How often should Amazon vendors audit their businesses?
In every business year there are times when the business can take a breath and reflect on what has happened operationally, analytically inside and outside of the business. Amazon vendors have the opportunity to use the end of quarter four (the week after Christmas) and the early parts of the new business year to audit the business. What should vendors do to better understand the performance of their business?
Vendors collect the evidence
In order for an audit to be successful a brand or Amazon vendor should collect all of its data to be able to create a picture/dashboards to understand business performance. Data sources such as Amazon Vendor Central data, social media data, direct-to-customer website sales data, and advertising metrics should be collated in order to understand what happened inside the business. Alternatively business can also use their reporting software to visualize the annual data in order for reports to be created.
Additionally vendors should also audit the various vendors/agencies that are used to perform tasks. Comparing the contract value against performance should also be done to enable discussions/negotiations with these vendors in the following year. At Equity Commerce far too often we see brands and Amazon vendors who are not receiving the return on investment from their vendors in relations to the fees paid for services rendered.
Audits should be used as another opportunity to note learnings from a particular event (Prime Day), post mortems from advertising campaigns that should be shared company wide. Audits will also indicate previously unseen costs or issues that should be noted and prioritized to not occur in the new year.
Keep Amazon Honest
Amazon vendors should also create a playbook or process to audit Amazon’s performace by asking for monthly or quarterly meetings to ensure that suucess can be achived. Amazon vendors should also audit their Amazon fees, charge backs to ensure that they are not being incorrectly being billed.
We’d very much like to hear about your marketplace pain points and serve as your guide on the audit journey. Let’s get started – reach out to us today.