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jmiralles
Member
191 Posts |
 Posted - 02/01/2008 : 4:13:11 PM
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I was wondering if anyone out there was on the Yahoo Store platform, or even if you're not, how you go about managing autoship orders all within Order Manager. Quite a while back ago I spoke to Mark in detail about Subscription Manager since we do own the module. I don't remember specifics since it was a long time ago, but he said something to the effect that it would not work the way we wanted it to and that it was more for simple subscriptions such as magazines.
What we sell are health supplements and customers often would like an autoship order delivered on regular intervals. How we would like it to work is to create an order for a customer once and then set OM up to run them through a batch process daily, whether it is done manually or automatically. Obviously we would need OM to keep track when these orders should be generated too.
How does everyone else do it, besides having to get on a store platform that already has autoship management built in? And just for the heck of it, what are some of the store platforms you guys know of that handles what I am describing here?
Thanks in advance.
Jamie |
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SteveFromAZ
Member
USA
191 Posts |
Posted - 02/04/2008 : 11:39:42 PM
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Jamie,
The merchant I recently worked with is here http://www.scoopfree.com. They sell an automatic litter box with replaceable litter trays that can be ordered in 3 packs and 6 packs individually or as a subscription service where the user can chose monthly/weekly interval with a frequency between 0 and 9. They use Miva Merchant 5. With Stone Edge's help, we created a number of sub-SKUs which mirrored all of the possible combinations of product-interval-frequency.
For each one of these sub-SKUs we created a subscription SKU which had the definitions around the product-interval-frequency built into them. Once the orders are imported into SEOM from Miva, SEOM automatically puts the user into a subscription plan which matches exactly what they chose on the web site. There is nothing that we have to do differently from an order processing stand point for the first order.
For people who have already had their first item shipped and are actively in a subscription, the merchant needs to go into the subscription manager and clicks 'preview' all orders that are currently due to ship (because they are ready). Once you are happy with the customer list you can then convert these customers to orders to fulfill their subscriptions that are due. You then treat the order like every other order in the system and go through the approval process,etc. with them.
There wasn't any 'autoship' feature that is required from the cart to support subscriptions through SEOM. All that was required in this case was the ability for the cart to pass us product-interval-frequency information which it did because they were product attributes that already existed for these two subscription products on the web site. All in all, this feature works great saving hours a day since they used to process all of these subscriptions by hand.
I've worked in a number of environments which need to manage subscriptions and I really believe that this implementation is one of the better ones that I have seen. Subscription management logic IMO is pretty complicated stuff, but they have been able to build something which is relatively straight forward and does the job that I believe it was intended to do.
So, I'm not exactly sure what your additional requirements are, but for these guys, it worked like a charm. If you want any additional details on the implementation, feel free to contact me off forum.
Sincerely,
Steve
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Steve |
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Barney Stone
Administrator
USA
6279 Posts |
Posted - 02/05/2008 : 08:20:00 AM
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Jamie -
The Subscription Manager can probably do what you want. You can find more information about it at:
http://www.stoneedge.com/subscriptionmanager.htm
Here is a paragraph from that page:
"The Subscription Manager supports numerous types of subscriptions. Some can be for a fixed number of deliveries, such as a training course with 10 lessons that are delivered one per month, with the same 10 lessons shipped on the same schedule regardless of when a customer begins their subscription. Others can be for a set number of deliveries, but with automatic renewals, such as annual magazine subscriptions. Typically in those cases everyone with that subscription would get the same product at the same time, such as the April issue or the CD-of-the-month, regardless of when their subscription began. Others can be for regular deliveries, but with no fixed ending date, such as monthly deliveries of vitamins or pet supplies."
You can also find the instruction manual for the Subscription Manager in our Knowledge Base at:
http://www.stoneedge.com/help/OM_DOC/subscription_mgr/first_topic.htm
Hope that helps, |
Barney Stone, President
Stone Edge Technologies, Inc.
610-994-3699 ext. 111 |
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jmiralles
Member
191 Posts |
Posted - 02/05/2008 : 3:33:39 PM
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| When we first purchased subscription manager - we were told that we'd have to make skus combining what the customer wanted. We sell 3,000 products so creating different sku combinations would not be something we could do. Has subscription manager changed to where we don't have to build subscription skus? Ideally we are looking for a way to generate a customer's order using the skus we already have in the system - set the schedule - and have the orders automatically generate. Is this now what subscription manager does? |
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kevin
Administrator
USA
2668 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2008 : 3:54:31 PM
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| No. The program does not provide for a random list of SKUs to be placed onto a subscription. This has been requested but has not been implemented. |
Kevin Smith
Stone Edge Technologies, Inc.
920 Germantown Pike
Suite 112
Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462
610-994-3699 x112
kevin at stoneedge dot com |
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jmiralles
Member
191 Posts |
Posted - 03/02/2008 : 11:40:27 AM
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| Kevin, what would it take to get it to the point where we can choose random sku's to be included in an autoship? It would also be nice if OM had a scheduling feature to automate the generation of the day's autoship orders so that it will always be included in each day's business as opposed to someone having to remember to process autoships everyday. Not knowing the programming involved, how much would there be and how much would it cost? |
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Yahoo Store & Autoships
