webinarseauctions-chapter-8-part-5-large-purchases-auction-shipment Chris Reddick (President and CEO of Clarity Ventures) and Ron Halversen (Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Clarity) discuss the finer parts of deciding who handles shipping on an eCommerce platform. Part 5 of a 6-part series (Return to Part 4) RON: I remember a couple of projects when [started at Clarity]. It's been a few years, but one you remember, the Transformation Management Solutions Company. We integrated like 45 different LTL carriers for B2B shipping, plus the trucking companies could come in and you could literally go, “I want to ship a piano from Austin to New York,” and I could go in and in real time on the site we built, they could get 40 different quotes and have all kinds of ideas; exactly when they could have it shipped and how much it would cost, and have both private and public carriers. And we gave them all kinds of options and it was fully automated. That just blew my mind. RON: Then there was one we did that was Orange Octopus, right? That allowed and extended all those companies, one was a tire company, and I could say, “Well, I need those four tires, but I want them shipped to London.” But it was completely built in and it was seamless in the eAuction platform we built, where all of a sudden customs and duties were included with the API that we automated, including all of the customs forms, the payment receipt, and I remember even the shipping labels. So when it showed up at the dock, the whole package of everything just came from our solution already automated, already done, label ready to be printed, put on the pallet and shipped over to London, right? CHRIS: That's really what we want you, as a listener, to be thinking about: What do you need with your custom auction website? Open your mind, if you would, if you don't already know that there are opportunities to automate each of these steps, there are probably opportunities to do that. And there may be an incremental cost or a percentage cost with some of these resources, but it probably makes sense to at least evaluate them together with an expert, whether it's our Clarity team or another vendor that you work with for eAuction software. CHRIS: We strongly recommend that you explore where you want to go to be able to dominate and provide a lot of value, to be the optimal vendor in your space with eAuctions. And one of the best things that we can recommend, if we were to summarize this section, is: Open your mind up and raise your standards on what is possible. Really demand a full shipping integration, or at least the ability to explore that, because most likely there are turnkey APIs available to be able to get you quotes and estimates that come back in real time and all automate the process for you. Like you said, Ron, with customs and duties and being in a position where we can allow the seller to actually use their own shipping provider and choose their own eCommerce shipping companies. We can allow the buyer to use their own shipping provider. This is a common theme that we see with large equipment purchases. One of the things that we see a lot is with estate sales or business sales. There may be a desire for the buyer to input their own shipping account information for the purchase of the shipping portion. This is an optimal option for a lot of buyers. So they may agree in the governance upfront, “Hey, I want to pay for my own shipping,” and this might make it optimal for the actual eCommerce auction itself. For the seller in the auction, they might say, “Hey, I want everyone to agree that they're going to provide their own shipping account or their own shipping solution. Again, this is an example for a scenario where it's expensive jewelry on a B2B auction. We may need to physically have a handoff that has a specialized delivery. Maybe it goes into like a bank security deposit vault. Maybe it goes to an armed vehicle, even. Of course, these are extreme scenarios. But the point is that it can be done in this particular space. On the shipping side for B2B auctions, the logistics side in automating this, it's a burgeoning industry and it's not going away. It's only going to continue to grow and continue to develop. So we want to encourage you that you have the opportunity to fully optimize your processes as specific as they may be to your niche. You really do have the opportunity to fully optimize those when you work with an online auction platform development company. Continue to Part 6 to discuss shipping container calculations on eAuction sites.
Chris Reddick (President and CEO of Clarity Ventures) and Ron Halversen (Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Clarity) discuss the finer parts of deciding who handles shipping on an eCommerce platform. Part 5 of a 6-part series (Return to Part 4)