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I'm upgrading from an old version of BV to the current version. As part of this, I am re-evaluating the dropship process in my company so that it is smoother for us and smoother for our dropshippers. My dropshippers would like PDF dropship notifications that they can print out directly as packing slips (instead of the emails with the email headers they have to remove now). I'm also investigating ways of automating notifications between us and our dropshippers. Ideas I'm considering include sending them a pre-generated shipment label pdf (so we already have shipment info), to 3rd party software solutions that the dropshippers can install on their sites, see their open orders in our system, ship the orders, and have our system updated with relevant tracking and shipments statuses: obviating the need for the email hassle that comes with the out-of-box bv experience. Does anyone have any thoughts, ideas or experiences to share with this? I am looking at the products from Structured Solutions, as well as some of the Enterprise shipping functionality from Stamps.com (it has ODBC hooks now for shipping).
Thanks in advance for anything you can share. |
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I'm also interested to hear what others have done in this area. Regarding PDF's, it would be possible to customize the drop shipping email to be converted to a PDF and emailed. As to the issue of automating notifications between you and your drop shippers, you might want to consider creating a drop shipper portal/extranet on your site rather than third-party software that they have to install. That way the drop shippers log into your site to view and update orders. |
Aaron Sherrick
BV Commerce
Toll-free 888-665-8637 - Int'l +1 717-220-0012 |
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Rank: Member
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Aaron - what technologies are available to create pdfs on the fly? I'm assuming it would need to be some kind of .net component. Is there a popular one used by developers with bv?
I have considered that extranet, but quite honestly, my higher volume dropshippers don't want to interact with my site. They want batch. They want me to batch the notifications, and they want to batch the shipping confirmations back to me. Those are the ones who also would like their shipping solutions to directly integrate with my back end so that the shipping they do for me does not interfere with their established shipping processes. |
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I know this is overkill, but Shipper can automatically create a packing slip and email it to a drop shipper as a PDF.
Do your higher volume drop shippers use different in-house systems? Have any of them asked if there is a way to directly integrate with your site? BVC 5 comes with a complete web service for external integrations. Shipper also includes a web service for uploading tracking information. It is much simpler than the BVC 5 web service. Either one could be used to directly integrate the drop shipper with your site.
I can imagine a system where you have a copy of Shipper that acts as the shipping dashboard. When your copy of Shipper downloads a new order, it sends PDF packing slips to your drop shippers. When your drop shippers process a shipment (batch or otherwise), their system sends the tracking information back to your store via Shipping Agent. The next time you run Download New Orders in Shipper, it downloads the updated orders that were dropshipped so that you can keep track of what has been shipped and what has not. |
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Rank: Member
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One thing Andy on this post, do not many of the drop shippers have services of their own that you poll? I know for example on one I am working with that we hit their webservices, check for shipped items and update orders. Orders are also sent to them via a webservice. I am guessing most often you have to do the work and not them hitting your services. At least the ones I have worked with so far are that way. |
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Rank: Member
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So Andy - can Shipper can automatically create a packing slip without a human pushing a button? Can it provide a shipping label? We really want to get out of the business of having to babysit the system to send dropship notifications.
Different dropshippers do different things - although some will be flexible enough to adopt client software I provide them if it makes their process smoother. Some of my dropshippers will want to use the little extranet that we are going to create. None of my drop shippers are technically savvy. Some need to be able to directly connect, but it will be incumbent upon me to provide a flexible solution for them that is lightweight. They will use it if it saves them work.
For one of our dropshippers to send tracking info back via Shipping Agent - does this require them to have specific software on their end? I really need to provide them a way not to have to cut and paste addressing information when they ship the orders.
Where is the documentation for the BVC5 web services?
Thanks much. |
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Originally Posted by: "Jen" 
So Andy - can Shipper can automatically create a packing slip without a human pushing a button? Can it provide a shipping label? We really want to get out of the business of having to babysit the system to send dropship notifications.
Shipper can automatically create and email a PDF packing slip as new orders come in. As of today, it cannot send the shipping label. Originally Posted by: "Jen"
For one of our dropshippers to send tracking info back via Shipping Agent - does this require them to have specific software on their end? I really need to provide them a way not to have to cut and paste addressing information when they ship the orders.
They would need software on their end. Either a copy of Shipper or their own software customized. Software is involved. It either lives at your end (extranet) or their end. But it has to go somewhere. [quote="Jen"] Where is the documentation for the BVC5 web services? I'm not aware of any documentation. |
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