Author: jensensiu

There’s been a real shift this year: the volume of online retail in B2B has exceeded that of B2C (Gartner). And this trend is likely to intensify thanks to marketplaces, which represent the best driver of sales among professionals: 70% of new marketplaces in the coming years will focus on B2B!

Digital retail in B2B in 2022 will be worth some $7 billion (Frost & Sullivan). If this incredible sum doesn’t grab your attention, it’s equivalent to +20% (19.6%, to be precise) and equates to the increase in online B2B sales in the first quarter of 2022 in France. B2C, meanwhile, is standing still, with a drop of 15% (Fevad).

The marketplace model provides companies with new opportunities. This “revolution” is happening gradually: professionals are slowly embracing this solution. They’re not used to working in this way, even though they already make a significant number of their personal purchases on marketplaces. It also takes time for a company to internally approve a change on this scale.

Changing habits

Launching a marketplace means embarking on a new way of managing a market; to do this, a company needs to adapt the way in which it works. You will probably need to review your stock and catalog management with the (virtuous) aim of automating them.

For instance, Alstom worked with IZBERG to launch StationOne, the first marketplace for railway operators. Wheels, bearings, motors, suspensions, cables, screws, cameras, personal protective equipment: StationOne provides all the necessary material for maintenance, installation, repairs, servicing and even training. The site streamlines the supply chain by working directly with a wide range of suppliers and by facilitating the identification of parts, the ordering process and the organization of deliveries.

Total provides us with another example: Click & Buy is an internal marketplace, which facilitates invoicing, especially for small amounts (C-class purchases). The main benefits for the group: faster processing times and time savings for its employees.

In addition to spare parts and invoices, you can also “trade” events online, as GRDF has done with its service marketplace, known as Dej’Tour’. The site encourages all group employees to sign up for internal lunches and discussions throughout the year.

Developing a service offering

Developing a B2B marketplace is also an opportunity to consider the specificities of the market and to demonstrate that you can respond to them with a real sense of service. Your professional clients have needs that don’t exist in B2C: quote management and deferred payment methods (credit, leasing with the option to purchase, long-term leasing, credit insurance, etc.), along with automatic invoicing and batch delivery management. A marketplace makes it possible for you to do this, while also offering a range of additional functionalities: from a deferred payment solution to the use of a virtual IBAN to limit the risk of any errors with manual entry.

The model also facilitates the management of access and rights (including approval by the ordering party, for instance) because in B2B, the person who’s buying isn’t necessarily the person who’s paying! Lastly, your site can support your company’s international expansion by automating the choice of language and compliance with local regulations.

Expanding the target market

Who wouldn’t want to reach new clients by launching on new markets that have previously been limited in scope?

Launched by IZBERG in 2017, Suez’s Organix marketplace connects sellers of organic waste (fruit, oil, sugar, lactose, etc.) with biogas plants with the aim of transforming this waste into energy.

It’s a win-win for all the project’s stakeholders. This reduces waste, protects the environment, creates a new business and opens up the market to all, overcoming an “ultra-local” issue that was previously resolved solely by word of mouth. The Organix marketplace already has 200 sellers and 140 buyers and more than 300 tons of waste have been sold online. 

In addition to providing an opportunity to develop a new business model, a marketplace makes it possible to: 

• launch an additional offering, as we are increasingly seeing in the health sector. Major financial organizations are creating marketplaces that offer the leasing or purchase of medical equipment for professionals; the purchase process includes financing options, whether for long-term leasing or leasing with the option to purchase.
• firmly establish a business within the circular economy by refurbishing and reusing. There are many examples of this, including Backacia, Cycle Up, Waste and BeeWee, which works to give industrial spare parts a new lease of life.
  

A marketplace project is more business-focused than technological. That’s why IZBERG supports its clients during the early strategic analysis phase: this is a vital process to identify and prioritize the functionalities to be included in your platform’s store front.

When the Internet made its first appearance in our lives (back in the early 2000s, if you remember!), food was undoubtedly the last product we imagined that we’d end up buying online one day.

Too fresh, too complex to pack and ship, too complicated to choose without seeing, smelling or touching: simply too physical (food is probably the most physical thing we buy). It seemed like there were far too many obstacles. What’s more, it didn’t really feel like a problem that needed solving: we all lived close enough to a supermarket or other shops selling food.

Thirty years later, things have changed considerably. Consumer expectations have become more diverse and more sophisticated. Eating is no longer the priority; instead, the focus is on eating well, protecting the planet, eating locally produced ingredients, shopping ethically, respecting the changing seasons, supporting organic farming and so much more.

Over time, retailers and agrifood have invested in the marketplace model, which is particularly relevant when it comes to encouraging more responsible consumerism. Today, plenty of pure players continue to focus on growing customer demand in various areas: buying loose groceries, limiting waste and more.

1. Flashback: a dramatic rise

On Thursday May 19, Marc Lolivier, Fevad’s Managing Director, announced that online food shopping has become the norm. “Because of the pandemic, many French consumers tried online food shopping in 2020 and remained loyal to it in 2021. The growth in sales of fresh food has been spectacular with an increase of 58% in three years. After the incredible rise in popularity of click & collect, home delivery is now making waves.”

Any market’s history includes key stages which serve as symbolic milestones. The history of online food shopping was undoubtedly shaped by Amazon’s takeover of Whole Foods in 2017: this was seen as official recognition of the e-commerce boom in a sector that previously had been largely unaffected by the rise of digital technology.

Two years earlier, Auchan was the first company to open a marketplace in France. This was a particularly innovative approach in 2015; the company focused initially on two categories (garden and food) before gradually expanding its offering.

Carrefour then launched its extensive food marketplace, showcasing local products that were not available at a national level.

Specialist food marketplaces emerged, including Les Grappes (buying wine directly from wine-makers) and, in B2B, Les Grands Moulins de Paris (flour for the Île de France region).

Métro, another B2B company and the leading supplier to independent restaurants, also opened its marketplace in 2019. The company now works with more than 250 traders and suppliers, with over 160,000 food products available online and has launched a program entitled “My sustainable restaurant” to support restaurant owners with their ecological transition.

2. The shift: a different kind of consumerism

Buying organic, buying local, shopping ethically: although consumers’ demands may have become much more specific, buying better is the clear overall objective.

Of course, other far less virtuous (and even contradictory!) trends have emerged at the same time, including quick commerce (whereby companies such as Getir and Flink deliver food in under 15 minutes) and the boom in delivery aggregators (Deliveroo, Uber Eats), which are accused of creating insecure, poorly paid and even dangerous jobs.

However, we’re hopeful that in the end, consumers will opt for responsible consumerism.

Adaptability is key for distributors. They must be able to react quickly to these fundamental changes and provide a relevant and tailored offering.

The marketplace model makes it possible for anyone to consolidate supply and demand and build bridges between two communities, such as organic producers and consumers who are interested in an organic approach, for instance.

Kazidomi, GreenWeez and La Fourche play this role.

There’s been a similar dynamic in B2B, with initiatives like L’Aventure Bio, a wholesaler specializing in organic food.

Other players focus on local produce: La Ruche Qui Dit Oui was founded in 2011 (if you’re looking for genuine pioneers, you’ve found them!) and now has more than 700 distribution points for producers within a radius of 60 kilometers.

Similarly, Pour De Bon now works with 500 growers and artisan producers and provides online shoppers with a digital shopping experience “that’s just like being at the market”.

3. The future: reducing waste

This is an important sustainable development issue, supported by regulations and the AGEC Law in France (which aims to fight waste and encourage the circular economy): we must urgently reduce our waste and, at the same time, we must also stop destroying unsold goods that are still perfectly edible.

The food distribution and institutional catering sectors (supermarkets, canteens, etc.) must reduce food waste by 50% by 2025, in comparison to 2015 levels. The same will apply to food producers, processors and commercial catering by 2030.

For distributors, circular economy marketplaces are a quick and efficient solution to the challenge of getting rid of stock.

Founded in 2020, WeBulk is “the first bulk and zero-waste marketplace for professionals” and has ambitious objectives. Its mantra is particularly appealing: 3 x 0 commerce or “zero disposable packaging, zero unnecessary miles, zero food waste”.

This is a clever and contemporary positioning. Other recent success stories including Too Good to Go, HorsNormes and Phénix show the way forward. And with marketplaces like Cstick (which sells products with a limited use-by date) and Organix (which sells leftover sandwiches, meat, etc.), the B2B sector is certainly not to be outdone!

In conclusion, we encourage you to pay close attention to this combination of food and digital technology; although it seemed improbable just a few years ago, it has proved to be essential.

Marketplaces: why UX is twice as important

45% of French people* (almost one in two) leave a website or mobile site after viewing one page. And a single second’s delay in loading leads to a 16% drop in customer satisfaction**.

If customers are king, then UX is their crown! By improving the quality of the customer journey, customers are more likely to want to stay on a site.

UX comes into play as soon as the customer accesses the homepage and extends well beyond the purchase process, including the after-sales service. It’s a key way to stand out, particularly in saturated markets.

For marketplaces, this issue is twice as important, simply because you need to attract two different types of customers: sellers on one side and buyers on the other, both of whom are equally important!

UX is a demanding discipline, but it pays dividends: the efforts you make yield immediately measurable results. Another positive: you can take a progressive approach, making changes wherever you need to.

Helping sellers to sell

As marketplace publishers, retailers see us as partners: we’re here to help them create an efficient platform. 

The first step is to provide the basics in terms of service: focus on offering seamless product listings and tracking to ensure successful sales.

This involves very specific tools, particularly when it comes to invoicing and payment. These tools are at the heart of the marketplace model! At IZBERG, we’ve added a module that enables B2B sellers to edit a quote and invoice directly in the marketplace. 

But how can you give these sellers an additional helping hand? By providing them with marketing tools, for instance, or by enabling them to push payment facilities or insurance themselves.

We firmly believe that an API-first approach is needed to develop a modular marketplace; in this way, administrators can add additional features, as their market evolves. 

And remember… it’s about more than just the online world! Move away from screens and ensure that staff are easy to contact, responsible and attentive to sellers: it’s vital to create a dedicated team to recruit sellers when the marketplace launches and encourage their loyalty in the long term!

Provide buyers with great service

The challenge for any marketplace is to maintain the delicate balance between buyers and sellers. When it comes to buyers, marketplaces must play a role as a trusted third party, providing reassurance and reliability without overlooking the importance of “pleasure” in the online shopping process.

• Some features have become essential, such as fast delivery, the importance of which cannot be overstated. There are other features that users expect to find on marketplaces: payment in installments and free returns, for instance.

• Other features are beginning to emerge, particularly with regard to reducing customers’ carbon footprint: delivery by bike is one such option.

• Other services make it possible to really stand out, as with the “Ask Your Father” button that we deployed for Dott, a Portuguese rival of Amazon. Young people can use this feature to ask their parents to pay for their order. Dott sends an email to the chosen person, with the ATM reference for payment.

Talking of millennials, they’re particularly keen on customer care and expect a personalized service. Picking up on the importance of this, Mano Mano readjusted the objectives of its customer relations center: with an 80% pick-up rate in under a minute, most customers wait no longer than 60 seconds before speaking to an employee. As for its CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), the company aims at a score of 90%***. Mano Mano has also created a community of “Manodvisors”, knowledgeable DIY fans who are paid to encourage purchases by providing Internet users with advice****.

The marketplace La Beauté Française is another example; it offers its (professional) customers the option to customize their selection, based on their region (local products), criteria that are important to them (cruelty-free, artisanal, zero-waste products, etc.) or their desired profit margins. In this way, the marketplace demonstrates that it’s focused on its customers’ priorities.

Delving a little deeper, a website’s scroll rate is a good indicator of UX performance. The higher it is, the better! To date, the average scroll rate across all industries is 54%*.

(*) Source: ContentSquare, Digital Experience Benchmark 2022

(**) Source: Aberdeen Group

(***) https://www.relationclientmag.fr/Thematique/techno-ux-1256/Breves/ManoMano-et-Diabolocom-une-relation-qui-s-inscrit-dans-la-duree-370235.htm#

(****)  https://www.manomano.fr/devenir-manodvisor?referer_id=683767&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7__qmvSz9wIVAuh3Ch1a1QzaEAAYASAAEgKGSfD_BwE