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Essendant Market Xpert YouTube Video Series

Video 8: Bid Wizard – Advanced Matching

  • This guide covers how to fine tune Bid Wizard matching to get the best match results for your Bid.
  • Watch the video

Outline

Before we talk about advanced matching, it’s helpful to understand why this is necessary. We have approximately two million unique items in our database. For each of these two million items, we could have an item number, a UPC number, a manufacturer item number, a chain store item number and so on. When we add up all the possible item numbers, we end up with an average of five different item numbers for each of the two million items.

Doing the math, that is over ten million indexes, or cross-references, just to account for all the possible ways an item can be referenced or "matched."

Every time you enter an item number into Market Xpert item search, the computers behind the scenes are looking through ten million cross-references for matches.

But, there is a problem when it comes to duplicates. There are currently 43 different items in our database all with the item number of 100. There are 276 different items with an item number of 1.

The problem is how do we know which one of those 276 different items, all with a number of 1, you want?

The answer is simple in Market Xpert Item Search, you pick the one you are looking for from the displayed list.

But how do we decide which item to pick when you are uploading an Excel file and the matching is automatic? This is where Advanced Matching comes in. Using Advanced Matching you can specify exactly where you want us to look for matches and in what order.

Ø  Advanced Matching is especially helpful when you are uploading a file containing 6-digit item numbers

·         Staples, Office Depot, Costco and Sam’s Club all use 6-digit item numbers

Ø  Advanced Matching allows you to select a matching preference if you know your source Excel file originated from one of these competitors

Ø  The default matching is Match Anywhere: look at all ten million records for a match to each item in your Excel file

Ø  If duplicate matches are found for one of your items, as in the case of those 276 different item number 1s, then the most popular one is chosen as the match

·         This default of looking everywhere and selecting the most popular item in case of a duplicate match works well for most files

·         Where this default can go wrong most often is when you have a large number of 6-digit item numbers in your Excel file

Ø  If you are uploading an Excel file that you know contains Staples item numbers, then you can choose "Match Any Staples Item" instead of "Match Anywhere"

·         Notice when you change the Match Anywhere, the Match Anywhere moves down the list

·         This is intentional and added as a catch-all. If there is no match on a Staples item in our example, then matching continues checking "Anywhere"

Ø  You can change this default behavior by selecting the "Stop Matching" instead

·         This way, only if the item is available from Staples will a match be made

Ø  You can select the same "Match Any" for Depot, Quill and Max. Staples Canada is also included

Ø  Individual chains are also listed in case you only want to match items that are available from specific chains

Ø  At the bottom of the list are the wholesalers

Ø  Some files you receive may contain items that are only available from the chains and not available from any wholesaler. Those are Non-Stocked items

 

Ø  Selecting "Essendant" and then selecting "Stop Matching" would only match items in your file that are available from Essendant

·         You may have to experiment with different settings on this page to get your best matching results

Ø  You can re-match your bid with new options any time by selecting your bid from the Bid Wizard list

·         Click the Edit Functions in the Bid Wizard Menu

·         Click Matching under the Edit Functions

·         You then have the choice to apply the new matching options to New Matches Only (the default) or Re-Match All Items