Sellercloud and Amazon MCF - Simplified multichannel fulfillment | Webinar | Descartes Sellercloud

Webinar Transcript

Emily from Amazon: Hi, everyone, welcome to the Sellercloud and Amazon multi channel fulfillment webinar. We are excited to share with you the benefits of Amazon’s multi channel fulfillment program. Throughout the webinar we will reference the program by its acronym MCF. My name is Emily and I’m an account executive for MCF and have been at Amazon for two years working with our selling partners. We also have the pleasure of presenting this webinar with Rachel from Sellercloud.

Rachelle Borowicki: Hi, everyone. My name is Rachelle from Sellercloud. I’ve been working here for about six years, and I managed the tech support team.

Emily from Amazon: Thanks for joining everyone. What is MCF? The Amazon multi channel fulfillment program now allows you to utilize Amazon’s fulfillment centers to power your e-commerce business. Send your inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment centers and we will store it and fulfill any orders placed from your own sales channels. These can include your own website, social media and other marketplaces just to name a few. MCF is available with or without Fulfillment by Amazon. If you do use FBA to sell on Amazon, your existing inventory will serve both Amazon customers and customers from other sales channels. We will be following a four part agenda for the day followed by a live q&a. We’ll help you determine if MCF is right for you. Help you choose a simple solution to fulfill your orders and show you how to create your orders. We’ll also show you how to use MCF to power your sales channels. So let’s get started and see if MCF is right for you.

You are able to send your full or partial inventory directly to Amazon and we’ll store and manage your inventory in our fulfillment centers. You will still own your inventory and pay storage fees according to the terms of the FBA program. And the big advantage of MCF is that Amazon fulfills the orders your customers place on your website or other third party sales channels. You can submit your orders to us with a bulk file upload or direct integration with our order API. Once we receive the order, Amazon will pick, pack, and ship your orders directly to customers and provide you with the shipping and tracking information. You can also choose to have your customer’s returns sent back to an Amazon fulfillment center for processing.

Now that we have covered the process, what are some of the benefits? MCF gives you flat rate competitive pricing, expedited shipping and fast, trusted fulfillment. MCF gives you the flexibility to scale instantly, and helps you simplify and control operations. Let’s explore some of these benefits in more depth. Leverage the efficiency and accuracy that powers Amazon Prime, you can offer your customers standard, expedited, or priority delivery options for off Amazon sales. With MCF, you can grow your business and scale quickly without increasing your fixed cost. For example, with MCF, you can manage seasonal spikes without additional resources. And with Amazon’s automatic inventory placement across our vast US fulfillment network, you can reduce the distance between your products and customers. MCF’s simple, predictable and competitive pricing helps control your cost and reduce shipping costs for your customers. There is only one fee for pick pack and fulfillment plus one fee for storage based on your monthly stock levels and cubic feet of storage. MCF has also recently decreased fees in the US for standard, expedited, and priority shipping. MCF gives you access to Amazon’s unrivaled fulfillment network. So you can offer the prompt delivery your customers expect at low affordable rates. Expedited shipping is more critical than ever to making a sale. In a 2019 survey of 2500 consumers, the number who cite speed as a priority doubled from 2018. More than a third of customers abandoned carts because shipping takes too long. With Amazon handling the logistics of shipping carriers and fulfillment, you have more time and resources to focus on growing your business.

So what’s new with MCF? We have some new updates starting on June 1. MCF has added the option to block orders being shipped by Amazon logistics for a 5% surcharge. You will be able to block this shipping method on an account level in your FBA settings for individual orders. We are also aligning most MCF product tiers to Fulfillment by Amazon tiers and have added a new small standard tier for two ounces or less. We will also be removing expedited and priority ship speeds on large oversized and special oversized products.

We recently launched many of our top requested MCF features. Our on-time shipping for customer orders has improved. Standard speed orders for in-stock inventory are now shipped out within two business days of order creation and expedited and priority speed orders are shipped out within one business day. For more information, you can go to our MCF Help page. We added the ability to track through Aftership to ensure that Amazon logistics shipments are trackable on popular sales channels such as Etsy and Wish. You can search any MCF tracking number on Switchship.com and tracking details can be found in Seller Central and in your order details page via our tracking API. You can have the tracking number sent back to a customer automatically if you provide the email address when you submit the customer order.

We also use your MCF volume when calculating your inventory performance index (IPI) score, which may help you qualify for unlimited storage. You can view your IPI score by going to the Inventory performance dashboard in Seller Central. You can also now sign up to be on a waitlist to beta test unbranded packaging and international shipping features. To learn more about all of these features, go to supplychain.amazon.com.

Now let’s choose a simple solution to fulfill your orders. MCF offers flexible options to fulfill customer orders from any sales channel. If you have inventory in an Amazon fulfillment center, you can utilize any of the following methods with no additional registration required. MCF offers three simple solutions. Quick order creation is a great way for you to explore the benefits of MCF if you have lower order volumes. Bulk order creation is ideal if you have high order volumes and don’t want to integrate with an API, or have customers with a recurring order or subscription. An API is our recommended method, especially if you have high volume orders that make manual order creation cumbersome or if you sell across a wide range of marketplaces.

Let’s take a look at how you can use these simple solutions to create your orders. The MCF API integration feature eliminates the effort of creating MCF orders manually. Fulfillment orders are created automatically when your customers place an order in your off Amazon sales channel. The fulfillment outbound shipment API section of Amazon Marketplace web service enables you to fulfill MCF orders. You can request previews of potential fulfillment orders that return estimated shipping fees and shipping dates based on shipping method. Plus, you can return the items back to the fulfillment network that you fulfill using the service.

Rachelle Borowicki: Hi, everyone. Again, my name is Rachel from Sellercloud. For anyone who isn’t familiar, Sellercloud is an inventory and order management platform that allows you to streamline your business workflow, connecting automatically to various marketplaces such as Amazon, to automatically download orders, post listings, update inventory information, and all the other business needs. We start with shipping the inventory to the Amazon warehouse, generally done with FBA inbound shipment. Sellercloud is fully integrated to manage your FBA inbound shipments, allowing for accurate inventory deductions. Once the Amazon warehouses have received the inventory, you now have products available for sale on other marketplaces. That brings us to step two – listing the Amazon inventory on your other sales channels. Once you have those items listed and available for sale, you’ll need to fulfill this order. For that, there are a few options, manual or automatic fulfillment of the orders. Once the order comes in, Sellercloud will pass that information over to Amazon to create the order in Seller Central and request fulfillment.

Once the order is shipped, the tracking will automatically be imported back into Sellercloud. Finally, Sellercloud will automatically update that fulfillment information to the original sales channel so the end customer is aware, and they receive tracking information. When fulfilling orders manually through Sellercloud, you find the order you’re trying to fulfill and within the order, you’d choose the action to ship it via FBA. Blocking the Amazon Logistics Carrier is an option that Sellercloud supports, allowing you to request this at the order level. Additionally, the option to request shipping in a blank box is available. Other options include choosing shipping speeds based on requirements from the original channel that the order came in on.

Emily from Amazon : Thanks. And thanks for that, Rachel. Now that we know how to use MCF and Sellercloud together to power your sales channel fulfillment, let’s cover how to track your orders, calculate fees, and issue returns. You are able to locate your MCF orders under the orders tab in Seller Central. If the order has not been shipped, there will be an estimated ship date and estimated delivery date within the shipment details of the order. Once the order has shipped, you will be able to see the tracking number associated with the shipment along with a link to a tracking website that contains the order’s detailed tracking. You can obtain tracking information from the Get package tracking details of the API section of Amazon Marketplace web services. The MCF fix rate card and fee preview calculator are available to US-based sellers in Seller Central on the MCF landing page. Once on the fee calculator, the steps to preview MCF fees include downloading the SKU or ASIN template, entering your merchant SKU or ASINs for existing Seller Central products in the template, and then uploading the completed template. You’ll receive a completed file showing you the size tier for each ASIN or SKU uploaded.

For MCF orders, you are responsible for providing customer service and handling returns. When customers contact you to initiate a return, you can ask them to ship the return back to Amazon, allowing you to incorporate the return into your Amazon inventory.

So how do I sign up? There is no separate signup required for MCF. Prepare your products and shipment according to FDA requirements and send your inventory to Amazon. Make sure you follow the Amazon shipment and packaging requirements to help prevent damage. We will now head into our live Q&A. Please submit your questions in the chatbox at the bottom right-hand corner of your webinar screen.

Audience Questions:

Emily from Amazon: Thank you for your questions! For additional resources, visit supplychain.amazon.com for guides, case studies, and support options.