I adhere to the idea that if something can be automated, it should be automated. In the long run, 9 out of 10 automated activities will always be easier and more profitable.
Well, it so happened that I once met a man who is engaged in the cultivation and sale of oysters - in the south of China this is an extremely popular business. We became friends with him so much that he invited me to visit him on an oyster farm (well, brag - not without it). I came to him and in one day I left two people without work.
Since in China today there are two types of business - bankrupt and online, the sale of goods is carried out through Taobao. That is, before I arrived there, the whole process looked like this:
1) Two people come to work at 4:XNUMX am, open a personal Taobao seller account, and start copying the order data one line at a time into the dispatch interface in SF delivery service. To do this, they need to copy-paste the recipient's full name, address and phone number, click everything to the end and get the order number.
2) at 6-00 a courier arrives with a portable Bluetooth thermal printer and a supply of tape. It is absolutely not suitable for such work - thatβs why itβs portable. It comes in great when you need to pick up an order from a private person and print out 1-2 waybills, which will then be glued to the envelope on the parcel, but when you need to print 200-300 orders accumulated per day, this is a tragedy. Accordingly, it takes 2-3 hours to print invoices for each order and pick up the goods.
3) for the fact that the courier comes to them after hours, they additionally pay a lot of money to SF. And they cannot accept the courier during working hours - SF promises Next day delivery in China only if the courier picks up the package before 09-00. And oysters are such a commodity that they need to be delivered in a day.
They are sent (like fish, meat and everything perishable in general), by the way, if anyone is interested in a foam container with a bag of ice inside. Even in the current 35-degree heat, the ice does not have time to melt by the time of arrival.
4) after all this, each parcel number is manually entered into Taobao, which changes its status to "in delivery" and the buyer can track the tracking.
5) payment for the order is made by senders from personal wallets, after which the money is returned to them by the owner according to advance reports.
This is major trash that makes your hair stand on end. What was done?
1) Register a seller account in SF on β SF platform for sellers. Postpaid. All you need to do is upload a business license there, fill in the information about the company and the shipping address, and go through a phone interview. After that, the platform generates an invoice for services once a month and sends it to the account owner
2) register an account in SF. On which the order creation API and order tracking API are connected. On the same platform, a ready-made solution εΊιΏε©ζ (shop owner's assistant) is connected, which already has solutions for all popular platforms (including, of course, Taobao), in which credits from the seller's account are registered:
3) the format of the electronic waybill template is selected + a USB printer is purchased
4) the seller's account number changes from sandbox (ζ΅θ―ε‘ε·) to real (ζ£εΌε‘ε·οΌ:
The customer is invited to make a test purchase on Taobao, after 30 seconds the order already hangs in the βwaiting for shipmentβ status in SF, and the printer, humming, prints an invoice that you just need to unstick from the substrate and stick on the package.
Automation costs amounted to:
- 600 yuan - thermal printer
- 300 yuan - a huge box of thermal tape
- 50 yuan per month for a premium account in βstore owner assistantβ
Source: habr.com