Leveling the Playing Field

Parag Mamnani of Webgility Shares Insights with Steve Hutt of eCommerce Fastlane

Since its inception, Webgility has been dedicated to helping small businesses succeed. As the leading QuickBooks connector for multichannel ecommerce businesses, we aim to address significant challenges faced by SMB ecommerce businesses. As merchants expand to more channels, they require a more efficient way to streamline their back-office operations and keep everything in sync. By consolidating all channels and systems in one place, Webgility empowers SMB retailers to increase sales, reduce costs, and achieve faster growth. 

Our Founder and CEO, Parag Mamnani, sat down with Steve Hutt of The eCommerce Fastlane to discuss how AI is leveling the playing field for SMB businesses, especially those selling on Shopify. Despite the hype surrounding AI, there is a lack of factual information about how it can benefit small businesses. Webgility aims to address this by demonstrating to business owners how AI can automate accounting and operations, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities. 

Webgility has witnessed firsthand the transformative power of AI. New AI-powered tools like Webgility’s AI Assistant enable users to transition from complex dashboards with overwhelming amounts of information to a simple chat interface to instantly access crucial business information. Our customers use it daily to post transactions to QuickBooks, synchronize inventory across multiple ecommerce channels, gain insights about their top customers, track revenue, and more. 

"AI technology has been transformational for our customers," explained Parag. "As merchants expand to multiple channels and geographical locations, their data becomes fragmented. It’s crucial for them to integrate their data into a robust, error-free system to ensure that their reporting is always in sync and up to date. We can also help customers predict future needs, allowing them to forecast when to restock items, anticipate seasonal demand surges, and stay ahead of the curve. Based on the merchant’s data, it can provide recommendations about out-of-stock items, best-performing channels, and other activities that can be automated." 

As we approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Steve and Parag discussed what SMBs should be doing now to prepare. Parag recommends using this time to get everything in order, as brands that struggle during the holiday season spend excessive time reconciling everything in the new year. 

Here are three recommendations for SMBs preparing for the holiday season: 

1. Focus on fulfillment: Prepare your inventory and set up systems for fulfillment and returns. Establish your holiday catalog and understand your top-performing products using historical data to create sales forecasts. 
2. Double down on financials: Ensure that your accounting systems are up-to-date. Utilize QuickBooks to its full potential, enabling real-time transaction posting, automated purchase orders, updated inventory, revenue and margin insights, tax reconciliation, and book closure. 
3. Create a great customer experience: Understand your buyer personas to improve engagement and community-building, reduce customer acquisition costs, boost retention and repeat business, and ultimately enhance profitability. 

Webgility has served over 20,000 businesses, processing over 87 million transactions annually, and we’re just getting started. If you’re ready to boost your growth and streamline your business, sign up for a demo of the Webgility AI Assistant today.