Mirakl, an advanced enterprise marketplace SaaS platform has released new features for Mirakl Marketplace Platform. The platform enables enterprises to fully integrate and manage both dropship and marketplace activities in a single, cloud-native solution. Bolstered by AI and integrating marketplace participants, the updated platform includes a host of enterprise-oriented capabilities and features. Mirakl says its specifically meets the growing demand for high-performance marketplaces in B2B industries.
eCommerce has accelerated rapidly since early 2020, marked by an unprecedented increase in online purchases across B2C and B2B industries. This change has created both enormous opportunity and turmoil for businesses. Everything from evolving buyer expectations to demand spikes and supply chain pressures have stretched traditional approaches to the breaking point.
Shift in B2B and B2C behaviour
Some analysts have suggested the enterprise marketplace has actually benefitted from the shift in behaviour. Marketplaces have established dropship models that many enterprises relied on to expand assortment with complementary sellers. According to a 2020 report from Research and Markets, the global dropshipping market is expected to reach $590 billion by 2027, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 18.3%.
According to Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder and CEO of Mirakl, “Marketplace technology has been on a steep growth path for years. The past year events in eCommerce have permanently changed the needs of enterprises and raised the bar for marketplace solutions.”
“Enterprises require a solution that will allow them to efficiently serve an expanding product assortment. The ability to react with agility to changes in the market,” said Philippe Corrot, co-founder and CEO of Mirakl. “Our new capabilities make it easy for customers to develop, adjust and scale their marketplace and dropship operations on a single instance. With the new B2B features, marketplace operators can now focus entirely on the decisions that drive their business success. Identifying the trends and products that will best satisfy their customers,” Corrot added.
The new capabilities include:
Categorization AI
New products submitted by sellers are analysed with a new intelligent algorithm to spot potentially mis-categorised products using Mirakl Catalog Manager. The tools helps marketplace operators grow their assortment faster with higher quality and less manual effort. The system recommends new categories with a confidence score to choose from. It can optionally apply changes broadly across many similar products.
Unified dropship and marketplace operations
Enterprises can now scale dropship and marketplace programmes together in a single platform with Mirakl. By combining operations, they can do more business with existing suppliers via dropship. At the same time expanding into new categories by adding new third-party sellers with a marketplace. This is all managed centrally with the customisation and workflow flexibility needed to accommodate multiple models.
Streamlined B2B selling
Enhancements such as customer profile management and segmentation allow organisations to streamline B2B selling, drive adoption, and scale business growth. Additionally, the recently-announced partnership with PunchOut2Go enables buyers to connect their eProcurement systems to your marketplace. The company says this increases access to B2B digital buyers and improve purchase experiences.
Alerts and dashboards
Seller performance monitoring has been enhanced with advanced alerting and suspension rules. This helps enforce quality control when sellers fall out of compliance. The updated Mirakl Marketplace Platform features completely new dashboards for marketplace operators, and sellers. The dashboard provides an at-a-glance-view and helps to streamline operations for fast and efficient growth.
Fulfilment capabilities
Mirakl’s new fulfilment capabilities allows marketplaces to partner with eCommerce fulfilment solutions and 3PL (3rd party logistics partners). Mirakl says to enhance delivery quality of service for their end customers, reducing delivery time and delivery costs. As an operator, using eCommerce 3PL solutions can help to bring non-domestic seller inventory closer to your customers and demand.
Enterprise Times: What this means for business?
It’s nearly two years since the company launched Mirakl Connect, its global marketplace ecosystem. These appear to be really interesting times for Mirakl. The announcement of new features comes on the heels of two significant financial milestones for the company. Mirakl recently closed $300 million in Series D funding, placing the company’s valuation at over $1.5 billion. The company achieved record 110% year-over-year growth in gross merchandise value in 2020. With $3.1B transacted on Mirakl-powered Marketplaces last year, demonstrated the ability of enterprises to effectively utilise the platform opportunity.
Given increased expectations from B2C and B2B customers, few technology categories benefited as much from the shift as enterprise marketplaces. Mirakl has been sensible to work with leading brands across B2C and B2B, to identify the changes needed. The company seems to be on the right track. Developing new capabilities for its platform, that support the business models needed to drive growth for the new era.
