Stock, price and the customer, in agreement
Storefront, marketplace, warehouse and finance each keep their own version of the truth, and the shopper is the one who finds the difference.
Ecommerce rarely breaks at the storefront. It breaks where the storefront meets the warehouse — an item sold twice, a promotion finance never heard about, a customer who is two records and one complaint.
What we bring, and what it changes
Storefront, marketplace, warehouse and finance each keep their own version of stock, price and the customer — and shoppers are the ones who see the difference.
Filed under Commerce & travelWhere the channels come apart
Inventory
Stock counted separately by warehouse, storefront and marketplace, so something is always oversold and something else is never shown.
Identity
The same shopper held as three records, which makes personalisation guesswork and loyalty a source of complaints.
Promotions
Campaigns configured per channel, so the price a customer was promised depends on where they happened to be standing.
Reporting
Channel-by-channel numbers that cannot answer the only question worth asking: what is this customer worth to us?
The platforms behind one order
- Storefront and marketplace listings
- Order management and fulfilment
- Warehouse, 3PL and carriers
- Product, pricing and promotions
- Payments, fraud and returns
- CRM, loyalty and customer analytics
Getting every channel onto one set of numbers
One stock position
A single availability source every channel reads, with allocation rules that are stated rather than emergent.
One order path
Orders from every channel through the same fulfilment process, so an exception is genuinely exceptional.
One customer
Profiles resolved across channels, with the matching rules explicit and open to review.
One set of numbers
Margin, returns and repeat rate measured per customer rather than per channel.
What ecommerce teams ask first
Do we need to replatform to fix this?
Rarely as a first move. Most of the visible failures are integration failures between systems that are individually fine. We would rather prove that by joining them up than by starting a replatform you may not need.
Can this cope with marketplaces?
Yes, and they are usually the reason the estate needs the work. Each marketplace has its own rules for listings, stock and settlement, and the point of a canonical order model is that the tenth channel costs less to add than the first.
What about peak?
Peak is a design constraint, not a support arrangement. We load-test the order path against your own peak history, and agree in advance what degrades gracefully on the day that exceeds it.
Other sectors
All 11 industries →Travel & Hospitality
Booking engines, property systems and loyalty platforms were bought at different times, so a guest is recognised in one channel and a stranger in the next.
Read moreHealth & life sciencesHealthcare
Fragmented clinical and administrative systems, strict interoperability mandates and rising cost pressure make it hard to move patient data safely between payers, providers and partners.
Read moreIndustry & productionPackaging
Order intake, production planning and customer systems often run apart from one another, leaving teams reconciling spreadsheets instead of responding to demand.
Read moreStart with your sector
Tell us which of these you operate in and where the systems are getting in the way. We will come back with the practices, the people and a realistic sequence.