[2:41]

So, in terms of agenda, we will focus on really shopping carts and marketplaces in the first part and then take some questions and answer them as well as and discuss some questions that have come up in our support queue. And also talk about a few of the new things that we are releasing one of them which is relevant to this topic today. And we're trying to get all of this done in the next 30 to 45 minutes.

So, similarly, these webinars are to be really just for your information type things and if you want to dig into more depth, we are happy to engage in a one on one basis.

[3:36]

Like I was saying the focus today is on just awareness and getting a high level view, understanding of the topic to dive in deep to explore, you know, what effort might be required to sort of get into this You know, how long a project what will it cost? All those kinds of things. We can have one on one conversations.

[4:06]

So, let me start with just an overview of terminology. And what does this mean? Some of you, I can see already are using a b2b portal. Some of you have shopping carts, Shopify, so this is stuff that you all understand but for the others.

A shopping cart is essentially your company's ability to offer a catalog online, to everybody out there, searchable on the web, to sell your products. So, if you go to a particular site like Amazon, they are offering a shopping cart where you can go Select products and buy them. So your case it would be something that you could offer, you could sell your products on a shopping cart, you can subscribe to a shopping cart like Shopify Magento, WordPress illusion, upload your products into the shopping cart, upload the prices, inventory levels, etc. and then use that as a platform to sell your products. Listen, let's do it. You can do it without Versa ERP, or any ERP, or you can do it by integrating the shopping cart software. With our ERP system, your accounting system, your inventory management system, your shipping system, all of those functionalities could be added to the shopping cart. You can add them one by one, or you can add them by adding versccounts and you get all of those capabilities added to your shopping cart. There's significant work to set up the shopping cart, you have to make it look pretty and attractive. You have to get your product images up there; you have to get your pricing in there. All of those things have to be done. There's usually a designer involved. They're specialized people who you can hire tokens, set up shopping carts for you. So, there's a significant work if you want a significant amount of work that needs to be done if you want to set up your shopping cart. Some shopping carts are easier to do than others. They come with templates set up is easier on Shopify seems to be a preferred, easy way to go. Magento for instance, is another shopping cart. Which seems to have more flexibility but is also much more complicated. So that's a shopping cart where you're selling your products at their, at one price to anybody in the world who wants to buy it. And they're called b2c because you're selling business to consumer. On the other hand, we've talked about last week with a b2b portal. b2b portal is the opportunity to sell to your business customers at customized prices, customized product, etc. It's still a shopping cart, but it's a shopping cart that is specialized for your customers. That kind of shopping cart is actually built into versa and we call it the Versa b2b portal that can be customized with your brand and you know, it can offer your customers a very customized experience as far as their pricing and all that good stuff. There are also third party b2b offerings for those which attached to versa, pretty much like the b2c shopping carts and some of them are digibit ropey handshake, etc. Some of them we have integrations with just like with b2c shopping carts, and some, if you need an integration, we will have to build that integration or you will have to use a third-party connector and we'll talk about all of that in a second. But at a high level, pretty much any kind of shopping cart can be integrated with versa, either through a custom integration or a third-party connector or some of the other Other methods we will discuss or we already have the integration built into versa. Then there is the issue of marketplaces. marketplaces are things like walmart.com ebay.com, Etsy, home depot.com Amazon knows where you are using their platforms to offer your products that you will fulfill typically and using their.com web presence to just sell reach their customers. Notice I said.com what it is not selling the product to them. It is selling the product your product through them to their customers. So Typically, when you're talking about marketplaces, you're talking about selling through versus selling to. You can also sell to Walmart or Amazon or Home Depot. Not the.com to the actual brick and mortar store or in Amazon's case, Amazon is not brick and mortar, but you can sell to them where they will be your customer, they will pay you and then they will resell your product at whatever price they want. That's a different discussion that we will have when we talk about EDI for instance, down the road in the next webinar. But for now, we are talking about selling your product Through these platforms, through these marketplaces, in the case of Amazon, it can be very confusing, because you're always selling to Amazon. But if you're selling to us, amazon seller central, that is, you are the seller and you're selling to their customers through them, which is a marketplace. Amazon vendor center is a different service offered by Amazon, where you will be selling to Amazon and they'll pay you for the stuff that you sell them and deliver to them. So that distinction is important to understand and very confusing about Amazon.

[11:56]

So, we'll now take a look at Okay, so I want to Do this stuff. What's involved? Well, it's all choices. At the top was a direct API integration. That is Versa as built in capabilities into the product to directly connect to say Shopify, or Magento or any of these marketplaces. That capability is built into versa, you enable it, you configure it and use that and you only deal with words. So that's one way you can go about it. The second is a custom connector, which is a separate piece of software that exists outside version. It exists outside. The shopping cart are the marketplace you want to connect to and it communicates with both Versa and the place you want to connect, and someone builds it for you, Versa builds it for you or you hire someone to build it for you. That's an option as well. The third is there are general-purpose third-party connectors like Zapier and quite a few where it's already those connectors already connected to a variety of marketplaces and shopping carts. And all that needs to be done is that connector has to be connected to versa. Sometimes versa, we'll already have a connector to something like Zapier, which we'll be making available in a few months, and sometimes it won't, but you can use a third-party connector as well. Then there is the option of the shopping cart or marketplace like a b2b shopping cart, for instance, building the connector into their product and connecting to versa. So, there are products like real Korean DocuMoto, where they may add, a customer may have an arrangement with them. Typically, it costs a lot of money. These products cost a lot of money. As part of that price, they will agree to build a connector to your VRP or versa. And so, ruffian Dr. moto are examples of those kinds of products b2b portals that will have a connector.

There's also a third party connectors that are already integrated with Versa For example, easy post in the future API to cart up easy post already exists, was announced a week ago, where instead of just FedEx ups and USPS, now you can literally have logistics provided by dozens of logistics providers through API easy post integration with Versa. So that's something interested in you should talk to us. Then there's EDI EDI is another way of connecting and when I say connecting, this picture has to EDI sort of illustrations the top one shows Versa connected to VDI. And then the VDI gateway connected to commerce hub, commerce hub connected to marketplace. Most marketplaces out there are connected to commerce hub as the preferred way of connecting to them. And to connect with commerce hub, you must use EDI. So, there are customers of ours who connect with Walmart and Home Depot, etc. that connect via EDI through commerce hub. Now this is to connect to their.com marketplaces. The second one is to connect to their non.com business where you're actually selling to that. I wanted to put this in though it's not relevant for today. I wanted to put this in to just show the difference between the true when you are selling directly to Amazon or Walmart or Home Depot. You are going to use EDI most likely because they mandated and you will be selling based on having this EDI connector, EDI connection to some EDI gateway and we showing SPS commerce in true commerce etc. And then there's a final version way to connect not a final but yet another version. If you don't have too much of a transaction volume, then you can just do a file download from either versa or from your shopping cart a marketplace and then upload the other end or build some kind of custom translator or you know, semi manual Excel spreadsheet macro that will do the conversion from one format to another and upload it to you. So, these are some of the ways That you can access these different channels to sell your product.

What I would say is that typically, the difference between all of this is that many of these connectors are built to be applicable to general population. So, they're very general purpose, which necessarily meet makes them their functionality not very deep. So, they don't deal with special cases they don't deal with. It's all about appealing to large numbers of people and large numbers of different kinds of users. And so, they will do a minimum set of things but no more, because it's hard to sort of build a general-purpose connector that will connect to 50 different geographies. But it is much easier for Versa to build connector that’s not a connector, but build the integration into versa, where it's directly talking to Shopify or Magento, Amazon, etc. and then build into it, the deep capabilities that would give all of the functionality of the marketplace of all the shopping cart to the Versa user. So typically, our connectors will be much deeper in terms of functionality than a third-party product. And, of course, third party products do have a role. We can't build integrations for everything into horses. So, if we don't have it, maybe a third party does. But if we do have an integration built in, it's typically a lot more functionality much deeper and also, as a result, because of that, it becomes A lot more things to configure and setup. But all of that is just a onetime thing, once we help you set it up, you get the benefit of a lot more functionality. So, we will keep coming back to this kind of picture time and again as we talk about EDI as we talked about integration, etc., and go the next level down as to what do these arrows mean? How does it all work, etc. But for now, I'll leave it at this and go on to the next slide.

[20:39]

As a way of sort of talking about the deep functionality of connectors, I thought I would take an example of our Shopify setup. And I see that a lot of you have not or not Currently Shopify users are Magento users or e commerce users. So I will just give you a sense for all of the different kinds of things that our connector will allow you to configure, which will give you a sense, in turn, have the sort of deep functionality that is possible and can be delivered via the integration that we have for a shopping cart. So, I will ask Richard, to jump in here and talk about a few of these options. We aren't exhaustively going to go and review all these options, but to give you a sense of what are all the different kind of things that can be configured, and hence that kind of functionality we have in our integration with a shopping pitcher.

So, there are the number of things you can set up in Shopify, for in Versa for Shopify integration. So, I have not explained everything but just at a high level, what are the things that you can set up? A typical thing we have to do when we set up Shopify or any other marketplace is mapping. So, there's data in the marketplace. Then there's also data in person and we need to map one set of data to another set of data. So, the setting is generally, those mappings and also sort of exception handling when this happened, what to do. Things like you know, you have the map would be Many marketplaces have the concept of warehouse or fulfillment point, you know where inventory is kept and where inventory will be shipped from. So, you can map that to the facilities in versa. So, this my example. And also, you may have different categories or products in the market places that you might want to map that to Versa something if another set of category definition and so forth. If they're the same, there is pretty simple one on one on one mapping. Other things like you know, if you use dimensions, custom fields, those can be mapped as well.

[23:44]

If you go on next type thing, there are more settings. I mean, another thing is they're mapping products, right? So, we have products in our marketplaces. Then we can know when this product came in from the marketplace, what is it inside verse so generally people use part numbers to map an identifier in the marketplace might be cause sku might be call part number or something else. Other sort of product information can be exchanged that you may have, you know, sets of descriptions, images out of things about a product in a marketplace. So, you can store that in person and have publish the information to the place or you can say, you know, the marketplace is going to get their own description. You know, because for whatever reason, they need to have their own set they can say that you know, I didn't want to slow store that information in so it was supposed to be just a marketplace information. other complications like you know, where you might have, you know, there might be different flavor or different sizes, or different color choices. Often the marketplace will have a way to sort of group those variables together as a product, then those have to be sort of mapped to the structures that we were asked to tell them, you know, was that how you want to sort of group those products inside the marketplace, and then how they map to the structure you have to find inside Versa. Things that typically we can do with a marketplace intuition that we can push product data, we can download orders, we can push even trade data and push prices. So, there's settings for those.

Okay, I think that's pretty much it.

[25:46]

So, when you import orders that you know the system can create invoices. You can a different type of sort of timeline you want you can follow, maybe you want to fulfill the order in the marketplace first. And then you then use Versa to just create an invoice based on the fulfillment. Or maybe you want to use Versa to do the fulfillment, and then you know, create an invoice, then in turn fulfill the order in our marketplace. So, we have a number of settings for you to use, depending on workflow and maybe you do certain things in the marketplace, and then the final step would be done in Versa. Or maybe you'll do everything, which means that once the order comes into Versa, you know, touch the order into a marketplace, you do everything you need into Versa I guess from our perspective, that's probably the ideal setup. But we do have customers that sort of use other means of fulfillment inside the marketplaces. They want to use those tools to do the fulfillments First, the Versa just plays catch up and say, you know, this thing is shipped then finish the order into your system and then you know, generally what whatever transaction needs to enter.

[27:17]

We know this marketplace and there's also things about payments, you know, how the payment exchange, you could say I'm going to collect payment. So, credit card when the customer makes a purchase, but we don't sort of capture on the credit card, we just put a hold in your credit card when the order is first placed, we will only collect payment when we ship the items. So, some, you know, most marketplaces allow that kind of setup. So again, depends on your workflow then, you know, we can sort of accommodate that kind of setup that we know that when somebody ship, we actually still have to go in there and collect the payment on the credit card. You know, things return exchanges those happens often with online way So, so we have sort of mechanism to deal with that to obtain the refund information, if it would refund the currency in Shopify or any other marketplaces to, download the information and then record the refunds exchanges inside our system.

[28:24]

So, Richard, thanks. So, I mean, the net of it is, you know, if you sort of categorize all of these things, in terms of settings, there are these general settings that Richard talked about. There is the issue of master data like product data and customer data, etc. How do you sync them up? If you Where do you make the changes and if one is a master, one is a slave or both of them are equal on Those are some of the things you have to worry about. And then, like Richard mentioned, when do these transactions happen? And which transactions? Are we talking about only bringing orders down? Are we talking about dealing with refunds? are we dealing with payments, all of that sort of stuff needs to be factored in to considering an integration or a connector if you're going to buy from a third party.

[27:17]

The other thing that you should be aware of if you're looking at shopping carts and marketplaces and and Versa support is not just the integration with the support but once you I mean with the marketplace, a shopping cart, it is also the issue of Okay, so now I've got the order into versa. What next Versa just added a new capability that is called batch shipping, where you can do the pick Pack and Ship all in one shot based on a bunch of rules that are set up in the system. So, you set up some rules as far as dimensions are concerned, weights on shipping methods are concerned, even custom clearances. And then you basically select a bunch of orders and say, I want to ship these using these rules. And Versa will generate the labels, the packing list the invoices, all in one shot rather than one at a time that you are current you may be used to using prior to this capability being done. So, this is something new it came out a few weeks ago. It's being worked on and improved and we're going to iterate through the process. We're also working on the pick Pack and Ship process to make it much more efficient as we move forward. So those are all some of the things that are happening, but relevant to the marketplaces and shopping carts, etc. that shipping is something you should look at if you are looking at shopping carts.

[31:31]

We've talked most about this. You know, we have talked about the challenges. So, it's not just you go in, turn something on, and it all starts working. You have to think through why you're turning on what do you want automated, what do you want to do manually. And then there's setup and configuration on Versa's not going to be complicated, but setting up your shopping cart, or setting yourself up on the marketplace is going to require you to bring in people who actually know how to do that. We will help you on our site. But setting the shopping cart up or setting the marketplace up is going to require some level of skill doing. Having enabled that and versa, you will need some kind of a test plan. And so, when you engage with us, we will help you think through that. And you will likely or sometimes I won't say likely, but sometimes you need a test system to test these integrations before you go live on them. Because you don't want it impacting your live system.

Finally, there's the issue of what's the solution when something breaks, or when something is updated and things don't work quite as they used to. Who are you going to go to, if it's a Versa sort of built in integration You will come to us? But if it's some other some other person, say it's a third party, connector, where will you go. Versa will work with you to the extent possible, so that you don't sort of get caught in pointing fingers. But there will come a time when we will have to engage with the other people involved to come to a resolution. So, it's not something that should scare you away, or it shouldn't sort of discourage you from getting the connectivity and automation that these integrations can provide. But it is something to be aware of. And so, as you sort of decide on what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, we can help you think through it. As you can see, the EDI commerce hub integration is kind of the most complex because not only would you need any EDI agreement with an EDI vendor, you will also need an agreement with commerce hub to get that done. Okay, so we are ready for questions as far as shopping carts and marketplaces are concerned, so, okay, so we have one question. We have one question relating to Shopify, I guess this is from an existing Shopify user who wants to also use the point of sales terminal that Shopify provides. Yes, you can use you can integrate. Shopify connector will also integrate With the Shopify POS, so you can actually use the Shopify POS in your front counter and use the Shopify shopping cart with that one connector.

Any other questions?

No, there are no more questions on Shopify, on shopping carts and marketplaces. If you have additional, you know, questions please send us to ask at Versa cloud vrp.com. Kathy, did you get any questions?

No, I don't see any yet. Does anybody have any questions? You can just send them right along the chat if you do.

We'll move on to the next set of questions that we have. We Just pick some interesting questions out from our support queue every week. Because they may be irrelevant to the larger audience. Does Versa Cloud have max inventory?

No, we don't.

But one of the things that I wanted to also let everyone know is that coming up pretty soon on vs roadmap is inventory planning module that will use historical data and recent data to recommend buying quantities, etc. So that's something that's coming up in the next few months. And we will revisit this issue of setting up MAX at that point. Can more than one user be part of the approval? Yes. I don't know how many of you are using the approval process in Versa. But you can definitely and we get this question quite a bit. But more than one user can be a part of the approval chain and to find out how just reach out to us and we'll show you how to do it. Kathy pointed out when we were discussing this question, as we prepared for this webinar, that the windows folks would be using Ctrl and command button on the Mac to actually figure out how to select more than one user

How do you create a case for a customer? I don't see where to add one. I think this is something that most people have figured out. But in any case, if you haven't, just go to the customer record and you will be able to then create a case from there in terms of new and improved capabilities, we last week I think released this integration to EZ post. So if you want to go on to EZ post comm and see all the different carriers they integrated with, especially the folks in Canada, then and then you would like to sort of use EZ post and our anniversary integration, do reach out to us and we will help you get that going. The second thing is a capability that we've been asked often on over the years by folks in or among our customers who use our multi entity capabilities. They would like to have different sort of GL accounts and different entities. And now you can do it by hiding the ones you don't want in a particular entity. So, you can do it entity by entity and you can do that. So that's a big deal for the folks who have that issue. And then this came up recently as we reviewed the pick pack, and ship process. There had been requests for customer name on the listing page, so picklist list of picklist page I guess, and as well as showing of service lines on a picklist. So those things were done from our backlog and added it to the system. Those three things. Every week, we pick just Three things. And these are the three things from the list. Look at the release notes that are released every Tuesday. And you will find a list of stuff that is done and release that.

Okay. Well that's it. Um, if Kathy, are there any more questions? Otherwise we can wrap up? Just a reminder that there are these three, uh, the sort of related topics, EDI integration and the API coming up in May and June. Kathy, anything last minute? Otherwise we can wrap up? I don't see any, no. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much for coming everybody and, uh, look forward to seeing you, uh, down the road, uh, on May 26 at EDI if it's relevant to you, as well as if you have additional questions, please reach out to us one-on-one. Thank you very much.