Orchestrating your partner ecosystem creates new value with e-commerce. Make no mistake, becoming a marketplace is a business transformation, not a feature rollout.

The number of ways that you can arrange your marketplace can be hard to imagine. Be ready to roll up your sleeves and formulate a distinct strategy, but don’t expect to pick from a menu of the most common. Doing so works against your potential and distracts you from your goal: to serve customers better by eliminating the constraints of your traditional business model (e.g., limited warehouse space, limited capital for inventory, limited merchandising staff). You must amplify what makes you great in your customer’s eyes.

To arrive at that end state, the operational changes you make will be distinct to you and must be planned carefully with executive sponsorship. Three high-level factors make you distinct:

  1. What you sell (bits or atoms)
  2. To whom you sell it (consumers or businesses)
  3. Through whom you sell it (one or many tiers of channel partners or direct)

That’s for starters. Being a one-stop shop for your industry sector looks different from the perspective of each participant. Your marketplace must optimize for each participant, and that’s a tall order.

The technology comes in after you’ve formulated your strategy. You’ll compose your marketplace to power your distinct business model. This Forrester Wave™ evaluation looks at the nine providers that matter most. Each of them promises to help you unlock the infinite possibilities of the platform economy (within their area of focus). Those focus areas are, in order of increasing complexity:

  • Selling atoms to consumers. Physical goods that are sold to one person. Think: Amazon.com.
  • Selling atoms to businesses. Physical goods that are sold to organizations of requisitioners and approvers that have prenegotiated pricing and the ability to negotiate quotes.
  • Selling bits to businesses. Digital goods such as IaaS, SaaS, and telco are sold through multiple tiers of partners that include distributors, value-added resellers, and managed service providers. This indirect channel is how large vendors like Microsoft sell to SMBs. Now also think: Buy with AWS.
  • Selling bits + atoms to businesses. Multivendor bundles of connected devices and the applications that manage fleets of them toward outcomes is the most complex type of offering to transact self-service. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it is increasingly what buyers want (e.g., pay for outcomes).

If you need help understanding how to select the platform upon which you’ll build your marketplace, let’s talk.

Schedule an inquiry or guidance session with me to talk about how you can use our latest Forrester Wave evaluation to drive your selection of your marketplace development platform provider. I can ensure that it aligns with your strategic commitment to the pursuit of continuously improving business results through technology. In the meantime, Forrester clients can read The Forrester Wave™: Marketplace Development Platforms, Q4 2024.