Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and the proliferation of B2B application marketplaces
Part 3: An example of how a business can use ISV applications
Note from the author: This is the final article in a series of three, which aim to provide an overview of what ISVs are in the context of a business user. In case you missed the first article, here’s where you can find it.
This final article lists an example of using ISV applications, drawn from my own experience of implementing them in businesses. This example is from a business I co-founded and launched with a world renowned department store in London.
Selling physical products in a digital world
The year was 2013. My co-founder and I decided to set up a homewares business in London, and set off to do the necessary ground work over the course of the following year. That ground work involved researching all aspects of the product as they related to our target demographic — the range of products on offer, pricing, packaging, brand messaging and understanding distribution channels — and also aspects related to the design, manufacture and supply of those products to meet those criteria.
In the beginning, prior to our formal launch, we did everything old school — from maintaining expense tallies in excel sheets, to sending customers Royal Mail tracking numbers via email for orders posted manually through the UK Post Office. We even converted Excel invoices into PDFs, for wholesale orders received while in the pre-launch phase.
Our aim was to sell online, while distributing wholesale through well known retail outlets, prior to opening our own physical store. We also set up pop-up shops at venues and events worldwide, to further increase sales and brand awareness. As you would likely appreciate, setting up the physical operations of the business involved quite a varied set of tasks — and we wanted the software to match those processes, that would help run our day to day.
Fortunately, that’s where the abundance of ISVs and application marketplaces came in handy; we were spoilt for choice and the decisions revolved around weighing the benefits of which software to use, rather than trying to search for any software at all.
The detail in our retail
Website/ ecommerce store
To sell online, we needed a website where we could manage a product catalogue and inventory, and promote those products to the public. Having more than just store functionality — like the ability to create blogs and host other types of static content — was also important to us.
Online payments
We wanted to provide customers an easy option to pay for our products when shopping online. And we needed an option that was familiar, widely used and accepted multiple card types.
In store payments
We wanted to provide customers an easy option to pay for our products when in store too, when we put up our pop-up shops. And similarly, an option that was familiar to users, easy for us to set up, would sync with our online payments and even maintain a product catalogue, was ideal.
Wholesale customer invoicing and payments
Wholesale customers often buy products at discounted rates to the price retail customers like you and me would pay. And wholesale margins, depending on the type of business and reputation, would have differing margins and requirements on invoicing. We wanted an application that could help us issue custom invoices and pricing, and as a bonus offer our wholesale customers an easy way to pay us.
Accounting & Tax
We wanted the ability to track all incoming payments from retail customers both online and in store, pending and received payments from wholesale customers, and all outgoings like employee salaries and payments to suppliers directly into our accounts. We also wanted to provide our accountants with easy access to these records. As a bonus, we wanted the ability to generate reports to submit for our quarterly tax filings (VAT returns in the UK).
In the table below, I’ve highlighted some of the ISV applications we decided to use, and some alternatives that were and still are present. Elaborating further on the rationale for why we chose those specific apps is likely a topic for another day.
And that draws this series to conclusion. I hope you enjoyed the read. In a future series or articles, I’ll cover some basics on the dynamics of ISV application marketplaces and integrations, and how some of them have been set up successfully — targeted at those who work at ISVs and thinking of launching their own marketplaces or further expanding their existing ones.
