It allows the user access to all advertised stock with full tracking; notes where the items are being sold and when the best days of sale are; prompts with ad suggestions for items that have been on the site for longer than 60 days; displays margins; and gives access to analytics for site data to improve decision making.
The system, which costs a non-contractual month-to-month fee of R199, enables smaller businesses to use the online platform efficiently, as a business shop window.
Barrie Swart, country head: gumtree goods, says the system aims to be the go-to inventory management system for South African SMEs. It is the second of multiple planned ProTool platforms – ProTool for Property was the first to be launched and ProTool for Jobs will be next.
“SMEs have been making good use of Gumtree as a marketing platform, which reaches nearly a million unique goods-related visits every month. We already carry ads from over 100,000 users who are ‘professional sellers’ each month,” says Swart. “Many of these sellers were dependent on stock management packages that were either extremely basic (such as Excel) or very expensive (such as Sage Pastel). We wanted to provide a system that was both more powerful and more affordable.
“Adding a powerful inventory management system to South Africa’s largest selling platform is going to change the landscape for SMEs, for the better,” concludes Swart.
