Overstock creates a dynamic, scalable solution for supplier engagement with WalkMe

Overstock is a technology-driven online retailer on a mission to create dream homes for all, providing high quality merchandise, great value, and exceptional customer service to its global customer base. Overstock’s global network of over 3,000 suppliers, who list their items on Overstock’s supplier portal and fulfill orders, are central to the company’s success.

To ease the process of doing business, Overstock provided suppliers with updates via frequent emails for most types of communications, plus a knowledge base with how-to articles and training. However, this knowledge base was housed on a separate platform, which took users away from their current tasks. Using this external knowledge base was time-consuming and disruptive to suppliers. Consequently, Overstock began looking for a dynamic, scalable way to provide critical communications, system update information, and general training to its suppliers. They also wanted a system that could evolve with their own changing business needs, without incurring the significant cost of building and maintaining it in-house – and they found an ideal solution in WalkMe.

As a result of their partnership with WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform, Overstock achieved:

• 20% reduction in support intervention
• 100% ROI within 12 months
• 30% increase in meaningful action, without site disruption

Overstock is a technology-driven online retailer Making Dream Homes Come True™, by providing high quality merchandise, great value, and exceptional customer service to its global customer base. Overstock’s global network of over 3,000 suppliers, who list their items on Overstock’s supplier portal and fulfill orders, are central to the company’s success.

Overstock aimed to improve its business operations by providing suppliers with frequent updates via email and a knowledge base containing how-to articles and training. Unfortunately, the knowledge base was situated on a separate platform, which was inconvenient for users as it diverted their attention from their current tasks and took up valuable time. As a result, Overstock set out to find a scalable and flexible solution that could offer critical communications, system updates, and training to suppliers, while being adaptable to their evolving business requirements. They sought a solution that didn’t incur significant costs associated with building and maintaining an in-house system, and they found the perfect solution in WalkMe.

Overstock partners with over 3,000 globally dispersed suppliers. In order to provide a seamless experience for these suppliers, Overstock required a dynamic and scalable onboarding, enablement, and education process ensure each supplier was in compliance with Overstock’s policies for listing products on its site, fulfilling orders, and handling other day-to-day business tasks. Overstock’s legacy supplier enablement process was decentralized, spread out between emails and a separate platform, and lacked connection to common portal tasks, leading to inefficiencies and low knowledge retention.

“Our previous enablement process was static and lacked a modern user experience. Email was the primary means of communicating updates to suppliers, while all training was housed in a separate platform. This required end users to abandon their tasks to reference training material. We knew we could modernize our enablement process and break the cycle of frustration for us and our suppliers,” explains Jo Wuertz, Senior Learning Experience Designer, Overstock.

Something had to change. The Overstock team recognized it needed a dynamic, flexible solution that provided the required agility to quickly inform suppliers of updated business processes, without incurring the significant cost of building and maintaining a homegrown system in-house. And they knew that they needed a solution that would increase supplier adoption and overall satisfaction, drive self-service, and reduce suppliers’ support cases for operational and enablement issues.

“Our aim was to increase supplier adoption within our portal and seamlessly integrate it into the user journey, instead of making them go outside the platform. Whenever the business made a change to a process that affected our suppliers, we required a lot of intervention from our internal development team, which meant that their time was taken away from more meaningful projects,” states Krystal Love, Senior Director of Merchandising Operations, Overstock.

Overstock partnered with WalkMe to deliver a fully integrated, dynamic, and scalable vendor enablement and resource center, directly within the main supplier portal. The experience for suppliers is now uninterrupted: a combination of SmartTips, Smart Walk-Thrus, Launchers, and ShoutOuts surface the right information at the right time to the appropriate users.

In the initial evaluation, Overstock saw that WalkMe’s tools and functionalities had instant applications for their supplier portal and could enhance the way they did business with suppliers. Making the leap to a digital adoption platform and strategy was eased by Wuertz’s trial of the WalkMe platform to build sample use cases.

“As we had conversations with our senior leadership, we were able to demo what it would look like to the end user, and that visual representation went a long way in gaining buy-in from leadership,” states Love. “After experiencing the platform and understanding the features that we could deploy, we guessed it would pay for itself within the year,” adds Wuertz.

During the implementation process, Wuertz and Love partnered with a team of a dozen internal subject matter experts to educate them on the strategic value of the WalkMe partnership as well as test the initial rollout. This well-rounded launch plan paid dividends – “Our end users started using it immediately!” exclaims Love. “Our favorite WalkMe application is SmartTips, because even though they’re low hanging fruit in terms of interactions they’re also really quick and powerful wins. It is rewarding for me to know the solution is serving up tips and tricks right when and where users need assistance,” adds Wuertz.

Today, Overstock has a mindful approach to supply chain enablement, focusing on maximizing end user benefits with strategically targeted communications, leading to few user disruptions, and a high level of adoption. Now, suppliers are informed via in app SmartTips and ShoutOuts announcing process changes, replacing their legacy static enablement process. The Overstock support team has subsequently seen a 20% reduction in help center requests from suppliers.

“One of our proudest moments was implementing strategically placed WalkThroughs that are only initiated when a user has a financially impactful issue that requires their attention. This one Walkthrough has increased data correctness by 30%, without interfering with non-affected user experience. WalkMe was as advertised, the solutions provided by the platform fit our needs – and we were able to realize ROI within the first 12 months of deployment,” asserts Wuertz.

The entire department has embraced WalkMe; leadership understands the strategic value of WalkMe, and the development and product teams recognize the value the strategic partnership with WalkMe brings to both end users and internal teams by way of time savings, and the ability for the business to easily access impacted features and make relevant changes as processes evolve.

“Basically, to create and maintain a similar in-house solution as WalkMe would take a full-time development team, which is hundreds of thousands of dollars a year savings right there. Today, WalkMe is a part of our software family,” explains Love, “Jo and I are being included in other software evaluations to assess how WalkMe could be used in conjunction with the proposed solution to ensure our users know exactly what to do, and when to do it. It’s very rewarding to see everyone embrace and run with a digital adoption strategy!”