Chris Reddick (President and CEO at Clarity Ventures) and Ron Halversen (Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Clarity) discuss regulations and how restrictions can be put on certain buying group members.

Part 7 of a 7-part series (Return to Part 6)

RON: Chris, dive into some of these other ones, especially when it comes to a buyers group requiring either documents or certificates. We've done ones where they had to put up their concealed weapons permit for each state that they're in. This is so we can track where their coverage is for insurance companies. Others where they've had to put up their HAZMAT certificate. There are just so many different nuances to this.  

Go ahead and dive into some of these additional things, especially when it comes into the third bullet. There are embargoes to certain countries. Certain regions might have restrictions. I know when I lived in Utah, my roommate and I, [the contract said] no pets. So we went and looked at the agreement and it specifically called out cats and dogs. I had three birds, a tarantula, two aquariums, and then my roommate came home with a ferret. Ultimately we had to get rid of the ferret because the city had an ordinance where ferrets weren't allowed in the city. 

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RON: There are so many different requirements and nuances for the group purchasing platform, especially when it comes to online purchases. How do you enforce those? And I love that you brought up governance because I'd forgotten to include governance here. But governance is a big one, so go ahead and dive into some of those applications, especially when it applies to governance. 

CHRIS: Absolutely. And I think this is a nuance for most folks, but you may get to this at some point. So this is an FYI, if this is a requirement for your space or industry, we encourage you to listen really closely to this portion. But the bottom line with some of these different rules is that you can think of it in the sense of “this is a requirement to be able to look at that. They have to meet some criteria.” 

They may just be able to I products. There may be enough regulation pressure that we don't even want them to see anything. This could be certain countries where there's an IP block. Although that may be relatively rare, this is probably something that's worth at least putting a simple switch, a setting, to turn on and to be able to show that, in good faith, we attempted to reasonably block this country from the buyers group members. So that's one extreme example.

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CHRIS: A much more specific example might be there’s a certain regulation; it could be they just don't want to sell their items to a certain company. Maybe it's with a state that has a regulation for a certain type of chemical, and you need to be able to verify that that chemical isn't in any of the items. Or maybe there's just an extra fee that has to be paid for some interstate commerce that's going on. So these are all nuances that we need to be aware of. 

And I would say with the customs and duties and taxes and things like this, this can be a really significant impact to the end-users cost and their consideration for whether or not they want to purchase. Ultimately, we want to be able to incorporate all of this and be able to identify—I'm not sure if a lot of folks are aware of this, I'm sure quite a few on this video are—but there are certain laws and regulations around removing taxes or reducing taxes dramatically for certain business types that qualify that are not just a traditional retail type of a purchase, but they're actually a merchandising business and they qualify under certain criteria. 

So does the business qualify for that tax advantage? And how are we documenting this and how are we making sure that we're going through a formal process so that we're not presenting pricing taxes, customs duties, regulations, or governance that isn't appropriate, and that we are presenting what we're supposed to. 

Ultimately, the business, the buying group, group purchasing organization, is of no value to the members if it is bankrupt and sued into oblivion. So we want to put reasonable best practices into place and show that we did what is the best practice to the best of our ability within the industry's standards. So normally that, at a minimum, is going to accomplish remediating major risks and being able to allow for remediation if there are still issues.  

Going into more specifics, that might be a great topic for another video, but we ultimately just want to encourage you as you're digging into catalog integration for your buying group or purchasing organization, know that there are experts out there. We certainly consider ourselves to be experts after all of the work that we've done in this space, and we love interacting with potential clients. 

It may not be a good fit for us to work together. In the worst case, we will point you in the direction of someone else that might be a good fit or a solution that will fit your scenario. But we’d love to chat with you. If you are considering or digging into this space and have questions, we provide a complimentary discovery process and we really enjoy learning about how your business operates and how we can help. And again, if there isn't a good fit, we can at least point you towards some really helpful resources. 

Of course, if there is, then we will certainly welcome the opportunity to discuss that as well. 

RON: Sounds good. Well, stay tuned for next time. We're going to talk about the advanced search capabilities in buyers groups, and we're going to dive into that one. If you enjoyed today's presentation, please smash that Like button. Subscribe to the channel. We look forward to seeing you in the future. 

Please visit us at clarity-ventures.com, hit the button to request a free complimentary consultation. I'll jump on a call with you. I would love to chat with you. Looking forward to our next video. Thanks, Chris. 

CHRIS: Thanks, Ron. Bye for now. 

 

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Flexible permissions can set up roles on your group buying platform to meet the needs of any business. Let Clarity show you exactly how powerful this feature can be.

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