Choosing a marketplace solution (also known as a marketplace framework) is an important step when embarking on a creation project. There are many technologies available today, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Most of the time, a point of honour is given to choosing the best solution. There is a lot of content available online for you to compare and consultants can guide you to the most suitable solution according to your needs. But how much importance do you place on the integration of the marketplace solution? Have you thought about the tools to facilitate it?
Integrating a marketplace solution is indeed tedious and requires time and resources. It is estimated that it takes a minimum of 6 months to integrate a marketplace solution into an existing information system, without taking into account the time needed to make decisions.
Discover the challenges linked to the integration of a marketplace solution and the solutions to optimise your time-to-market while securing your launch.
What is the purpose of a marketplace solution?
A marketplace solution allows you to manage a sales model that is very different from that of traditional e-commerce.
These differences must be understood in order to build a platform. The main characteristics of a marketplace are as follows:
- The seller becomes a customer : the customer of a marketplace is not the final buyer but a seller offering its products and services. The business model varies, a marketplace may charge a commission on the sale, offer a subscription, ask for payment of registration fees or even pay for advertising.
- Stock management is provided by the sellers: they must update their data.
- Logistics: the logistics solution is provided by the seller.
- Customer relationship: the marketplace must be able to supervise customer relationships in order to play the role of a trusted third party while remaining an intermediary.
The marketplace solution gives you the keys to adapt your e-commerce to these changes. Thanks to its interface, you can give sellers the possibility to configure the catalogue, manage orders, offers, customer relations or define sales conditions.
Integrating a marketplace solution: what investments are required?
The marketplace solution includes all the key features needed for a multi-seller platform and is therefore of major importance.
There is content and guidance available to help you choose the right solution for your needs. However, there are few resources that tell you how easy it is to integrate at the beginning of the project.
Indeed, to integrate this technology into an information system, multiple connectors must be created and tuned. Several elements relating to the catalogue, offers or orders must be connected. This work is very time and resource consuming.
Some very powerful frameworks offer a hundred or so APIs for operators to manipulate and integrate into their company’s information system. This work is all the more important if your information system is already existing and complex.
Moreover, integrating a marketplace solution is crucial for the quality of your future service. If the operation contains errors, no matter which tool you choose, the quality delivered to the sellers and your end customers will be degraded.
Finally, when the marketplace solution is integrated, it will be necessary to connect external tools and services such as a payment service (PSP), a returns management tool or a KYC tool for example. This work of connecting between APIs will also require time for each integration and modification.
The Marjory product addresses these integration challenges.
Marjory simplifies the integration of all your tools and services
Created and designed by experts in the project management marketplace, the Marjory product facilities of your solution and all your external tools and services.
Without Marjory, you have to connect each solution to your IS independently, which consumes a lot of resources while taking the risk of having to deal with errors later on.
With Marjory you only have to do this once by connecting to our product’s unique API. Marjory can be adapted to any type of project, whether you have an existing information system or not.
Since Marjory is already connected to the various tools useful for the marketplace you have direct access to pre-configured services.
Once your marketplace is connected to our product, you can orchestrate the intervention of each service thanks to an interface that will present your processes in the form of workflows.
Once your tools and services are integrated, Marjory will help you orchestrate your tools and services more easily with the following benefits:
- You will be able to consult your processes more easily thanks to the visualisation of workflows.
- You will be able to change tools or services more quickly by deleting the chosen element in the process and replacing it.
Today, Marjory is the only global player to facilitate the integration of specialized tools and services in the marketplace. Our teams are made up of experts who have created marketplaces for several large French groups in B2B and B2C and who know the challenges involved in creating a marketplace.
Do you have questions? Do you need information? Feel free to contact us
