Category: eCommerce Analytics

Education portal and online bookstore Central Books Online offers a wide selection of textbooks, reference books, study material for competitive exams, novels, stationery, and other general purpose books. In addition to selling its product range on a website, CBO also has an Amazon store.   

Their challenge: Scaling up on Amazon 

Owing to the competitive nature of the category, Amazon has many other sellers pushing the same products. This has led to CBO not being able to meet its projected growth. In order to scale up as per their plans, CBO needs to fulfill two objectives: 

• Win the buy box for most of their product listings, which will drive more customers to their products instead of their competitors. The initial buy box win percentage is estimated at 10%
• Maintain the highest possible margins after price reductions from Amazon as well as other investment and operational costs   

Our strategy: Creating an analytical dashboard to study buy box percentage

Tenovia’s analytical dashboard would conduct a detailed week-on-week study of the buy box percentage, crawling data from four primary locations – each representing east, west, north, and south zones. In addition, the dashboard would also read competitor details such as who won the buy box, its price, ratings, discounts, and delivery times. 

Using this data, we were able to deduce reasons as to why CBO lost the buy box to other vendors. This exercise provided specific and actionable insights to boost CBO’s buy box win percentage by optimizing product pricing, tracking buy box allocation for the entire product catalog, and escalating issues on time. 

The results: Key takeaways and successes 

With Tenovia’s support through the analytical dashboard, we offered CBO a method of accurately forecasting, which minimized inventory idle time in the warehouse and operational expenses. Tensight’s data also allowed CBO to design their promotions, pricing, and purchases – ultimately boosting sales and profit margins. 

CBO now enjoys: 

• Total visibility of all their products with detailed insights on their competitors to take informed decisions  
• Total calibration of their pricing strategy and inventory management, allowing them to win their buy box
• Reduced product delivery times due to improved inventory flow as well as higher availability and stock fill rates across regions  
• Week over week, we could see a good improvement in the buy box wins % (from 21.4% to 26.9%) when the reasons that is pulling the chance down is calibrated with the help of Tensight.

• With consistent operational efforts by working with the reports generated they were able to bring down their reasons that was hindering their buy box wins% 
• In the beginning 68.38% they were losing their buy box because of their price competence, which upon consistent optimization, they were able to bring down to 51.64%
• 55.76% they were unable to win buy box due to non availability of their stock at the Amazon Fulfillment Centers. With the help of the dashboard report they were able to identify the exact ASINs that would have to be moved to respective FCs for optimal chances reducing the reasons to win the buy box to 42.74%

Paragon Footwear, one of the largest homegrown footwear brands in India, has found success in offline and online retail. The brand manufactures crores of pairs every year. While its eCommerce presence is successful, and growing in all parts of the country, it faces some challenges that are unique to a company of its size – such as effective regional utilization. 

Their challenge: Lack of optimization in stock distribution

Given the sheer range of products and SKUs for a brand of Paragon’s scale, stock distribution based on region and state remains a major aspect, and a challenge, of inventory planning. When done right, optimized regional supply adjusted to keep pace with changing demands drastically decreases delivery timelines and shipping costs – which means higher conversion. 

This is important in eCommerce as the brand’s range of products is exposed to the entire customer base across the country. And to cater to customers across various regions quickly and efficiently, it becomes imperative to distribute inventory strategically. That’s where Tensight comes in.  

Our strategy: Leveraging Tensight’s regional inventory planning functions 

Using Tensight’s regional utilization dashboard, we conducted a detailed analysis of Paragon’s existing state and regional utilization – both overall and across warehouses. This exercise allowed us to support the brand in a few vital ways. 

1. Discovering sales potential: We identified regions that experienced higher demand as well as states and regions that had immense potential for sales growth.  
2. Opening new warehouses in strategic locations: Using Tensight’s vital insights and inputs, we created a new strategy to ensure optimal distribution of inventory across India, after which the brand opened two new warehouses in the eastern and western regions of the country.
3. Fine-tuning SKUs: Further, we also studied the demand from these zones and on-hand inventory to provide an optimal distribution report to distribute inventory on an SKU level across warehouses and regions. 

Our impact: Better regional utilization, happier customers

Central Books Online is an online bookstore and education portal, offering a wide range of general books, stationery, as well as academic books for schools and competitive exams. Along with its own website, CBO also sells its range of products on ecommerce marketplaces – specifically Amazon. 

Their challenge: Low regional consumption 

Despite making several attempts to move inventory to Amazon’s multiple warehouses across the country, the brand’s regional consumption remains low. For example, a fulfillment center in the southern part of India may deliver a majority of orders to PIN codes in all other regions of the country but not in its immediate vicinity. 

This mismatch in the regional demand and supply is often the result of improper inventory allocation. When this happens, a seller is often subjected to consumer demands and expenses caused by inefficient and inadequate inventory planning and forecasting, leading to:  

• Excessive national shipping costs
• Slower delivery 
• Low conversion rates
• Poor customer satisfaction 

To correct these inefficiencies, Central Books Online would require data-driven recommendations on their reorder quantity to prevent stock depletion, a nudge to prevent an out-of-stock scenario, and the optimal disposal of their overstock (dead stock). 

Our strategy: Inventory optimization and regional utilization 

Inventory optimization and regional utilization are important crucial profitability factors for any ecommerce business. That’s why we employed Tensight to analyze sales data across various lengths of time – from the previous month, increments of 3-6-12 months, previous season, and custom lengths. 

With this, we built smart maps with inventory across warehouses to provide detailed information and vital insight into relocating stock at appropriate warehouses, plan for future reorders, and dispose of dead stocks based on historical data. We were able to help Central Books Online:

1. Examine opportunities to optimize warehouse inventory levels and achieve high sell-through rates
2. Reduce the cost of aged or obsolete inventory that has a direct impact on the business and a high holding cost
3. Assist with prompt inventory sourcing, marketing, and procurement decisions
4. Examine regional utilization to optimize demand-based inventory allocation across all fulfillment centers (FCs)

Our impact: 7-point improvement driven by Tensight

Soch Apparels Private Limited, a women’s ethnic wear label, employs Vinculum Omnichannel Retailing to manage its online marketplace and Omuni, powered by Arvin, for omnichannel retail enablement to manage stock in its physical stores. Vinculum manages everything from the automation of catalog listings, inventory management, and ordering for Soch’s ecommerce vertical.

Their challenge: Managing inconsistencies in product listings across channels

The company noticed significant discrepancies in their entire listing and inventory across Vinculum and Omuni, as well as the total number of products that had front-end visibility for consumer sales on the marketplace. They wanted to address these inconsistencies and create a clear product status map.

Our strategy: Efficient integration, better visibility, more transparency

As an essential first step, we integrated the offline retail stock as well as the styles and inventory available on Vinculum in the ecommerce warehouse on the Tensight dashboard.

We applied it to all marketplaces activated on the Vinculum dashboard and cross-validated the style count in terms of catalog listing, stock, and front-end exposure across three major marketplaces – Nykaa Fashion, Myntra, and Ajio. We then mapped the number of styles present on Vinculum to the marketplace’s back-end for listing and stock visibility, as well as the front-end for live products available for purchase by customers. We also:

• Provided a weekly summary of Vinculum’s listing percentage and stock exposure percentage by channel
• Enabled clear panel stock exposure and front-end style exposure percentage
• Integrated suitable filters to make data downloading easier
• Highlighted styles on the dashboard that were not accessible on the front-end but were accounted for in the inventory on Vinculum
• Enhanced visibility of unseen SKUs on Vinculum to help them make better, well-informed decisions

Our impact: From effective strategy to near-perfect results

With Tensight, we delivered total visibility for styles they have in stock as well as those listed and exposed to the marketplace. We also helped enhance listing hygiene, optimize inventory, and maximized product exposure across marketplaces with the highest clarity and precision at the SKU level. 

Improved listing percentage by an average of 15% in 3 weeks, from 75% to almost 86%. Over 3 months, there was a massive improvement in the listing quality.

Total stock exposure percentage for marketplaces such as Flipkart increased by a staggering 60.85%, with an overall average increase of 33.76%.

Achieved almost 95% panel exposure for strategic channels.

Optimized front-end exposure percentage by 24.08% (for Myntra).