CHRIS: Think about it, if you have permutations of search results that may need to include literally a hundred different search attributes. And we've had many clients that have had 90 to 100 custom search attributes per subcategory. So they're actually all different per subcategory. We need to be able to track this data to see which are actually being used so that we can have a useful user interface and we're not presenting 100 search filters, which is just crazy. Users aren't going to find that particularly helpful. But ultimately, we also have to show those counts and be able to dynamically update the data and show inventory and pricing, user-specific and buying group-specific pricing. Again, doing all of that on the fly at scale in a performant way is pretty darn challenging. So we just encourage you to think about that.
The other thing that we would point out is, within each category subcategory, typically those filters are going to change. And this needs to be architected in a way that doesn't require that you and your team put literally hundreds of hours into specifying this information.
So ideally, whoever you work with is going to have some intelligence about how they're pulling that in from your ERP or CRM or system of record for this product data. If you're using the eCommerce platform of your buying group or group purchasing organization as your system of record or your PIM, is it easy to manage like the Clarity eCommerce platform—shameless plug—and ultimately the main point here is that whenever I'm going to do a search and I have the intent to buy, I want to be able to quickly filter and every different subcategory is going to have different attributes that make the filtering work or not work. If the search filters are silly and super generic, it's not going to be helpful.
The other thing that I would point out is that the users are typically going to be looking for a category of specific information, but they're also going to be looking for details that might be specific to your industry. So a lot of industries will actually have a prerequisite or a representation of what somebody ought to be able to search for as a filtering mechanism. What do I mean by this? Well, maybe you're going to set a profile for the search, or—an example that I see a lot is with an auto industry search. So they'll actually specify something like what the vehicles are that we're looking for. And then the tires that come back would only match that vehicle. And so there can be characteristics of the wheels and maybe characteristics of the actual vehicle that we can specify up front.
You can almost think of this as like a Wizard, like you were talking about earlier on. But this is a really interesting capability with your filtering on group buying platforms. Of course, you have your standard filtering where you have a left or right sidebar and you have these collapsible panes where folks can filter, but you can also have these characteristics of the user and their industry.
And this can be really helpful to, like you were saying, really narrow down on possibly a relatively infinite set of results on buying group platforms. That's just not that useful. So being able to do that, and then also being able to look at things like very logistical oriented or fulfillment-oriented aspects like inventory levels, being able to look at price ranges, and even things like how much of the container does it take up. We may want to visually present on the page of containers or packages that need to be filled and how much each of the items will actually take up.
These are just some interesting things that we want to point out with the search. Obviously, you're going to have a very specific scenario that you're going to be working against. And so we want to be able to work with you and collaborate to offer a customized and catered set of recommendations. That's why we offer what we refer to as a complimentary discovery.