WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF OROMARKETPLACE?

In the space of a few years, OroCommerce has established itself as a reference in the world of B2B e-commerce platforms. This platform’s growing influence amongst large corporations (Cdiscount, Azelis, Descours & Cabaud, etc.) was echoed in a most striking way last year, when Gartner, the consultancy that is world renowned for its digital market research, rated OroCommerce number 1 in its ranking of B2B e-commerce platforms.

In the coming weeks, Oro will be launching OroMarketplace, a solution that adds marketplace functionalities to the OroCommerce platform. For an e-merchant, a marketplace provides an opportunity to bring in complementary revenue streams and to acquire and retain customers, by using third-party vendors to expand and enhance the range of products sold by the e-merchant whilst collecting commissions on those sales. There are also e-procurement marketplaces that allow companies to list and compare offers from different vendors for their internal purchasing needs.

As one of its Gold Partners, Oro gave us a sneak preview of the solution and the chance to explore its different functionalities. So, what can you expect from OroMarketplace? Will this new marketplace solution really disrupt today’s already highly competitive market?

OROMARKETPLACE: A SERIES OF PARTICULARLY EASY TO INSTALL MODULES

OroMarketplace will be distributed as a series of OroCommerce modules, making it very easy to install. This means no complex interfacing will be required to connect the marketplace to the e-commerce platform, with all of the functionalities grouped together on the same platform.

There is a front-end form that third-party vendors can use to gain access to the marketplace. That form creates a back-office request on the “seller request” screen.

VENDOR RECRUITMENT FORM

Once the marketplace’s operator approves the request, an account will automatically be created for the vendor. OroCommerce will then give that vendor access to the back office, with access rights limited by OroPlatform’s native rights management processes.

Once logged into the back office, the vendor will only have access to their own data and not to other sellers’ data. The vendor will be able to create their own products in the back office, with no need to switch tools to log into a product information management (PIM) system or to ask the marketplace’s operator to create new products.

VENDOR BACK-OFFICE VIEW

The user interface for product creation has been tweaked to simplify its use. A vendor can enter a sales price which, in technical terms, will be stored in a price list dedicated to that vendor.

To be able to add a commission to the vendor’s sales price, Oro has set up the solution to allow the marketplace operator to use dynamic price lists. In other words, the operator can configure its own rules, such as adding a different commission, depending on the vendor or the product type, for example.

In the front office, the customer can see which seller is offering each product. For the time being, it is not yet possible to associate more than one vendor to the same product.

VENDOR LISTING IN THE PRODUCT CATALOGUE

At the end of the order tunnel, Oro will create several orders: an order with all the products, which will be the main order, and a sub-order for each seller. Subcommands are linked to the main command. From his customer account, the customer views the main order, and if he wishes, he can access the detail of the sub-order by clicking on a line of the main order.

A feature has been provided to allow sellers to define their shipping costs. The shipping costs charged to the customer correspond to the sum of the shipping costs charged by each seller.

OUR OPINION: EXCITING PROSPECTS!

It is exciting to see the progress made by the teams at Oro. This solution opens new prospects for the OroCommerce platform, and we appreciate Oro’s approach to product design, which is attentive to standards on the market and to feedback from its clients and partners.

This initial version is a first step towards challenging the biggest names in the marketplace sector. We expect future versions to include a vendor rating system, a messaging system for communication between buyers and sellers, and the ability to handle multiple vendors per product. Most of these features are in the publisher’s roadmap, which has rapid progress slated for the months to come.

Oro’s solution stands out from most other marketplace solutions available on the market in a number of respects:

• While certain marketplace solutions must be connected to an e-commerce platform and/or a PIM to function, OroMarketplace contains all the functionalities needed for the marketplace to function, all on a single technical platform. This unified architecture will be technically simpler, so we can expect faster, cheaper rollouts.

• OroMarketplace’s completely open, modifiable source code also opens new possibilities. Although most marketplace solutions are distributed in SaaS mode, with unmodifiable source code, Oro allows you to maintain control over that code and, in turn, maintain control over key processes like defining product lines, pricing policies and purchasing processes. As a result, the tool can be adapted to functional needs, and the marketplace can be enhanced without being dependent on the timeline of the publisher’s roadmap.

• The relative newness of the marketplace functionalities is partially offset by the wealth of other features provided by OroCommerce. The solution also benefits from the extendibility of OroCommerce, thanks to the available extensions for that platform.

With this new product, Oro is giving us a new vision of what a marketplace could be: a vision that prioritizes efficiency, openness, and extendibility. There can be no doubt that this solution will be adaptable and quick to roll out for many marketplace projects. All that remains is to determine how much this solution will enable the massive rollout of B2B marketplaces in the years to come…