Key takeaways (TL;DR)
By: Stephanie Barrett, Manager of Implementation and Support on VIP's Connect Experience Team.
Implementation doesn’t have to be the hard part. Here’s what it actually looks like when a distributor goes live on Connect.
The question I hear most often from distributors evaluating Connect isn’t about the features. It’s about what happens after they say yes.
‘What does implementation actually look like? How long does it take? How much does our team have to do?
It’s a fair question. Ecommerce projects have a reputation for going long, going sideways, and landing on someone’s desk who didn’t have time for them.
The experience we’ve built with Connect is designed to be different. Here’s what the first 90 days actually look like.
Every Connect customer is assigned a dedicated Connect Experience Team representative, someone from our team who has worked inside beverage distribution and understands the operational reality of what you’re building. That’s your primary point of contact for everything that follows.
The first thing we do together is review your item data. The quality of your catalog is the foundation of the Connect experience, it determines whether retailers can find what they’re looking for, whether images display correctly, whether search returns useful results. We go through your data with you, flag what needs attention, and get it into shape before a single retailer logs in.
At the same time, we’re configuring the platform to match how your business operates: account structures, pricing, promotions, what accounts see and when. Your team doesn’t have to figure this out in isolation. We’ve done it before. We bring a point of view.
This phase typically takes two to four weeks, depending on the complexity of your catalog and how many retailer accounts you’re starting with. Some distributors move faster. The timeline is driven by the data, not by us.
The CE Team will encourage a soft go live with a small group of trusted retailers first. Then we'll support the distributor through going live with all other users.
After the soft launch, it’s go-live day, and it’s usually quieter than people expect. That’s a good sign.
If the item data is clean, the platform is configured, and the team knows how to use it, the first orders coming through Connect feel routine.
That’s the goal.
We train your team before launch: dispatchers, sales leadership, anyone who’ll be using Ecommerce Manager to schedule campaigns or review analytics. We also help you think through your retailer communication, how you’re introducing Connect to your accounts, what support you’re offering them in the first few weeks. In addition, there is a suite of useful assets in a Connect Tool Box, live in our Help Center.
For Retailer Portal customers migrating to Connect, we manage that transition carefully. Your retailers keep their account history, their balances, their invoices. The experience is familiar. The capabilities are significantly better.
The part most ecommerce projects skip is what happens after launch.
We don’t. In the weeks after you go live, we’re watching the same data you are: what retailers are searching for, what they’re finding, what they’re not finding, how the New Placement Recommendations are performing, where the cart drop-off is.
Ecommerce Manager gives your team full visibility into retailer behavior, searches, clicks, cart events, zero-results queries, conversion rate, average order value. We help you read that data in the early weeks and use it to make adjustments: catalog gaps to fill, promotions to schedule, segments to configure differently.
The zero-results query report is the one that tends to change how distributors think about the platform. When you can see what your retailers searched for and didn’t find, you have a list of unmet demand inside accounts you’re already serving. That’s not a reporting dashboard. That’s a growth opportunity.
By the time you’re 90 days in, a few things are typically true.
Your team knows the platform. They’re scheduling campaigns in Ecommerce Manager without asking for help. They’re looking at the analytics before their weekly review calls. Retailer adoption is building — slowly at first, then faster as the experience becomes familiar.
We do a formal review at the 90-day mark: what did you set out to accomplish, what does the data say, and what should we be doing differently in the next quarter.
This isn’t a handoff. We don’t disappear once you’re live. The relationship is designed to keep improving the platform’s performance for your specific operation.
I’ve worked with a lot of distributors through this process. The ones who get the most out of Connect early aren’t necessarily the ones with the cleanest data or the most sophisticated tech teams. They’re the ones who treat implementation as a collaboration — who ask questions, share context about their business, and engage with the data once they’re live.
That’s what our team is here to support. If you’re evaluating Connect and wondering whether your operation is ready for it — that’s exactly the conversation we’re built to have.