I'm about to go through a process of potentially changing the e-commerce software that is the backbone of the small business I own.
This is a major re-engineering project for the business, so I thought I'd document it on Hive. This should both help me document what I've done, and might also be of interest to anyone going through a similar process.
Image by REDQUASAR from Pixabay
Project Overview
- Identify reasons for moving to new software
- Identify and deal with (do, or cancel) any other non-routine workload.
- Download all possible data from existing package.
- Identify the actual functionality which new package has to have.
- Shortlist and evaluate possible new software providers.
- Make a decision (which may include staying with current provider if none of the shortlisted possibilities meet requirements), and plan in the time to implement and learn it. This may involve putting some sales channels onto temporary holiday mode.
1. Reasons to change software
Our e-commerce business currently uses a package called Linnworks as the core operational software. It handles synchronisation of inventory across sales channels, order processing, shipping label generation and manifesting, despatch notification to channels, purchase order processing and a certain amount of reporting, as well as a few other minor tasks.
We have been using it for about 10 years. I'd say that I used to be a super-fan of theirs a few years ago. However, they were taken over by a venture capital company about 3 or 4 years ago, and the original management team was replaced shortly afterwards.
Under the new management, it is clear Linnworks has made a decision to focus on enterprise-level customers and gradually ditch the micro-businesses like ourselves. It's their right to make that decision, but it leaves us out in the cold !
This has mainly been done by making design changes in the software. In particular, they introduced a new cloud-based iteration of the software (".net") to replace the original relatively slick Desktop version. At the time, they promised Desktop would be available to legacy customers for as long as they continued to use it.
This wasn't exactly true. More and more functionality has been removed from Desktop and moved to .net. In the process, each module has been totally redesigned, with functionality used by small businesses removed and replaced with systems far more useful to large customers with teams of people on hand.
They've made it far more complex to learn and use, which is great if you are part of a company divided up into teams each of which only has to perform a single function and is willing to accept clunkier processes as the price for additional complexity/flexibility. None of which we need. A couple of changes in the last week have changed key functionality we use daily from something we can do with a couple of keystrokes, to a far clunkier method (and in one case, impossible to replicate by any method other than downloading a massive report and analysing it out each day).
So while Linnworks may still be a good piece of software for some businesses, it feels like it's just no longer right for us.
The hard bit is going to be switching from a bunch of known issues and bugs to an exciting new set of unknown issues and bugs !
2. Clearing Existing Workload
Existing items that I need to deal with;
- Sorting through customer returns, manufacturer samples and dead stock, creating a clearance sale for those that are worthwhile, and dumping or giving away the rest. Temporarily placed on hold.
- Resolving a caching issue with website product categories. Planning to do an upload this week while our webmaster monitors progress live to see if it updates correctly. In progress.
- Website PayPal plugin; the old PayPal Payments Standard (which works fine) is being deprecated by PayPal and replaced with PayPal Payments Express (which offers customers more payment options, but also captures considerably more screen real estate). This should be a simple installation, but needs to be scheduled in with our webmaster, and may require some cosmetic redesign of the checkout. A job for this week !
In the next post, I'll move onto part 3, which involves the fun of downloading 10 years' worth of data. I plan to go into a bit of depth on this one !