foreword
With the decline of the growth rate of the e-commerce industry, the stage of savage growth has passed, and e-commerce has begun to enter the stage of refined operation. The competition among merchants has shifted from competitive marketing and low prices to the back-end supply chain, and the efficiency and cost of the supply chain have changed. The level determines the life and death of the business.
In the supply chain management of e-commerce, there are two core businesses, namely order processing and inventory management. Orders are the source of all back-office business. After multi-platform store opening has become a common operation method, how to efficiently and coordinately manage orders from different platforms has become a key link that affects user reputation. E-commerce eliminates the space restrictions in the shopping process, but the physical goods need to be stored and distributed, and the geographical space restrictions cannot be eliminated. How to quickly and cost-effectively meet consumer needs from different regions, global inventory management has become a must Management challenges to be well resolved.
1. Multi-platform order management
The so-called multi-platform store means that when developing e-commerce business, not only to establish your own official website, nor to open an online store on the Taobao platform, but to cooperate with all mainstream platforms. At present, these platforms include: Taobao, Tmall, Paipai Mall, JD.com, Suning.com, Yihaodian, etc., open independent stores on these platforms or promote through online distribution models.
(1) How to unify orders on different platforms
Obviously, due to the differences in the design ideas of different platforms, the order status of each platform is different. For example, the order status of Taobao platform is: "No Alipay transaction created", "Waiting for buyer to pay", "Buyer has paid" , "Seller has shipped", "Buyer has signed", "Successful transaction", "Transaction closed automatically", "Seller or buyer voluntarily closes the transaction". The order status of the Jingdong platform is: "waiting for delivery", "waiting for delivery", "delivered", "buyer has received the goods", "cancelled".
Among these states, many states are useful for platform management, but useless for subsequent order processing; for example, the "Alipay transaction has not been created" state of Taobao platform, this state is designed by Taobao to control the abnormality in the payment process of the order. However, in the Haiding system (hereinafter referred to as the "system"), orders that have not been successfully paid do not need to be processed. If these useless statuses are removed, the status of orders on different platforms is similar. According to the needs of business processing, order It is unified into the following states, and the relationship between these states is as follows:
After the order is downloaded from each platform to the background system, the system unifies the status of all orders into the order status of the platform according to the corresponding rules, so that subsequent order processing operations can be completed in a consistent manner.
(2) Order processing strategy
After the sales order is downloaded from major platforms, it needs to be reviewed by customer service and related operations of the system. The processing content includes three categories: merger strategy, promotion processing strategy, and inventory processing strategy.
1. Merger strategy
Taking Taobao platform orders as a sample, about 10% of the orders are placed separately by the same user within a short period of time, and there is a possibility of merger. Consolidation of orders can reduce shipping costs, and customer acceptance of goods is relatively simple, so it is used by most e-commerce companies.
The consolidation of orders can be manual consolidation or automatic consolidation. Manual merging is flexible, but inefficient, and automatic merging is the most used.
Automatic merging is done automatically by the system. When the order must meet certain conditions, it can be merged. Common conditions include: the source store of the order is the same, the buyer ID is the same, the delivery address is the same, there is no remark information, and the location is the same. Under the "Buyer paid, pending review" status. When automatically merged, the order amount and shipping cost are simply accumulated, and the order line amount is not re-allocated.
The system generally completes automatic merging and automatic review at the same time, and leaves orders that do not meet the automatic processing conditions for manual processing by customer service. Manual merging is very flexible. Orders that have been merged can be merged again. Manually merged orders also need to be reviewed manually.
2. Promotional processing strategy
All e-commerce platforms support a wide variety of promotion strategies, but due to the limitation of platform versatility, some promotion strategies cannot be supported. For example, Taobao platform does not support the most common gift promotions and quantity discount promotions. Therefore, the system provides corresponding functions to make up for the shortcomings of the e-commerce platform.
The currently supported promotion models are:
Model 1: For all products, if the purchase amount >=m, C+D will be given as a gift;
Model 2: For some products A and B, the purchase amount >=m, and C+D will be given as a gift;
Model 3: The stock of gifts is limited, the stock of gift C is m, while stocks last;
Model 4: Giveaways of different grades, high grade A, stock m, after all gifts are given, send low grade gift B, stock n;
Model 5: A batch of gifts A, B, C, D, the stock is m, n, i, k respectively, while stocks last;
Time is another dimension of the promotion model. In the current promotion list, the effective time can be accurate to the second, for example, the promotion starts from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm every day.
上面提到的促销模型是系统自动生效的，由于电商的售后服务复杂多变，很多时候需要通过送赠品的方式来换取客户的理解，因此，系统还提供了手工添加赠品的功能，只要是有库存的商品都可以手工添加到订单中，作为赠品处理。
3、库存处理策略
根据库存的状态可以分为以下几类：可用库存、锁定库存、预留库存、买断库存、待退货库存、虚拟库存。在订单处理时，锁定库存和待退货库存是不可以使用的，其他集中类型的库存需要按顺序进行处理，处理逻辑如下：
二、全局库存管理
在传统零售中，由于每个实体店都有自己的库存。而对于在不同平台上的网店而言，也需要一个库存数，这个库存数既是平台的要求，也是防止超卖的管理要求。
每个网店有库存数，不表示每个网店都需要有自己独立的仓库，因此，不同平台上的网店库存需要集中管理，以保证每个网店既不缺货又不超卖。
库存集中管理后，库存要存放在实体仓库中，而实体仓库的建设有两种模式，即集中式和分布式，这两种模式各有优缺点。
（一）集中式库存管理
所有库存都放在一个实体仓库中，这种方式非常简单，也是广大中小电商最常采用的库存管理策略。
不同平台上的店铺共同使用一个仓库中的库存时，就涉及到库存分配问题，否则就容易出现缺货或超卖，在我们系统中通过库存发布来解决。
库存发布有两种方式，一种是按店铺的权重进行分配，比如100件库存，一个A级店铺分配40件，两个B级店铺各分配20件，两个C级店铺各分配10件。更精细一点的控制是根据商品在不同门店的销售占比来分配。另外一种方式，所有店铺库存保持一致，将所有可用库存同时发布到所有店铺上，比如100件库存，在一个A级店、两个B级店、两个C级店的库存都是100件。
看上去第二种方式似乎不太合理，但实际上更符合电商的环境。电商销售的突然爆发性远远超过实体零售，几万件商品可以在几分钟内销售出去，如果按权重进行分配，很可能的出现C级店库存全部销售完成而下架，A级店还有大量的库存。其次各大平台的库存是可以随时更新的，通过系统对接，可以及时方便地将库存发布出去，从而降低在各个店铺缺货而影响的销售。
通过快速的更新库存，让所有店铺的库存保持一致的做法比预分配的做法更有效性，但对于库存很少的商品容易造成超卖。比如某件商品库存只有1件了，如果所有店铺都还将库存设为1的话，几个店铺同时下单的可能性还是很大的，就非常容易出现超卖的情况了。因此，针对库存少的商品需要进行特别的控制，应该定向发布到指定的店铺上销售，而不再是发布给所有店铺销售。
如果库存商品的数量很大，且店铺数很多的情况下，计算可用库存和发布库存是比较耗费时间的事情，因此，我们引入了增量发布的库存功能，只发布从上次发布到本次发布时间间隔内有库存变化的商品。
（二）分布式库存管理
与集中式库存管理相对应，一般出现以下情形时，需要分布式库存管理：
1. 在各个区域需求量都足够大，可以支持一个配送中心的运营成本，这种情形对大型电商（如京东、一号店等）而言是非常常见的；
2. 线下各个区域的比较强势的经销商，线上的订单需要有各个区域的经销商负责配送，这种情况对品牌企业比较多见；
3. 产品易碎或保质期比较短（比如生鲜等）必须要通过区域配送来完成，才能有效降低损耗。
分布式库存管理的复杂性远远超过集中式库存管理，其管理的核心在于如何协同使用在不同区域的库存，常用的方案有：
1. 不同区域订单归属不同仓库管理
这也是最常用的一种模式。如果自建官方商城，可以在客户下订单的时候，就可以指定到不同区域的仓库。如果是在第三方平台上的店铺，则没有办法指定区域，这是需要后台系统在处理订单的时候，根据送货地址自动将订单处理到对应区域的仓库上；
2. 不同网店归属不同仓库管理
这种模式不太常见。但如果一个企业有多个品牌，同时这些品牌的制造或配送仓库不在一起的时候，就会出现这种需求。由于品牌定位不同，所以不同品牌在第三方平台上都会开设不同的店铺，但后台系统还是一套，所以需要将不同网店与对应品牌的仓库建立对应关系，在处理订单的时候，根据这个对应关系扣减相应的库存；
在分布式库存管理中，另外一个常见的难点是成本核算。比较常见的方式是每个仓库单独核算，仓库之间的调拨是成本价或加价调拨，或者所有仓库统一核算，仓库之间调拨仅仅是数量上的变化，不涉及成本上的变化。比较复杂的是某几个仓库统一核算，这些仓库内部调拨是按成本价调拨，而与其他仓库之间是加价或成本价调拨。
（三）虚拟库存
所谓虚拟库存，就是这些商品在仓库中并没有实际的库存，但在销售平台上显示有库存，这类库存都是虚拟库存。由于电商是先有订单后发货，从销售成立到货物发出有个时间差，这个时间差就让虚拟库存在电商中得到非常灵活和普遍的使用。
在虚拟库存管理中，根据配送方式的不同，有两类处理模式：
第1种，集中配送，即供应商送货到自己的仓库中，统一分货打包后，与其他在库商品一同配送给客户，这种模式的最大好处是供应商接触不到最终客户，同时，由于是统一配送，客户的服务质量能得到保证，处理流程如下：
第2种，供应商配送，即订单发送给供应商，由供应商直送给客户。这种类型缺少了二次分拣，可以降低配送成本，但缺点是客户的资料被供应商拿走，且每个供应商的服务质量差异较大，很难统一。处理流程如下：
结束语
海鼎的电子商务解决方案全面解决了多平台订单处理和全局库存管理中的管理难题，整体处理框架图如下：
通过灵活的自定义处理策略，系统具备了很强的适应性，为我们的客户拓展电子商务业务提供了强大的工具和坚实的基础。
