When it comes to business collaboration between organizations, flexibility, speed, and efficiency of product publication operations are critical. Which is why CloudBlue Connect presents the Listing Management module that is designed for streamlining onboarding products to go-to-market channels and for automating a number of listing management operations.
The Listing Management module provides with a versatile and smart solution for organizations to list products across multiple sales channels. This module includes a set of features that help organizations collaborate, get listed fast, and reach new buyers. The following outlines some of the high-level benefits that can be increasingly helpful for your organization:
Product listings are used to represent pages on specified marketplaces that include detailed information on a specific product that is available for sale. Thus, product listing help organize your product publications within one or multiple marketplaces.
To streamline and facilitate collaborations with your business partners, product listings are managed by listing requests. Product listings and related listings requests are used to initiate the product flow. Namely, once a new listing request is created and submitted from the Vendor portal, Distributors (or Resellers) can accept requests, list a product on their marketplace, and consequently make the product available for end-customers:
In case of an error, Distributors or Resellers can cancel product publications by simply declining listing requests.
The Listings Management module provides multiple ways for propagating product information according to capabilities of Distributor or Reseller systems. Specifically, product details can be propagated manually by using graphical user interface. Such information can also be processed automatically via APIs or by using available Extensions.
Before starting to use the Listing Management module, make sure that the contractual relationship with your business partners are successfully established on the Connect platform. Namely, it is required to sign corresponding agreements and provide access to marketplaces that should feature required products.
Once Vendors decide to list their product to their selected marketplace, the system creates a new listing that includes information on the defined product, selected distributors, marketplace, specified price lists and offers. The system can also prompt Vendors to fill out specific forms before generating a new product listing or signing required contract. Such forms are created by Distributors or Resellers and they help collect required information for their systems. Refer to the Forms documentation for more details.
Product listings are consolidated via listing requests. Namely, these requests are used to list products to required marketplaces, update the listing information, or remove products from marketplaces. Therefore, the system creates a listing request in case it is required to create, update or delete product listings. Distributors or Resellers can manage such business operations by approving listing request or reject them. The following diagram schematically illustrates the described workflow:
Note that the system also includes individual workflows for product listings and listing requests objects. In case more information on the provided workflows is required, refer to the State Machine article.
Access the following articles to learn more about the Listing Management module, provided API and available operations within the graphical user interface:
