Cloudtail DF (Cocoblu)

About Cloudtail

Cloudtail India is a joint venture between Amazon and NR Narayana Murthy's family office, Catamaran Ventures. Cloudtail India Pvt Ltd is an online retailer which sells a variety of goods to customers in India. Cloudtail offers over 6 lakh products across multiple categories like Books, Media, Apparel, Shoes, Furniture, Appliances, Consumables, etc., and has to buy relationships with brands across the world. It is one of the largest sellers on the Amazon India online platform.

We have 2 integrations available for Cloudtail. 

1. Cloudtail DF (Direct Fulfilment)

2. Cloudtail B2B. 

This document is all about the Cloudtail Direct fulfillment Program and its integration with Vin e-Retail.

What is Direct Fulfillment? 

Direct Fulfillment is a supply chain strategy whereby the retailer (Cloudtail) transfers individual customer orders to the supplier (Brand/Seller) to ship the goods directly to the end customer. 

Below are the key features of the Cloudtail DF Program: 

1. Cloudtail DF is Bill to Ship to Model in which Customer places an order on Amazon (where Cloudtail is a seller). 

2. When the order is received to Cloudtail, Cloudtail directly Passes those orders to the Brands/Sellers and Brands are doing the fulfillment on behalf of Cloudtail. 

3. Orders are created on the price agreed between Cloudtail and Brand (Not on the Sale price of the customer). 

4. the Shipping Labels are invoices are generated where the Sold By/Ship from is Cloudtail. 

Integration Highlights:

For this Model, we have: 

1. SKU Pull (Using Amazon MWS APIs) as Cloudtail does not have any such API. 
2. Order Pull 
3. Order Acknowledgements 
4. Order Pack/Invoice/Shipping Label generation 
5. Order Shipment 
6. Inventory Push 

This Model is running with around 15-20 brands i.e. Paragon, Soch, Bagzone (Lavie), Planet Retail, Harpa, Clovia, etc for the last 8-10 months.

Prerequisites for Channel Configuration:

1.  Cloudtail Vendor Id

5 characters Vendor Id (This credential will be shared by Cloudtail account manager to the Brand/seller) once the commercials are done between Seller/Brand and Cloudtail. 

2. Cloudtail Warehouse Id

4 Characters Warehouse Id/FC Id (Warehouse Identified of Cloudtail) and this credential will be shared by the Cloudtail account manager to the Brand/Seller.  

3. Amazon Cloudtail Vendor Id

This can be created by Vinculum’s Account Manager and is a mandatory attribute to be used in multiple API of Cloudtail. This can be created by using the 5-character Cloudtail Vendor Id and the format is - amzn1.vendor-id.AB1CD where AB1CD is the vendor Id shared by Cloudtail to the seller and amzn1.vendor-id. Is fixed. 

4. Optional Credentials: 

All MWS credentials i.e. MWS Seller Id, MWS Token, Access Key, Client Secret, and Marketplace Id are optional and are required If and only If the seller wants to enable the Auto SKU Pull-in Vin e-Retail.

Please use the same MWS credentials using which the seller has configured an Amazon account in Vin e-Retail. 

SKU Pull is applicable only if the client using Amazon also. If the Client is a Cloudtail vendor only then the SKU Pull is not applicable.

Process to Generate MWS Access Key:

2. Enter the Username and Password.

3. Approve Notification and enter OTP details.

4. Go to “Settings” and select “User Permissions” as mentioned in the screenshot below.

5. Click on “Visit Manage your Apps” under “Third-party Developer and Apps” section.

6. Click on the “Authorize new Developer” Button.

7. Enter the Developer name and Developer ID as per the information provided below:

1. Developer Id is: 073980952359; Developer name:   vinculum (For India, UK, MEA, Japan, and other countries except for the US and Australia)
2. Developer Id: 18802594138; Developer name:   vinculum (US)

*Developer ID and Developer name should not be with any space and Developer name should be in small caps always.

*These IDs are confidential and hence cannot be shown in this document.

CHANNEL CONFIGURATION

g. Enter the details 

(i) Cloudtail Vendor ID

(ii) Cloudtail Warehouse ID

(iii) Amz-Cloudtail Vendor ID (ex. Amzn1.vendor-id.AB1CD) If SKU Pull

Please use the same MWS credentials using which the seller has configured an Amazon account in Vin e-Retail.

Channel Mappings:

Currently in the case of the Amazon Dropship model that we have we/client maps the Merchant SKU code of Amazon in ChannelSKUcode of eRetail. In the case of Cloudtail DF, we also must Map the Merchant SKU/Amazon SKU in ChannelSKUcode and ASIN needs to be mapped in ChannelProductId.

CHANNEL MAINTENANCE

Channel Maintenance setup helps the seller to reduce manual intervention and avoid the multiple usages of the marketplace seller portal. With the selection of below options at the Channel Maintenance window (Sales > Manage Channels > Add New > Select Amazon India) get the advantage of using multiple features of Vin E-retail:

S.No.	Features	Where to Click on Channel Maintenance	Dropbox/Checkbox	Details
1.	Order Pull/ Order Pack/ Invoice/ Order Shipment/ Shipping label generation	Orders > Order Sync > Yes/No		Order Pull: The user can choose to sync the order from the channel to e-Retail by managing this option. If this is disabled, the Order pull will not happen also the shipping label/Invoice and manifest will not get generated.
2.	Order Return	Orders > Return Order Sync		Users can click this option to sync Return Orders.   Important Note: In Return Pull Services, the “Return” is always created in Confirmed status.     Users need to do an inbound from Return Inbound functionality available on the Application.
3.	Prefetch Shipment Label	Orders >  PrePack Enabled checkbox		PrePack Enabled: The user can enable prepack for the order from here. To avoid delay in Order processing and Shipment fulfilled within a provided SLA, we have a feature to pull Flipkart shipment Label and Invoice at the same time of picklist generation instead of during Pack Call. To use this functionality, we just need to enable the Prepack checkbox available under the Channel Configuration setup screen and the user needs to click on Prefetch deliveries during the pending picklist status available on the Picklist enquiry screen.
4.	Ready to Ship Status at	Orders > Ready to ship at		Users can choose to mark the status of ready to ship at any of the two events: -at Manifest or -at Pack
5.	Use Market Place Shipping Label	Orders > Use Marketplace Shipping label checkbox		Users can check this option to notify the Shipping label by the marketplace and then opt from the Shipment label dropbox.
6.	Inventory update	Inventory > Inventory Sync		If selected "Yes" from the dropdown box, it automatically pulls and updates the inventory.
7.	Inventory Reconciliation	Inventory > Enable Inventory Recon		For Amazon, our system reconciles the entire inventory once daily to avoid any discrepancy other than the normal inventory push that happens on a transaction basis. To use this functionality, we need to enable Inventory Recon as ‘Yes’ available under the Amazon channel configuration.

Additional Key Information:

1. We get the orders of the last 24-48 hours from the Cloudtail APIs. So please set the Order Pull from date in the channel configuration screen accordingly. 

2. If the order Pull from date exceeds the mentioned range, the orders will not be pulled. Likewise, other Marketplaces Ex: Amazon Flex, we sent the acknowledgment at order Allocation. In the case of Cloudtail DF, Vin e-Retail sent the order Acknowledgements at the time of the Order Invoice. 

3. Cloudtail shipping labels have .pdf format. However, the Shipping Labels has the. ZPL format means the Brand/Seller is not able to preview the Shipping document in the Browser and auto Print configuration is a must have feature for Cloudtail DF Shipping label and Invoice generation. 

4. In the case of Cloudtail DF, if an order has 5-line items, then 5 shipping labels will be generated on Vin e-Retail back to back with a single click on the Print Label button. 

5. Client must input the actual weight and dimensions of the package at the time of Order Pack or Order Prefetch.

6. Orders should be marked as shipped only if they are handed over to the courier partner. (Making the order shipped before the actual handover will lead to mass communication.)