Where this usually lands in our work: service at volume, marketing automation and customer portals.
A wholesale order, a direct order and a warranty claim from the same customer usually sit in three systems that have never spoken to each other. So nobody can say what that account is actually worth, and nobody prices, services or forecasts it as though it were one relationship.
We build the account and contact model around the customer rather than around the channel, join it to whatever is already handling fulfillment, and put returns and claims next to the revenue they came out of. Then a buyer who ordered through two channels and complained through a third stops looking like three different people.
A retail or consumer goods order crosses several systems before it is revenue. These are the seams that matter.
A consumer brand usually runs two businesses that share a balance sheet and almost nothing else. The direct side is measured in minutes and judged on whether a person got an answer. The trade side is measured in quarters and judged on whether a buyer got their pricing. Most orgs end up configured for whichever one shouted loudest the year they were set up.
We build both without pretending they are the same. Consumer contact, registration and service on one side; account hierarchy, portals and order history on the other; one customer record underneath so the brand can finally see a person who buys from them in both directions.
Beyond phase one
Each of these surfaced after launch, when the first real season hit.
One flooring business let its commercial customers pull up a property, point at a building, a floor, a unit and a room, and order from there. Two clicks, on a phone, standing in the lobby. The commercial sales team stopped being the transaction bottleneck more or less overnight.
Adding and removing portal users is the single biggest source of portal support tickets, and it is entirely avoidable. Give the customer a company administrator who manages their own people and sets their permission levels, and the tickets disappear along with the delay.
Sell through distribution and you have no idea who owns your product. Product registration from your own website is the cheapest relationship you will ever acquire, and it is the precondition for warranty, for reorder, for recall, and for any consumer AI you might want later.
One client’s previous implementation was so overcomplicated the team had gone back to email. Before rebuilding we deleted the stale leads, accounts and opportunities outright. Adoption came from subtraction — people trusted the org on day one because everything in it was true.
An ecommerce platform standing in as a CRM keys everything to the individual buyer. That is how three to five of your people end up working the same company without knowing. Restructuring to parent and child accounts is unglamorous and it is what makes wallet share a question you can actually answer.
Your storefront, your ERP and your helpdesk each do a job well. What follows is the work at each connection.
The direct storefront, and the first-party purchase history that comes with it.
Shopify Plus BigCommerce Adobe Commerce WooCommerce
One inventory pool serving direct, wholesale and marketplaces, plus the financial close.
NetSuite Acumatica Dynamics 365 Business Central Cin7
One source of truth for copy, images and attributes, syndicated to every retailer.
Salsify Akeneo Plytix Syndigo
Rates, labels and tracking produced from the record the agent is already looking at, and a return that updates the order rather than starting a separate conversation.
ZenKraft UPS USPS Shopify
Email, SMS and loyalty on the direct side, against a profile that service can also see.
Klaviyo Attentive Yotpo LoyaltyLion
Order status, returns and retailer queries, on the same record as the purchase.
Zendesk Gorgias Gladly Freshdesk
Nine times in ten it is what they are worth across both halves of the business, the direct side and the trade side together. Tell us the question and we will tell you what it would take to answer it.
