---
title: "Preparatory Work for Distributors After Building Their Own Platform"
description: "This article discusses the preparatory work distributors need to do around their self-built platforms, using theory and real cases. Case 1: Hexing Huike, the leading regional e-commerce brand in Inner Mongolia, with over 100 upstream partners and about 1,000 active outlets in Baotou. Case 2: Tiantianmai, the first e-commerce platform focusing on Nanjing, with 5,000 offline outlets and monthly turnover exceeding 20 million yuan. The article then details three key aspects: organizational, warehousing and distribution, and technical support."
author: "季化培"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-05-31"
language: "en"
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# Preparatory Work for Distributors After Building Their Own Platform

> This article discusses the preparatory work distributors need to do around their self-built platforms, using theory and real cases. Case 1: Hexing Huike, the leading regional e-commerce brand in Inner Mongolia, with over 100 upstream partners and about 1,000 active outlets in Baotou. Case 2: Tiantianmai, the first e-commerce platform focusing on Nanjing, with 5,000 offline outlets and monthly turnover exceeding 20 million yuan. The article then details three key aspects: organizational, warehousing and distribution, and technical support.

Today, I'd like to talk with fellow distributors about the preparatory work needed around the platform you've built. I'll proceed with a combination of theory and real cases.

Case 1: Hexing Huike, the leading regional e-commerce brand in Inner Mongolia
Overall operations:
Mainly self-operated. Over 100 upstream partners (manufacturers, distributors), including 7 consignment partners; in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, there are 2,000 outlets, with about 1,000 active. In just over a year, it has basically captured the Baotou market; remaining competitors either joined Hexing Huike or disappeared. Currently expanding to Hohhot and Chifeng, replicating the Baotou model.
Downstream partners are mainly convenience stores, also internet cafes, KTVs, etc.
Current average daily order total is 70,000–100,000 yuan (daily orders 250+, average order value 200–300).
Current inventory turnover is about 20 days, target 7 days.

Case 2: Tiantianmai, the first e-commerce platform focusing on Nanjing
Overall operations:
Self-built logistics and an O2O model using community convenience stores as nodes to reduce coupling.
SaaS model (a service model providing software applications via the internet) architecture, finding the most suitable e-commerce solutions and technical service providers for system support, saving costs on purchasing hardware/software, building computer rooms, and hiring IT staff. The SaaS model is the best way to implement informatization with advanced technology. The overall architecture design emphasizes large capacity, high performance, high reliability, high maintainability, and high security. Through remote interfaces distributed across different servers, it achieves service clustering and logic reuse. Tiantianmai can assemble different business combinations and plug/unplug service components like assembling a car.
Integrates street-side small shops into the regional e-commerce system, turning them into "super shops." Integrates upstream supply channels, especially for daily necessities like grain and oil, achieving whole-network price comparison.
Tiantianmai now has over 5,000 offline outlets, 2,000 active outlets, and monthly average turnover exceeding 20 million yuan.

**Regional e-commerce has become the only way**
Above, I shared the e-commerce operations of two representative cities at different development levels: Nanjing is a 1.5-tier city, while Baotou is a 3rd or 4th-tier city. Different cities, whether driven by government guidance or the need for convenient living, have an urgent demand for e-commerce. Because e-commerce integrates upstream and downstream resources, solving the integration of information flow, capital flow, and logistics. As you can see, leading e-commerce companies have begun to enter local markets in various ways, severely squeezing the survival space of traditional local distributors. Transforming to e-commerce has become their top priority. Next, I'll share how to operate a regional e-commerce platform.

**How to carry out e-commerce operations?**
E-commerce operations are meticulous work, requiring refined operations around customer service and customer success. This time, I'll focus on the following three points: organizational support, warehousing and distribution support, and technical support for e-commerce.

1. **Organizational support**
To achieve the integration of information flow, capital flow, and logistics, business informatization is the foundation, including the entire process from procurement to customer receipt. This requires assessing whether the existing organizational and human structure meets the needs.

For example, Hexing Huike mentioned earlier was previously a traditional FMCG distributor. After deciding to start e-commerce transformation, the first thing they did was organizational support, implementing flat management to ensure rapid decision-making and execution of various business processes. They established six flat core departments: procurement center, sales center, warehousing and distribution center, operations center, technology center, and finance center. The first two are support departments. Let's focus on e-commerce procurement and operations:

**A. Procurement Center:**
Mainly responsible for product procurement management.
First, let's talk about the main core positions in this department, generally including:
- **Procurement Assistant:** Mainly responsible for executing orders with manufacturers, agents, etc., based on product sales cycles, safety stock, etc.
- **Procurement Channel Management:** Facing convenience store promotions, managing the product structure of convenience stores. The specific department for this work depends on each company's actual situation, but it is crucial for refined customer operations. By understanding the product structure of each convenience store, it not only helps guide convenience stores in effective ordering but also helps the company make scientific procurement decisions. It is an upgraded version of the traditional make-to-order model.

Second, for procurement, you can't grab everything; you need to focus on product structure. Which are high-margin products, which are hot sellers, etc. You need to strictly control procurement categories and SKU numbers. Traditional distribution cannot provide such data support or timely data-driven decisions.

Third, for e-commerce operations, we need to continuously optimize procurement execution based on data. The core optimization ideas include market shipment volume, whether it's a traffic-driving product, gross profit contribution, etc. Business processing also needs continuous optimization, such as manufacturer order acceptance and processing time, and time from manufacturer to our warehouse.

**B. Operations Center:**
Operations are the foundation of e-commerce and one of the important means for member retention. Here, I'll discuss how to establish an e-commerce operations department. Based on core operations work, it generally includes two types: member operations and activity operations.

First, member operations.
If sales help companies acquire new customers, the member operations department's key is retention. By analyzing member basic information, purchasing behavior, etc., it continuously provides decision-making basis for member policies and business activities.

Second, activity operations.
Activities are an important means to activate members, including online and offline activities. Based on the e-commerce system, more scientific and refined activities can be formulated, such as effectively targeting specific member types, product categories, regions, or time periods, and whether to conduct activities online or offline, all with effective data support.

2. **Warehousing and distribution support**
Here, warehousing and distribution do not mean traditional warehouse and delivery management. E-commerce warehousing and distribution are key means to ensure improvement and continuous optimization of turnover rates.

First, it is necessary to achieve full informatization of the warehousing and distribution process, including the entire process from product inbound, warehouse management, and outbound management.

Second, based on member purchase and product inventory data, e-commerce warehousing and distribution can monitor warehouse areas and locations in real time, promptly adjust and optimize in-warehouse operation efficiency and even processes, maximize shipment accuracy and timeliness, and improve member satisfaction.

3. **Technical support**
Technical support is the foundation for implementing e-commerce. Here, technology mainly refers to the implementation and deployment of e-commerce systems, daily operation and maintenance of e-commerce systems, and data analysis to support enterprise management.

For companies without their own team, for e-commerce implementation and deployment, it is recommended to find a reliable e-commerce solution and technical service provider for long-term technical support.

**In addition:**
You must establish your own technical operations and data analysis team. Technical operations mainly provide technical consultation to various business departments, ensuring smooth business processes, such as assisting the order processing department in querying abnormal orders and providing specific handling measures.

There must be a data analysis role or position that can build basic data models based on various basic data, including product data, member data, order data, etc., and perform correlation analysis and cross-analysis. Companies with conditions can establish a data warehouse for data mining, seeking more reasonable and scientific business decisions and discoveries from data.

Above, I briefly introduced three aspects of regional e-commerce operations, including the organizational, warehousing and distribution, and technical support needed for e-commerce implementation. This is just a starting point; welcome to leave comments for discussion.

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