiness checklist. I want to get a bit of perspective from our guests on the key takeaways. So: confirm that priority products are live and accurate on the marketplace; test your promotions before applying them across your full assortment; right stock from the right source systems to each priority marketplace should be traced; and run your complete order journey end to end and make sure that you know what your system can handle. But yeah, I want a bit of a final takeaway from our professionals today. Julia, what is one readiness check a marketplace team should complete within the next week to be ready for peak?

00:52:10 Julia Flood: So Q4 — it's a marathon and a sprint, right? Because it's a long time, but the preparation for it can feel like a sprint. So I'd say starting now is a good idea. Determine that list of priorities, both in terms of your SKUs as well as your retailers. You know your products best, you know where they play best, so making sure that you know what you're going to prioritize. And then starting that process that we talked about in the beginning — checking your content, both back end and front end. So what the customer is seeing as well as the specs in the back. Making sure that the talent you're using is still within your usage rights, making sure there's no updates from legal, there's no changes to the product or the packaging. Easy things like that is where I would start. Checking scorecards or retail readiness if the retailer has any specifications. Doing that through as many items as possible, but definitely focusing on those priority items. I think that's the first step and that's what I would start today, if you haven't already, because the season comes quick. We've got October Prime Day right around the corner, so there's a lot — after that, the whole season is upon us.

00:53:24 Niels Floors: Yeah, no, it's creeping up already, right? It's just around the corner. Tim, your takeaway for today?

00:53:33 Tim Smit: Yeah, I kind of wanted to expand on what Julia said — how would you do that? I would recommend going to your priority marketplaces in ChannelEngine, checking listed products, and looking at validation and feedback. You can even get a report — you can export this report and get everything in an Excel sheet — and just start looking for trends. So Julia mentioned that maybe something changed legally for that marketplace. You will immediately see it because a very large part of your products that no longer adhere to these legal rules will immediately return errors. And from there on, you can start fixing this with enough time ahead to actually do that, instead of having to stress during peak season.

00:54:21 Niels Floors: Great. Thank you for that one. With those tips, I think that's going to set you up for success for your Q4 season. As we said, start now, don't wait. Just after this session, we will also share with you the peak season readiness checklist. So we have a content item created especially for you so you can also read through it, have a look, and validate your own organization's settings, content, and operations to make sure that you are ready for it. I want to thank Julia and Tim today for this session. Great session. Thank you for all your insights.

00:55:06 Niels Floors: If you have any further questions or want to deep dive into any of these topics that we discussed today, please reach out. You can reach out to us via LinkedIn or just reach out via the ChannelEngine chat. And then we will of course deep dive into those topics with you to make sure that we help you as well as possible or connect you to the right people that have the knowledge in the market that can support you through this journey. I want to wish everybody a lot of success for this peak season. The recording will be shared after the session as well so that everybody will have it on demand and can also share it internally with their team members. And with that, I want to thank everybody for attending. See everybody soon. Bye.

00:56:01 Julia Flood: Thank you.