[Step-by-Step]
You are a procurement specialist and you want to settle a strategy with a comprehensive approach of the main challenges affecting procurement? Thierry Dufresne, Sales and Marketing VP at Izberg, explains all the benefits of a marketplace solution for a successful Procurement strategy.
Can you tell us what are the major challenges affecting procurement today ?
When we talk about B2B procurement we have to consider two stakeholders. The first one is the buyer. And the second one is the supplier.
On the buyer side, the buyer wants :
to have a one stop shop buying experience. That means be able to buy products from a single place.
He wants to compare prices.
He wants to have a wider catalog of offering of products and services.
And he wants also to buy from reliable trusted suppliers, in terms of finance, logistics and ethic.
And last but not least, he wants to have the same buying experience as in B2C.
From a supplier perspective :
the main challenge will be to ensure he has a better visibilty
a higher traffic.
And ensure that he will be paid by the buyer and control the investments.
What are the solutions for these stakeholders today ?
There is one solution to solve the challenges of the buyers and the supplier which is the marketplace. It introduces a new stakeholder who is the operator. So the marketplace allows to federate the ecosystem and place the operator at the middle of the value chain. It also helps to generic new source of revenues on a commission based model. Zero stock and zero logistics to manage. In addition to that it allows to extend the catalog and manage the long tail*. The other advantage is to test new products, new services, new offering at no risk. And last but not least, it allows to capture and capitalize on data to manage this ecosystem.
*The long tail effect allows companies to realize significant profits by selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers and therefore, represent a significant part of the global sales.