Retail and eCommerce highlights this week include: Ivalua platform selected to improve efficiency, transparency, and the employee purchasing experience. HCLTech’s automation and artificial intelligence solutions to enhance cybersecurity and employee experience at one of the world’s largest snack companies. Mirakl Marketplace Platform maintained 100% uptime even as sales skyrocketed, processing a record-breaking 2.3 million orders during Cyber Week. November GMV performance demonstrates the resiliency of the VTEX customer base, despite challenging macro conditions. Elastic Path raises $90 Million in 2022 following 200% YoY Growth, funding to accelerate Elastic Path leadership in composable commerce
Volkswagen Group selects Ivalua to digitise its indirect procurement processes
The Volkswagen Group has chosen Ivalua’s platform to digitise its global indirect procurement processes for the Group’s entire brand portfolio. Ivalua is a provider of spend management solutions.
A top-10 Forbes 500 company, the Volkswagen Group is one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers and the largest carmaker in Europe. The Group is made up of twelve world-renowned brands from seven European countries: Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania, and MAN.
The Group operates 120 production plants in 19 European countries and a further 10 countries in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. 662,575 employees worldwide produce vehicles and work in vehicle-related services or other fields of business. The Volkswagen Group sells its vehicles in 153 countries.
Mondelēz International expands partnership with HCLTech to supercharge digital workplace transformation
HCL Technologies (HCLTech), a leading global technology company, announced an expanded multi-year contract with Mondelēz International. The contract aims to enhance Mondelēz International’s cybersecurity and transform digital workplace services globally.
To support its hybrid workplace model, Mondelēz International deployed HCLTech’s top rated BigFix platform to automate the discovery and remediation of potential vulnerabilities, ensuring all endpoints including servers, mobile devices and laptops, are continuously secured and compliant.
HCLTech will leverage its automation and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to support Mondelēz International. HCLTech will provide an intuitive, on-demand personalised user experience and accelerated issue resolution to its 110,000 plus employees across 79 countries. In addition, HCLTech will create a Digital Experience Office to support the continuous improvement and automation of the employee experience at Mondelēz International.
Mirakl Marketplace sales outperform eCommerce with 53% Y-o-y growth during Cyber Week 2022
Mirakl has announced that sales across Mirakl-powered Marketplaces grew by 53% year-over-year globally during Cyber Week 2022. The company says this significantly outperformed the 2% growth of overall eCommerce. This dramatic growth proves that platforms are the model of the future and traditional retail rules no longer apply in today’s economy.
Marketplaces Dominate Globally: An analysis of hundreds of Mirakl-powered Marketplaces across the globe during Cyber Week (the 7-day period ending Monday, November 28) found that growth was seen consistently across markets. Sales in local currency increased by 67% in North America and 44% in Europe. With millions of shoppers browsing marketplace and drop ship products, the Mirakl platform received 1.6 billion API calls (+23% over 2021). It scaled flawlessly during this new peak in orders, maintaining 100% uptime to support Mirakl’s 300+ customers throughout the entire Cyber Week period.
Marketplace Purchases Surge Ahead: Twin forces powered online marketplace growth during Cyber Week. First, there was a surge in the total number of marketplace and drop ship orders placed on Mirakl-powered Marketplaces, growing by 30% and reaching 2.3 million. At the same time, average order value on marketplaces increased significantly, jumping by close to 20% year-over-year. Personalization technologies further strengthened sales by making curated recommendations to help marketplace shoppers discover more of what they were looking for. 10% of orders placed with retailers using Mirakl Target2Sell’s recommendation engine contained recommended products.
VTEX customers experience 33% GMV growth in November
VTEX the enterprise digital commerce platform for brands and retailers, reported strong performance during the start of the holiday shopping season (November). Total Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of US$1.75 billion, representing an increase of 33% in USD over November 2021 and 27% on an FX Neutral basis. With the opening of the holiday shopping season, VTEX recorded in November a 30% increase of orders year-over-year, demonstrating the long-term trend of consumers going online through multiple channels to buy products from their preferred brands.
This November, VTEX witnessed a significant GMV increase in verticals such as electronics (+47% YoY), grocery (+45% YoY) and apparel & accessories (+40% YoY) in the more than 38 countries where it currently operates. This is a result of the increase in penetration of eCommerce as well as the influence of FIFA’s World Cup — which led to an even higher growth in categories such as sports & fitness (+55% YoY) and food & beverage (+45% YoY).
VTEX demonstrated the resiliency of its business model by outpacing the market, despite a challenging macroeconomic environment that resulted in a Black Friday performance below the company’s expectations.
VTEX November 2022 Highlights:
- November sales reached the highest peak on Black Friday, November 25th, at 8:27 pm ET, when VTEX customers registered 2.5 thousand orders per minute.
- VTEX enabled 1.5 million consumer orders globally from their preferred brands and retailers during Black Friday 2022, representing a year-over-year increase of 9%.
- The total number of orders among VTEX customers increased 30% year-over-year in November 2022 versus 25% in the same month last year.
- The top five countries with the highest year-over-year growth in absolute sales volume were Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and the United States. Along with the global sales growth, VTEX platform has also delivered scalability, reliability, and security, giving peace of mind for its customers with 100% uptime during Black Friday and Cyber Monday week.
Elastic Path raises $90 million in 2022
Elastic Path, an advocate in the Composable Commerce Movement, is marking the end of 2022 with a total of $90 million in financing. This is in addition to 200% year-over-year growth in bookings, and 221 product releases. The $90 million includes $60 million announced in February, plus a recent addition of $30 million in growth funding led by Sageview Capital with participation from additional existing investors. This new capital will allow Elastic Path to accelerate its leadership in Composable Commerce.
Composable Commerce enables brands to curate a best-of-breed solution that provides the flexibility to fit their unique business requirements. With any multi-vendor approach, there’s an added complexity of integrating, managing and troubleshooting disparate technologies, which can become prohibitive to brands. Elastic Path is dedicated to reducing the complexity and risk of a multi-vendor approach by providing unparalleled partnership, enabling all brands to leverage Composable Commerce.
In 2022, this commitment was showcased by the company’s launch of EP Payments, a pre-integrated payments solution; the release of the D2C Starter Kit, a composable frontend framework, available as open-source code on the company’s Github; and the creation of an Integrations Hub, a central repository of pre-built low code integrations. These advancements reduce the potential risk of a composable approach and empower brands to realize the benefits of Composable Commerce.
Additional highlights from the past year include:
- 200%+ year-over-year growth in subscription bookings
- Launched EP Product Experience Manager (PXM), reinvented product data & catalog management, and EP Payments, pre-integrated payments
- 221 new product releases focused on empowering brands to merchandise without limits and delivering differentiated commerce experiences with ease
- Recognized as a Visionary in the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce
- Included in the Gartner Market Guide for Product Information Management Solutions
- Became the first and only MACH-based commerce vendor to enable HIPAA compliance
- Welcomed three new executives: Kristin Hambelton, chief marketing officer; Tamra Gray, vice president of payments; and Joanna Kmiec, vice president of people and culture
- Recognised as a Great Place to Work in the U.S., Canada, and the UK by the Great Place to Work Institute.
