In this white paper, I wish to discuss the impact of bulk orders placed by resellers on item availability, customer CSAT and impact to the business. The paper outlines challenges and solution approach taken to make items on promotion available to individual customers and have better selling agreements with resellers; it is intended for folks who manage/design order processing on eCommerce website and product team who manage item inventory and purchase ordering.

1. 1 | P a g e B u l k O r d e r M a n a g e m e n t
White Paper
Bulk Order Management - Individual Customers Vs Resellers
Ramesh Yelamali, Nov 2016
In this white paper, I wish to discuss the impact of bulk orders placed by resellers on item availability,
customer CSAT and impact to the business.The paper outlines challengesandsolution approachtaken
to make items on promotion available to individual customersand havebetter selling agreementswith
resellers; it is intended for folks who manage/design order processing on eCommerce website and
product team who manage item inventory and purchase ordering.
When working as part of Fraud Mgmt team, we were observing multiple orders being placed by the
same customer(s),with high quantity of individual items. Those orders were legitimate; valid payment,
valid billingandshipping addresses.It’s allgood,right?More sales,better business.Diggingdeeper into
analytics and connecting dots, we saw how it was impacting business and customer CSAT.
For any successful e-Commerce website, there are two primary factors to attract customers –
Availability andPricing. Yes, there are other aspects suchas speed of delivery, promotions,returnsand
others. Most e-commerce websites and retailers run pricing promotions to attract customers, make
more sales and try to retain customers by enrolling in loyalty/rewards.
However, if customersexperience frequent out-of-stock on items or see higher prices compared to the
competitor’s website, you will likely see drop in customer traffic and also CSAT. In today’s world,
customers have tools and apps to compare item prices across sellers. They have easy access to item
pricing information. Online returns are not scary anymore; most retailers support returns with fewer
restrictions. So customers go and shop where they get the best price for the item without worrying
much about seller credentials. In my opinion, the only time any customer would place order paying a
higher price for an item, is when they are using their reward points. 
To win customer traffic, most retailers match prices. Now the variable is promotions provided by
manufacturers. There will be flash sales and promotions and all those gimmicks to attract customers.
How many times have you unsubscribed to advertising emails? Check Kohl’s or Overstock.com. You
get a blast of emails with 10% to 20% discounts.
In order to support promotions, product teams keep applying discounts and price adjustments for all
sale events throughouttheyear. I haveexperienced instanceswhere wrongitems were marked down,
and items got sold out. Remember there are social sites distributing news of your item being marked
lower, and most customers are glued to their mobile devices to see the news.
Bulk ordersare one of those factorsthat influence item availability. Bulkorders, by definition, are those
orders whose item quantity is more than what a regularcustomer would expect to buy. Quantity may
vary by item types. Customer may buy one or two shoes (same SKU), but may buy a dozens of
toothbrushes or soaps.
What if you see customerplacing order for 100shoes of same SKU? How about same customer placing
multiple orders for same SKU with quantity 50? Let me introduce to “resellers.” When resellers buy
items in bulk with the goal to resell, your individual customers are deprived of those items.

2. 2 | P a g e B u l k O r d e r M a n a g e m e n t
Resellers take advantages of your hard work; you negotiated the price with brands and marketing of
item. You provide free shipping. Resellers get those items delivered free of cost and resell for a higher
price. Worse thanthat, they took the opportunityfrom your loyal / regularcustomersfrom purchasing
those items on your site impacting customer satisfaction.
Unlike going to the physical store and fighting for promotional item purchases, it’s super easy to buy
items on sale online. Those items that are on a bargain deal, will go out of stock in mins. And when
resellersplace bulkorders, individual customershave slim chance to get any of those items thatare on
promotion.
Following pages of this paper will discuss the solution approach to put in place.
Above picture shows the workflow changes we put in place to addressbulk ordersplaced by resellers.
It was an easy and quick win for us.
When an order is successfully placed, identify if order qualifies as a ‘bulk order’. (It could be from
website or from Fraud queue) If yes, route the order to appropriate processing queue, where human
intervention is required. Call center team or Purchase Order Mgmt team are the ones who would be
subscribed to bulk order queue. They get notified of the order. They will either –
1. Contact the customer and identify if its individual customer or reseller
2. Mark the order to proceed ahead without any changes OR
3. Cancel the order OR

3. 3 | P a g e B u l k O r d e r M a n a g e m e n t
4. Cancel the order and place new order on behalf of the reseller. New order will benefit both –
a. Your organization can make better pricing / shipping agreements with the seller
b. Seller gets better relationship and contacts to place future orders.
c. More Individual customers get a chance to buy promotional items and improve CSAT.
Some of the design considerations to consider –
1. Establish a thresholdfor Style/SKUs to classify as bulk orders. When a customer places order
beyond those thresholds,thoseorders are marked as bulkorders by the system.
a. Build a portalfor the Productteam to set these thresholdsinsteadof engineering
team updating thosethresholds.Mostof the time, when new productsare procured,
they will have contractsto limit the quantity to sellto preserve pricing/promo values.
2. Bulk ordersdo notplace hold on item inventory when an order is submitted.
a. Do not take the item inventory out. These ordersmay not get fulfilled andmay take
few days to finalize. When finalized, you will have new delivery dates set.
3. PO team gets notified of the bulkorder.
a. PO team contacts the customer.
b. Evaluatesif the customeris genuine individual customer or reseller
i. Did this customer placing orderfirst time or placed similar ordersbefore?
c. Negotiate better deal with reseller
i. Better pricing
ii. Shipment charges
iii. Dropship dates
iv. Advance PO to manufacturer
d. Fraudcheck
i. Violation of manufactureragreements
ii. Items soldout of country
e. Decide to let the order continue to be processedas one of exception. Youmay break
the order to subordersto meet shipping andavailability needs.
4. Dashboardand Monitoring
a. Monitor how longthose orders are placed in the queue andhow quickly there were
resolved.
b. Measurehow “seller”network was builtaroundyour organization
Groups primarily involved in design and implementation of this feature would be –
1. Website team, which messages correctlyfor bulkordersafter beingplaced and/ orroutingthose
orders to special queue
2. Order Mgmt team, who sets up special queues for processing bulk orders and converting them
to regular orders
3. Call center team, who acts on bulk orders and reaches out to those customers.
4. Product/Purchase Ordering team who negotiates better deal with resellers and fulfilling bulk
orders
5. Fraud Mgmt team, who may flag multiple orders being placed by a customer
What are some of the challenges?
1. Defining what quantity is considered as bulk order for different Style/SKUs
2. Excluding Style/Skus from bulk order consideration.
3. Mixed bag; single order containing both single and bulk items.

4. 4 | P a g e B u l k O r d e r M a n a g e m e n t
4. Org support –Callcenter and PO team to be able to act on bulkordersand take decision quickly.
5. Auto release of bulk orders if not performed within defined SLA
Bulk order management is not to stop those orders or to prevent business with resellers; but to have
better pricing and shipping agreements with those resellers and take care of individual customers. If
many of those resellers end up canceling the order because they don’t get the deal, then there is
nothing to lose. (Unlessthose items were marked for liquidation). In fact, you are making those items
available to your individual customers who are loyal to your site.
However, you will see few of bulkorder customers, who will be happy to work out a deal with you; it’s
less hassle for them to place multiple orders and better relationship with your organization for
purchasing and reselling the items.
After we had implemented the solutionapproach, we saw improvement in customerCSAT and few
successful agreementswith resellersto manage bulkorders. One reseller thankedus for helping him to
place a single orderinstead of multiple ordersto overcome item quantity thresholdlimit.
On the closing note, this implementation was influenced by strongcustomer focused call center and
Fraudteam who respondedto individual customerfeedback.