Mirakl, the industry’s first and most advanced enterprise marketplace SaaS platform, announced the release of new features for its industry-leading Mirakl Marketplace Platform (MMP), enabling enterprises to fully integrate and manage both dropship and marketplace activities in a single, cloud-native solution. Bolstered by AI and seamlessly integrating marketplace participants, the updated platform includes a host of enterprise-oriented capabilities and features that specifically meet the growing demand for high-performance marketplaces in B2B industries.
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Growth in eCommerce has accelerated rapidly since early 2020, marked by an unprecedented increase in online purchases across both B2C and B2B industries. This change has created both enormous opportunity and turmoil for businesses, as everything from evolving buyer expectations to demand spikes and supply chain pressures have stretched traditional approaches to the breaking point.
Few technology categories benefited as much from the shift as enterprise marketplaces, which unleash the power of the platform business model to gain the speed, scale, and agility necessary to grow businesses faster online. However, marketplaces have thus far grown in parallel with 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%.
“While marketplace technology has been on a steep growth path for years, the events of the past year in eCommerce have permanently changed the needs of enterprises and raised the bar for marketplace solutions,” said Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder and CEO of Mirakl. “Mirakl has been fortunate to work closely with leading brands across B2C and B2B industries worldwide to identify these needs early, then partner on developing new capabilities for our platform that fully support the business models they need to drive profitable growth for the new era.”
“Given the increased expectations from customers in both B2C and B2B industries, enterprises require a solution that will allow them to efficiently serve an expanding product assortment and react with agility to changes in the market,” said Philippe Corrot, co-founder and CEO of Mirakl. “The new capabilities of our marketplace platform make it easy for customers to develop, adjust and scale their marketplace and dropship operations on a single instance. With the addition of 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.”
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New capabilities include:
- Categorization AI: New products submitted by sellers are analyzed with a new intelligent algorithm to spot potentially mis-categorized products using Mirakl Catalog Manager to help marketplace operators grow their assortment faster with higher quality and less manual effort. The system will recommend new categories with a confidence score to choose from, and can optionally apply changes broadly across many similar products.
- Unified dropship and marketplace operations: Enterprises can now easily scale dropship and marketplace programs together in a single platform. By combining operations, they can do more business with existing suppliers via dropship, while expanding into new categories by adding new third-party sellers with a marketplace, all managed centrally with the customization and workflow flexibility needed to accommodate multiple models.
- Streamlined B2B selling: New enhancements such as customer profile management and segmentation allow organizations 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 the marketplace, increasing access to B2B digital buyers and improving purchase experiences.
- Alerts and dashboards: Seller performance monitoring has been enhanced with advanced alerting and suspension rules to help enforce quality control when sellers fall out of compliance. The updated Mirakl Marketplace Platform features completely new dashboards for marketplace operators, and sellers, providing an at-a-glance-view and helps to streamline operations for fast and efficient growth.
- Fulfillment capabilities: Mirakl’s new fulfillment capabilities allow marketplaces to partner with eCommerce fulfillment solutions and 3PL (third-party logistics partners) to enhance delivery quality of service for their end customers, reducing delivery time and costs. As an operator, using eCommerce 3PL solutions brings non-domestic seller inventory closer to customers.
Building Strong Marketplace Momentum
The announcement of these new features builds on the company’s momentum including two significant financial milestones. In September 2020, Mirakl closed $300 million in Series D funding, placing the company’s valuation at over $1.5 billion. The company also achieved a record 110% year-over-year growth in gross merchandise value in 2020. With $3.1B transacted on Mirakl-powered Marketplaces last year, Mirakl continues to demonstrate its unique ability to enable the world’s leading organizations to seize the platform opportunity.
Mirakl is poised to continue to capitalize on the growth in eCommerce with the recent addition of Isabelle Bénard as chief product officer. Isabelle joins the company following successful tenures developing eCommerce solutions for Amazon, Global Fashion Group, and Lightspeed, and she will oversee B2C and B2B product development as Mirakl leads the next phase of the marketplace era.
“ABB launched our global marketplace strategy with Mirakl because we recognized the tremendous potential of the marketplace model, and we needed a SaaS platform that was purpose-built to deliver on that potential,” said Samer Shehadeh, Global eCommerce & Innovation Director, Electrification Business Area, ABB. “Only Mirakl offers the features and functionality that ABB needs to truly seize the marketplace opportunity, and their new B2B enhancements will accelerate our digital transformation even further.”
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