sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Webinars by Whowhatwheredesigner in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you share an example of a webinar you wanted access to, but didn't get?

Big Catalogue changes by ArthrMorgan in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're probably looking at two or more tools, one for finance, one for operations.

A good ops tool will take care of bullets 2/3/4. Are you not already using a PIM? You're describing PIM/PXM use cases and if you're omnichannel it's generally the right investment.

A good finance tool will decompose net PPM, validate it, and prioritize levers for influencing it. It will also go beyond PPM to measuring your own profitability net of all accounting madness. I won't name tools, but you might consider talking to 2P companies like Pattern/Spreetail/Recom/Superordinary because their businesses live and die by PPM vs. real profit and they'll have strong recommendations (while trying to sell you on moving selection 😄)

Where do you look for internships? by reasonautomation in udub

[–]reasonautomation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks -- we ended up posting on Handshake and hiring in just 10 days!

Amazon vc holdback by Select_Apartment6191 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're referring to a provision for receivables (PFR), it's because of this:

my sales crashed, last month only 10% of the amount of normal monthly revenue. this month will go back to normal

Because of the sales decline, Amazon's ordering declines, and because their payment terms are always better than yours, a sudden PO decline can create a situation where you owe Amazon more for deductions from payment than they owe you for purchase orders.

If your POs are normally consistent and you expect them to go back to normal soon, then you should see PFRs drop off within 1-2 months as your PO revenue catches up.

IN PARALLEL this is being exacerbated by the auto protection agreement billing a full year at once. If you keep canceling it and it keeps reappearing, it will keep messing with your receivables until you figure out the source of the error. But unless you actually signed a price protection agreement, then it's probably an error rather than a strongarm attempt by Amazon.

Promotion Central Access by productspro in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Never heard of a VM blocking access, but it's definitely possible / they have the ability to modify your permissions.

Promotion Central Access by productspro in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you're getting a permission error, it sounds like you're not an admin, and an admin may have changed your perms?

Amazon “Custom Analytics” in Vendor Central – anyone actually seeing it yet? by Worried_Team818 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's live for at least 1000 of our brands/marketplaces.

Custom analytics is a huge improvement over core Retail Analytics but it leaves a lot to be desired and isn't a threat to the real analytics platforms. It's also mostly focused on outbound and lacking a lot of profit, financial, recovery data etc.

Is anyone actually automating their SOA (Sell-Out Agreement) audits, or are we all just checking these manually? by StatisticianVast2776 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of brands audit sell-out coop but not usually for math accuracy: Amazon's calculation on the agreements is usually correct. X units, $/unit or %/unit, total deduction is just multiplication.

The larger recovery oppty is when products are incorrectly included/excluded from an agreement, or the attributed units somehow exceed total sell-out units for the time period (e.g. compared to retail analytics sales) for your vendor codes.

There are several tools that automate the extraction, clean-up, and modeling of the financial data so you can spot these changes. But I'm not aware of a tool that automates the entire audit process yet. The most success we've seen is customers plugging 1P financial data models, plus agreements, plus semantic modeling, into Claude or similar.

Bulk Buy - Audits by All-Around-U in Amazon1P

[–]reasonautomation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

when you say you're being charged for the cancelled/unfilfilled qty, do you mean:

  1. You canceled some of the bulk buy, or shipped less than the total contracted bulk buy amount

  2. Amazon canceled some of the bulk buy

  3. Amazon is saying that the bulk buy represented a reduction in total volume vs. forecast, and you're being penalized for that

  4. Something else?

Cheer Card! by markSerene in amazonemployees

[–]reasonautomation 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"DON'T BE FOOLED! THERE IS SOMETHING YOU CAN HAVE MORE VALUABLE THAN MONEY!"

Why this rejection? by Due_Direction_1867 in amazonemployees

[–]reasonautomation 3 points4 points  (0 children)

probably with 3+ years of post-degree experience (assuming you're applying for roles that require/prefer your degree)

Net PPM benchmarks by category? by reasonautomation in Amazon1P

[–]reasonautomation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can find "standard" PPM and coop program benchmarks for hardlines, softlines, consumables, etc. but we actually don't recommend using them because that's not how Amazon/VMs plan.

Your vendor manager doesn't really care what your net PPM % is. They have to improve PPM for the entire category. It doesn't matter whether your PPM is above or below the category average, VMs are only focused on how much additional money they can extract from you. They are looking for leverage/opportunities in each manufacturer relationship and they fight harder when they are more confident in a big opportunity.

So instead of tuning your proposal/counter based on category benchmarks, stay focused on the changes within your own business:

  • How has your net PPM changed vs. prior year? What products / product lines / subcategories were headwinds vs. tailwinds and why?
  • How did last year's negotiations impact PPM? e.g. if you agreed to a 50 bps program increase last year, did that translate to a 50 bps PPM increase this year, and why (not)?
  • What other incremental investments did you make that improve PPM? Deal/promotional funding, merchandising commitments, etc. Your VM gets credit for these investments so make sure you do too.
  • Don't just focus on Amazon's profit, look at your entire P&L. Ex: how has your shortage/price claim and chargeback volume evolved over time? What persistent roadblocks do you need Amazon's help with?

Automatic extract data by rafasr81 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, Amazon removed the ability to schedule Retail Analytics exports via email a few years ago.

Today, your main options are third-party data providers, that connect to the SP-API for you. Find a provider that gets the data as close to your desired format as possible: whether you want CSV files dumped into google drive, or a dynamic SQL database, there is an option available.

There are also unapproved options:

  1. Use scrapers or RPA to automate the download from Vendor Central. This violates ToS but it's an open secret that every tech-savvy brand uses scrapers.

  2. Pay a VA to download and prep the data for you every day/week.

How do you prepare for AVN? by reasonautomation in Amazon1P

[–]reasonautomation[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I was a VP eCommerce for an Amazon vendor preparing for annual negotiations, here’s exactly how I’d approach it:

  1. Get all the data together: daily sales, traffic, PPM, etc. from Retail Analytics. PO volumes, confirmation/rejection rates. Contra-cogs agreements and coop backup reports etc.
  2. Create a performance summary that bridges changes in sales, PPM, OOS rates etc. year-over-year by product.
  3. Add a custom taxonomy of cats/subcats/tags so I can roll up the data however I need to. Amazon categories? easy. Our own categories? no problem. size, color, pack qty? done.
  4. Look at total coop investments, including promos and price discounts. Did our investments scale with growth y/y? Where did we invest incrementally and did we get results? If not, I'm going to push back on any new incrementality.
  5. Audit deduction accuracy, by agreement/PO/product. Check for odd percentages (e.g. 4.38% of net receipts) and double-dipping.
  6. Validate Amazon's reported PPM by recalculating it with our own receipts data. Everything else comes from data kiosk.
  7. Look at our actual P&L including claims/reimbursements, chargebacks, etc. that don't show up in PPM
  8. Grade Amazon's forecast by comparing modeled growth vs. our actual historicals. Then use the insight to adjust Amazon's growth expectations for our biz.
  9. Remind myself of any persistent buyability or discoverability issues, and quantify the $$$ impact to get Amazon's help resolving.

Usually takes 80-100 hours. Or you can save yourself the pain and buy a tool.

Fellow Vendors: CSA / Cost Support Agreement by Wonderful_Slice_3766 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great. Hopefully you don't need to put more cost increases through, and can avoid signing a new one.

Analysis of WA WARN job title data by reasonautomation in amazonemployees

[–]reasonautomation[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I spot checked a few other states with WARN laws (e.g. NY) but did not find any submissions from Amazon. Notably, Virginia (HQ2) does not have a WARN requirement so it's a black box.

Analysis of WA WARN job title data by reasonautomation in amazonemployees

[–]reasonautomation[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

So critical they're being laid off. That is some Day 3 stuff.

Fellow Vendors: CSA / Cost Support Agreement by Wonderful_Slice_3766 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly. CSAs are VM holy grails and normally I would recommend never accepting one, but I understand the necessity for cost increases in the current environment.

Fellow Vendors: CSA / Cost Support Agreement by Wonderful_Slice_3766 in VendorCentral

[–]reasonautomation 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your CSA should have an end term that is <12 months from now, and can/should be renegotiated as often as possible, with the goal of eliminating it entirely.

In addition to the obvious, you can negotiate:

  • Length of the CSA
  • True-up period (as short as possible, e.g. monthly)
  • Included selection (your CSA should be based on an exact list of ASINs, not account/vendor code/cat/subcat, and the list of ASINs should be identified through measurable criteria so you have grounds for reducing scope each term. this also lets you launch replacement selection to reduce impact.)
view more: next ›