Epsilo’s place in the evolution of software and demand for better ecommerce tools

By 
Cynthia Luo
Jan 5, 2022
Insights

From the CEO's desk:

Without software, what are online sellers - of any size - using to guide and run their daily operations? It's usually Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets where data is gathered, analysed and turned into a report to decide on next steps in another medium.

But with the rise of SaaS, software is now available and even more specialised to go above and beyond what Excel does to help businesses increase operational efficiency.

For example, to facilitate collaboration, more savvy online merchants commonly use Google Workspace as an all-in-one software suite to conduct business. With teams as small as three, users can gather and compute sales data, use Google Data Studio to visualise it in clean trend lines, present the findings on Slides all for as little as $6/user/month.

Another rising company in the collaborative SaaS space and popular alternative to Google Workspace is Notion. The platform combines key features from Excel, Docs, Data Studio and Slides all in one UI-friendly workspace priced at $8/user/month or $6/month for personal use.

These two successful companies have created useful alternatives to the status quo and knocked down adoption barriers because its features are intuitive to users who already collaborate, share, calculate, visualise and meet with five other separate tools.  

But there’s a vital step to any business operations missing, which is what comes after collaboration?

Business performance is monitored and dissected across multiple users but can they take action at the moment the insights are discovered? Not directly off of Notion or Google Sheets. Taking action is a function of ERP (enterprise resource planning).

To close this gap, Notion released its API earlier this year, but it's not easy to integrate ERP. This means digital merchants/online sellers are usually operating off Notion or Excel to plan and analyse business data, using Shopify to execute 1P ecommerce (D2C) or other software like Seller Business Center to execute 3P ecommerce (marketplace). This creates large execution silos that usually require more people to close the gaps.

We at Epsilo have been building software to close these exact execution gaps for online sellers at any stage of their ecommerce journey. Google Workspace and Notion are great for collaboration, but we want to be the "Shopify" and "Notion" to unlock growth for marketplace sellers. Epsilo is one execution hub for any ecommerce team to optimise growth on marketplaces.

Ecommerce teams can plan ahead of time for future campaigns across marketplaces by setting price, media, inventory, and ad budgets in advance, forecast business scenarios based on revenue and margin targets, and even instruct Epsilo software to take automated actions such as ad bid adjustments to save valuable time.

All data can be turned into customised reports, shared with different stakeholders across their ecommerce team or organisation. Users can personalise their dashboard menu, add/remove key metrics, and create approval workflows to set up a process and workspace best suited for each unique ecommerce team.


We’ve made the Epsilo software so easy to use, even micro-sellers using pen and paper won’t hesitate to digitise. We warmly welcome them to the platform to help them scale.

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