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Ron Halversen, vice-president of sales and marketing at Clarity Ventures, discusses the advantages of shopping lists and reordering for buying groups.

Part 2 of a 12-part series (Return to Chapter 1)

RON HALVERSEN: Hi, Ron, from Clarity. This webinar is the second in a series of about a dozen or more short webinars covering buying groups. This webinar will cover defining and creating groups, features, and the benefits of buying group marketplace, the marketplace technology, and more.

Last webinar we discussed the questions what is a buying group and talked about its benefits. The main benefit is the ability to purchase items at a discount to be a member of a group. However, that comes with additional expectations. As a member of Costco, I can get gas a few cents a gallon less than the local stations near my house. But since there are only two Costcos and both are at least 15 minutes away from my house—and they also always have long lines at the gas pumps—it's not really a deal, and it's very inconvenient. So I don't even bother, even if I'm already there shopping.The same holds true for buying groups storefront. You need to ensure that your workflow and purchasing interfaces are as good at, if not better than, the alternatives, if you want them to keep coming back.

what is hipaa

A major feature that we've added to our buying group solution is the addition of shopping lists. The purpose of shopping lists is to help increase repeat business by making it easier to reorder from your solution than any other location. A shopping list is similar to wish list or favorites, but you can name shopping lists and have as many of them as you want, and they can be reused over and over again.

With the Clarity solution, these lists can be used by your sales rep for phone, email, and faxed in orders as well. This allows a customer to call in and a rep can see all of their shopping lists, add to cart from there, and purchase on their account all within a few seconds.

what is hipaa

These lists can be for repair kits, for maintenance on large equipment, all items needed when hiring a new employee, unique lists for custom projects or client jobs in construction, and thousands of other uses.

So how do we create or set up these shopping lists? Well, first of all, we need to determine how we purchase and repurchase. With the Clarity's eCommerce solution, it's so easy to create, rename, delete and clear these lists that they can easily be managed on the fly. They're extremely helpful if you reorder items a lot or, for construction, need to create a list of approved items that will be ordered months in advance for a specific client build. This can be very helpful, as anyone with purchasing authority could call in and a customer sales rep can emulate that user, see the shopping list, and order on their behalf.

what is hipaa

Lists can be associated to a location, branch, or office. In the case of different needs for each location, it makes it easier for office staff to repurchase commonly needed items for new hires, keeping office inventory in stock, and ensuring the right items are ordered like toner cartridges, laptops, tablets, and more.

It also helps a ton when setting up a new location, if you've already got a list of exactly what's needed for office supplies, what chairs and desks were ordered, what a new employee needs and what the IT staff have approved for hardware purchasing. Shopping lists have a number of helpful features besides just being able to add to eCommerce shopping cart. Additionally, it keeps up to date on the stock availability, any updated sales pricing, and allows you to adjust the quantity before adding to cart.

what is hipaa

Finally, it links back to the product details page in case you want to review any product or warranty information. It provides a place for your bigger clients and B2B purchasers to create and manage their own frequent and recurring purchases, eliminating additional searching and waiting through the product catalog. In general, it speeds up the reordering process by bringing all the pertinent information regarding the product inventory and pricing and turns it into a single click process, which will become their go-to if it's easier than all other options, thus increasing and protecting your future sales revenue.

what is hipaa

So let's go ahead and take a look at what these live look like. From the product catalog while you're browsing through all the products, if you hover over any product you're provided with some helpful quick links, which should include adding a product to your favorites or wish lists. After drilling into the product details page, you now have more information regarding the product, its uses, warranty, image and more so now you can make a in-depth decision as to when and how you would buy and potentially reorder this product. So not only do you still have the buttons to add to your favorites and wish list, but now you've got the option to add to a shopping list.

what is hipaa

Clicking on the shopping list icon provides you with a simple to use UI that will allow you to easily add this product to the existing shopping list or if you need, create a new list and add the product to this new list. From your user dashboard, you can view and update your list, deleting and creating lists is needed. Finally, one additional feature from any past purchase, whether an order, quote, return or invoice, you can reorder any single item or reordering everything with a single click by clicking reorder all. It makes it really easy to reorder, especially if you've got a repeat order with a lot of items and quantities.

what is hipaa

So now that we know what shopping lists are and how they work, let's review the benefits. Typical online product catalogs have both many products and many features that consume a lot of time to find exactly what you're looking for. Lists make finding the exact item you need quick and painless. Lists help when you're ordering in bulk or reordering many items over and over. Some solutions allow the sharing of lists so that others in your company, like procurement managers or your sales reps, can order from your lists.

Some solutions also allow you to save your own customized lists. Other solutions also provide for the customization of roles that some users may or may not purchase certain items or over a certain budget restriction without the order being forwarded for approval into an approval process. So that's it for chapter two of our buying group webinar series, how to create groups and how to manage groups. I hope you'll join us for our next chapter where we'll dive into EDI integrations. Thanks for watching.

what is hipaa
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Take Advantage of Buying Groups

Creating buying groups can be an excellent way to differentiate yourself in the market and make yourself the go-to destination in your preferred industry. Clarity can show you demos of the clients we've already done this for.

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