Industry — Ecommerce

AI for
ecommerce.

Ecommerce is where many interconnected systems meet at once — inventory and working capital, merchandising, marketplaces, paid media, lifecycle marketing, service, supply chain, and returns. It is one of our deepest areas of specialization.

01Why connected AI matters here

Everything here is downstream of something else.

A merchandising decision becomes a demand signal, which becomes an inventory position, which becomes a cash requirement, which becomes a marketing constraint. Tools that only see their own slice cannot act on that.

  • Working capital is on the line

    Inventory decisions commit cash weeks before revenue arrives, against lead times that drift.

  • Catalog complexity compounds

    Attributes, variants, and channel requirements multiply faster than a team can maintain by hand.

  • Channels disagree

    Storefront, marketplaces, and wholesale each hold part of the truth about demand.

  • Spend outruns supply

    Paid media can accelerate a SKU straight into a stockout if nothing connects the two.

  • Service volume follows operations

    Most contact volume is caused upstream — by shipping, stock, or catalog accuracy.

  • Unit economics are measurable

    Margin, contribution, and landed cost are knowable, which makes good decisions provable.

02Where capacity can be built

The work worth
building around.

Not a menu to buy from. These are the places where connected systems most often remove work, improve a decision, or keep the operation moving.

  • 01

    Leadership & Analytics

    A daily operating picture assembled across storefront, marketplaces, finance, and inventory rather than rebuilt in a spreadsheet.

  • 02

    Finance & FP&A

    Coding, reconciliation, contribution margin, and cash requirements tied to committed purchasing.

  • 03

    Purchasing

    Reorder recommendations and draft purchase orders prepared from demand, coverage, and supplier lead time — queued for approval.

  • 04

    Inventory & Supply Chain

    Coverage, velocity, shortfall risk, inbound status, and landed cost monitored against current demand and supplier lead times.

  • 05

    Vendor Management

    Supplier performance and lead-time drift tracked with evidence instead of memory.

  • 06

    Merchandising

    Assortment gaps, cannibalization, and catalog health reviewed on a cadence.

  • 07

    Pricing & Promotions

    Competitive monitoring and promotion review inside margin guardrails, with pricing changes approved by a person.

  • 08

    Product Catalog / PIM

    Attribute enrichment and content consistency maintained at catalog scale across channels.

  • 09

    Amazon & Marketplaces

    Listing health, case handling, and channel economics kept under watch.

  • 10

    Paid Media

    Spend pacing informed by coverage, capacity, and contribution margin — not impressions alone.

  • 11

    Email, SMS & Lifecycle

    Segmentation and campaign preparation grounded in real purchase and behavior data.

  • 12

    Customer Service

    Responses drafted from order, account, and policy data; humans keep the difficult ones.

  • 13

    Retention & Loyalty

    Cohort behavior, churn signals, and lifecycle interventions kept in view.

  • 14

    Returns & Reverse Logistics

    Return reasons, disposition, and cost recovery handled as a workflow rather than a queue.

03One connected example

Spend moves. Everything downstream knows.

One chain of awareness across marketing, ecommerce, inventory, purchasing, and finance. Each step is informed by the step before it, and the commitment of money stays with a person.

  1. 01Marketing

    Paid media spend increases on a product line

    Observed
  2. 02Ecommerce

    SKU sales velocity accelerates

    Observed
  3. 03Inventory

    Coverage falls below supplier lead time

    Observed
  4. 04AI Environment

    Stockout risk identified and quantified

    Reasoned
  5. 05AI Environment

    Reorder quantity calculated from demand and lead time

    Reasoned
  6. 06AI Environment

    Draft purchase order prepared with supplier terms attached

    Reasoned
  7. 07Purchasing

    Approval request received with the reasoning shown

    Human authority
  8. 08Finance

    Cash requirement visible before the commitment is made

    Human authority
  9. 09Marketing

    Warned about the inventory constraint before spend compounds it

    Human authority
  10. 10AI Environment

    Decision, inputs, and outcome written back and logged

    Reasoned

One illustrative workflow, not a product. The architecture behind it — how systems, context, and approvals fit together.

04Human authority

What stays
with a person.

AI prepares, calculates, and recommends. Committing money, changing prices, and speaking for the brand stay with the people accountable for them.

  • Purchase orders and any commitment of working capital
  • Price changes and promotional structure
  • Marketplace and supplier communications with commercial consequence
  • Customer-facing exceptions, goodwill, and escalations
  • Catalog changes that affect how a product is represented or sold

How Big Timber works

We don't start with
a product.

We learn how the business works, then identify where connected AI creates useful capacity — and where it does not.

See the engagement model →
  • Discover

    We learn how the operation actually runs — systems, handoffs, and where work stalls.

  • Design

    We map where connected AI creates capacity, and what stays with a person.

  • Build

    Integrations, context, workflows, approvals, and logging built into your environment.

  • Train & Maintain

    The team is brought with it, and the environment keeps an owner afterwards.

Find where AI fits in yours.

A working session against your actual operation — storefront, marketplaces, inventory, purchasing, and finance. We will tell you what is worth building first, and what is not worth building at all.