Lightspeed’s Supplier Network helps retailers shop, access, and order from the catalogs of modern and classic suppliers straight from their point-of-sale (POS) system. This gives small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) the visibility that, previously, could only be accessed by large retailers with market power and considerable in-house development resources.
As Lightspeed’s marketplace infrastructure partner for this initiative, Convictional bridges Lightspeed’s POS system with its suppliers’ systems, whether they’re on WooCommerece, Shopify, or using SFTP or EDI.
How Lightspeed Supplier Network works for buyers
Retailers can order and manage their inventory all from their POS, instead of juggling emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets to manage their supplier relationships.
The Supplier Network is a revolutionary B2B marketplace. It features up-to-date information on each supplier’s price lists, products, inventory and availability levels, specific to the retailer who is browsing. Because supplier product information is maintained hourly, retailers can be confident that they are ordering from a supplier’s real-time, up-to-date catalog.
This leads to higher order frequency and more accurate inventory management for both buyers and their suppliers.
How Lightspeed Supplier Network works for suppliers
Suppliers in the network get exposure to over 100,000 brick-and-mortar retailers who are using Lightspeed to run their omnichannel business operations.
Once Lightspeed approves a supplier for the network, they get passed on to Convictional to get their catalog on the website. A seller can choose to upload their product catalog via a secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) or through an out of the box API integration to their ecommerce platform.
After the initial upload, suppliers confirm the pricing relationships with their merchant partners.
Suppliers will then receive order updates from the system every 15 minutes. Suppliers manage these orders from their own system, whether that’s an eCommerce website or an advanced enterprise resource planning (ERP) setup.
Suppliers can configure whether or not to accept each order or partnership request. The built-in inventory syncing and order management workflows prevent overselling – particularly important in large wholesale orders.
This lets suppliers manage orders based on their inventory and fulfillment capacity and forge new retail relationships without using (yet) another portal.
Lightspeed Supplier Connect, powered by Convictional
As of this writing, Lightspeed Supplier Network is on public beta. Lightspeed is looking to add North American suppliers within the bikes, outdoor sports, pet supply, and jewelry verticals. They’re looking to onboard suppliers who have achieved a meaningful gross transaction volume (GTV) and a threshold number of current retail partners.
They are planning to open up the network to all their other verticals in February 2021.
As the backend integrator that sits between Lightspeed and its supplier’s systems, Convictional quietly runs in the background, sending orders, managing price lists, and updating inventory count.
Partnering with Lightspeed in their marketplace initiative helps further our mission to be the go-to solution to power B2B trade globally.
Unlike clunky marketplace software that prioritize merchants over their suppliers, Convictional gives all participants in the Lightspeed Supplier Network a seamless experience, whether they’re suppliers accepting orders in their Shopify store or merchants putting in orders through their Lightspeed POS.
“We’re proud to support Lightspeed to provide the best possible supplier enablement experience to over 100,000 retail customers,” says Roger Kirkness, our co-founder and CEO. “Together, we make it easy for Lightspeed merchants of every size to source, onboard, integrate and grow with their suppliers. I’m thrilled to announce this program together. If you’re looking for ways to supercharge your B2B sales in 2021, Lightspeed Suppliers is the best place to start.”
For more information on the Lightspeed Supplier Network, you can go to their website. If you’re ready to apply for the network, you can sign up through this form.
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