Powering the Platform Economy
DMI is excited to be a Mirakl partner. How did Mirakl get its start?
Mirakl powers tomorrow’s e-commerce by providing the technology, expertise and partner ecosystem needed to launch an eCommerce marketplace. Retailers, brands, manufacturers and distributors use the Mirakl Marketplace Platform to offer their customers and partners anything, anytime, anywhere. With their marketplaces, they’re able to increase the number of products available for buyers, grow the lifetime value of customers, and anticipate buyer needs and preferences. We also have a team of more than 60 marketplace experts who help our clients adopt best practices and provide long-term strategic guidance. Overall we have more than 200 retail, manufacturing, distribution and procurement customers operating marketplaces in 40 countries.
What is the StopCOVID19.fr marketplace and how is it helping to curtail the PPE shortage in French hospitals?
StopCOVID19.fr is a project we worked on with the Ministry for the Economy and Finance in France to make vital supplies like hand sanitizer, masks, and protective clothing easier to source. The traditional supply chain for these critical products wasn’t able to keep up with demand. With Adobe Magento, we quickly launched a Mirakl-powered Marketplace in just 48 hours that matches French healthcare institutions with these providers of critical supplies. It uses the platform model to organize the distribution chain connecting producers of materials with packaging manufacturers and, ultimately, the hospitals, clinics, and other organizations that need these products the most. As of late April, StopCOVID19.fr had facilitated orders of more than 30 million critical supplies for more than 6,000 clients in France.
How do you see Mirakl helping businesses get a fast start coming out of the COVID-19 crisis?
We believe the companies that will come out stronger will be the ones who don’t delay in investing in future business models. Mirakl can help businesses quickly adopt a platform business model strategy. This means setting up an online marketplace to rely more on ecosystem partners to do business and not depend solely on their own sourcing, manufacturing and supply chains to meet buyers’ needs. Investing in an innovative, asset-light, agile platform strategy will be key to scaling faster and thriving in the post-COVID future.
How do you see the continuing adoption of platform-based solutions impacting medium and large businesses around the world?
There’s a huge opportunity for incumbent businesses to create platform strategies of their own. Gartner has projected that by 2023, 15 percent of medium-to high-GMV digital commerce organizations will have deployed their own marketplaces. When incumbents move boldly with these digital strategies, they actually command four times more market share than digital natives encroaching on their territory. The organizations that recognize the power of the platform model will win.
Mirakl’s client list is impressive. What’s the key to engendering the trust of so many large brands?
Mirakl has the expertise, an advanced technical platform, and a vast partner ecosystem that when combined, are truly the recipe for our success. We have dozens of marketplace experts who partner closely with our customers and partners to help them achieve their true potential, and in many cases they actually operated marketplace projects of their own before joining us. But we wouldn’t be able to build these close partnerships if our solution didn’t deliver results – and it does. It increases customer lifetime value, improves the customer experience, and can actually even do things like increase in-store sales. We asked Forrester Research to determine the ROI of a Mirakl-powered Marketplace and they found that it can deliver a 162 percent return on investment within three years. We’re the only solution that can offer that return at the scale and quality our customers expect.
Describe how a partnership with DMI makes sense for Mirakl?
DMI fits nicely into our partner ecosystem because the company has deep eCommerce experience with Oracle Commerce and SAP Commerce. This experience allows us to work together closely to expand our clients’ commerce platform incorporating a Mirakl strategy. We’ve successfully completed multiple projects with DMI. DMI has the unique ability to quickly implement Mirakl so customers can start to achieve revenue through the solution.
