webinarseauctions-chapter-9-part-2-b2b-auction-platform-key-features Clarity Venture's Chris Reddick and Ron Halversen use this webinar to discuss the importance of a flexible and powerful automated bidding function. Part 2 of a 7-part series (Return to Part 1) RON: Let's talk about the automated online bidding system and some of the mechanics that we built into the platform, or that any other vendor that might—if you're looking at multiple solutions—might need to do for the automated bidding. CHRIS: Absolutely. This is a really good tie-in to notifications, because, fundamentally, the site needs to be self-service and automate mundane, pedantic tasks that the user would otherwise have to complete manually. The last thing we want to do with B2B eCommerce type of users is waste their time when they could set simple rules and simple logic to complete automated bidding and enable them to win a bid, and not have to sit there and watch the thing unnecessarily. Now, there are a lot of benefits to having engaged auction sellers and bidders, but the bottom line here is, for most different auction types, there should be some level of automation that the bidding party can set, whether or not it's a seller reducing their prices for a certain type of auction where the sellers compete, or a bidder raising their bid whenever the bidders are competing. There are some really sophisticated nuances to this. I would say, for your particular space, what you'll probably find is that, no matter what, certain folks will want to be able to set an automated online bidding increment and a maximum that they're willing to go up to. And these are just fundamentals that everyone would typically look for. There may also be the desire to have a quick refill option if somebody is realizing, “Okay, this auction is getting more serious and we want to just repeat the same set of increments and the same the same max bid, just increment it on top of itself,” so you can do something like that. CHRIS: A lot of times with online bidding software, one of the challenges that can occur is that people will just step on each other. The governance for how this automated bidding works is also going to be really, really important, so they're not feeling like it's literally just racking up the cost unnecessarily. There needs to be some logic so that people don't just get outbid instantaneously. Some delay between the bids is typically going to be useful. The other thing I would say is just being able to incorporate other factors into your B2B eCommerce auctions. You may want to do something like allowing the actual bidders to bring in nuances of the sellers, and have that drive there they're bidding. Based on certain criteria, they have templates that they can use to automatically create bids and bid increments so that they don't have to reset everything up manually. They can say, “Okay, this is a lower priority auction, and I don't necessarily want it to be something where I have a really high max bid. But I want to give it a shot.” So you might have a level of sophistication with the bidding that's a little bit simpler, and for something that's a lot more sophisticated we might have automated bidding that's going to occur on behalf of the potential buyer. But [you can also have] some really detailed notification, so they could, from the notification, go ahead and engage in another round of the same increments and another incremental increase in the max bid. The point is that whenever bids are going on, whenever you have an online auction that's running out, one of the biggest challenges for a bidder is tactically and mechanically applying what their desire is. And you really want to think about what that's going to look like in the extremes. What is it going to look like when there's a lull of bidders? What is it going to look like when there is extreme activity? And how can we automate this and help self-service for the actual seller and the buyers who are competing on this? RON: That makes perfect sense. And that leads us into search and filtering capabilities, right? We've all, I think, bought in an eCommerce auction, so I think we understand that concept. But I love the fact that, with B2B, the ability to set up profiles and how we typically bid, and can I engage that so it doesn't take me an hour to set up all my preferences every time I come into each auction. There's a lot of things like that, especially when businesses do a lot of purchasing, to be able to set up those Scouts and automate. It just makes so much sense. Continue to Part 3 to learn about filtering in B2B auctions.
Clarity Venture's Chris Reddick and Ron Halversen use this webinar to discuss the importance of a flexible and powerful automated bidding function. Part 2 of a 7-part series (Return to Part 1)