Category Archives: eCommerce

5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites

Were excited about our 100th post!
This is our 100th post!

It’s the 100th post on prasadgupte.com and it’s time to celebrate! For long, I envied the Americans for having Groupon until I realized that there are several deal of the day websites – in fact, with better business models – to serve us. I have been a regular user of these websites, having bought at least 15 deals totaling over INR 15,000 with overall savings of 69%.

5 reasons to save your riches with these shops

1. It saves money: What’s more important that saving some money?
2. It’s easy: There is no upfront payment to receive these deals – they’re delivered to your phone & mailbox for free.
3. It’s safe, either ways: I have always (knock on wood) had a good experience transacting on the internet, and these sites are safe to use as they transact over a trusted gateway. If you fear spending online, you can always have the coupons delivered to your doorstep – free of cost!* So its safe either ways.
4. Keeps you aware: One huge benefit I found out of following these deals (even if you don’t want to buy) is that it keeps you aware of the new places in town and the margins that you can possibly cut in when striking a deal.
5. It’s cool: There’s no reason to be shy – like my dad likes to make me feel. It’s any day cool to be spending smart!

I’ve put together a list of the creme-de-la-creme in the order of *my* choice:

1. DealsAndYou

DealsAndYou
DealsAndYou

I purchased deals worth Rs. 9100 for Rs. 2593. This is one of my favorites! The website is neat, and the deals are fabulous. They take the entire payment upfront – so its a deal in the real sense as against a discount coupon. It covers for roughly 60% of my deal spend and growing, ever my trust in the brand was bolstered by their quick justification email. Continue reading 5 reasons to Spend.. err.. Save smart with the top Indian deal websites

Jargon: Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP)

Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment, or EIPP, is more general concept (as compared to ERS discussed earlier) that is based on electronic invoice submission. ERS uses Advance Shipping Notices (ASNs) instead of invoice. However, they share benefits: avoidance of data entry, errors and exceptions, lost invoices and vendor inquiries. Most solutions are capable of receiving invoices in CSV, XML and few other formats over EDI.

EIPP or e-Invoicing is part of the larger procure-to-pay (P2P) cycle (will be writing soon on this). A huge challenge lies in supplier on-boarding: getting suppliers to automate at their end. In the current era, supplier enablement can be hastened by hosting an internet facing portal – called Supplier Portal in sourcing jargon – that suppliers can log-on to and key-in their invoices. ‘Flipping-the-PO’ is a standard feature that saves data entry effort for the supplier, and minimizes error. On referencing the PO being invoiced, information about line items viz. description, ordered quantity & price are defaulted. This helps reduce the number of expections in automated invoice matching. Imagine this as handing over your groceries list to a baniya who converts it to a bill by stamping his name and adding prices & total (and discounts if the baniya is willing to spare)

References:
http://scm.ncsu.edu/public/facts/facs041014.html
http://www.agilent.com/oracle_supplier/downloads/ERS_supplier_guide.pdf
http://www.jpmorgan.com/tss/General/Invoice_Management/1159348844579