How a Procurement Marketplace Improves User Satisfaction

According to a recent benchmarking study done by ProcureCon, 45% of Chief Procurement Officers surveyed said they were very interested in joining a Procurement Marketplace where pre-negotiated prices, terms, and conditions were all available.

Leveraging a Procurement Marketplace not only brings buyers and suppliers closer, it increases compliance with purchasing policies internally and drives user adoption. Keep reading to learn how you could benefit.

Marketplaces Naturally Fit into How People Work

If you’ve read our other posts on achieving 100% user adoption, you know that the only way to do that is to create an e-procurement solution that fits into how people already work. By this point, consumer marketplaces are second nature – just think of Amazon. You go to their webpage or app, type in the product you’re looking for along with your search filters, and Amazon presents items that fit your criteria. Marketplaces make buying easy – and therefore increase user adoption and satisfaction with the e-procurement tool.

Users Expect Marketplaces to be as Easy as Online Shopping

A Procurement Marketplace, to be successful, needs to deliver the same search perks as Amazon. The only difference is it’s for business-to-business (B2B) transactions, not business-to-consumer (B2C). Just as it sounds, a Procurement Marketplace is a network that allows buying organizations and their suppliers to efficiently maintain a list of contracted goods and services and empowers the end users to quickly order the goods and services they need.

There are a few things we’ve come to expect from these marketplace sites:

• Products should be easy to find and compare.

• The tool should “learn” patterns in buyer behaviors.

• Users should be able to make purchases from their phone or tablet in minimal keystrokes.

The Basware Marketplace Improves User Satisfaction with Enhanced Functionality

Regardless if it’s B2B or B2C – at the end of the day, we’re all people consuming goods and have certain habits when it comes to buying. The Basware Marketplace was built on the major tenets of consumer marketplaces with a B2B audience in mind, enabling our customers to:

1. Connect with Suppliers: The Basware Marketplace is open to strategic and long tail spend suppliers alike. They just need to upload the catalog items with updated prices. Then, the buyer organization approves the items. Once approved, the items are ready for purchase and viewable by users. This enables a seamless exchange of information between buyers and suppliers and makes sure users have all the options when it comes to buying goods and services.

2. Let Suppliers Manage Content: Suppliers can upload catalog items and manage prices. This way, users always see the most current prices and available products. Suppliers can also use the same item information for multiple buyers, reducing manual effort on their side and freeing up time.

3. Use Vendor Punchouts: The Basware Marketplace accepts the integration of vendor websites. This means users can “punch out” or easily navigate to vendors’ websites, (e.g. Staples, Office Depot, even Amazon) within the Procurement Marketplace, select the items they want to order and bring them back to their internal shopping cart for approval. This means users can get exactly the items they’re looking for that are available online – increasing the likelihood that they will continue using the e-procurement solution for all their buying needs.

4. Deliver a Consolidated View: The simple, consumer-style user interface makes users feel at home in the platform. A single view across all supplier content means that users can search internal and external supplier catalogs from one convenient location. Just like Amazon, product comparisons, reviews, and ratings are all available to assist in the decision-making process.

5. Leverage Guided Buying: Procurement leaders can breathe a sigh of relief when they put their trust in the guided buying experience offered through the Marketplace. This ensures compliance with purchasing policies and reduces maverick spend by guiding users to the preferred buying options based on their needs.

6. Personalize the Experience: Personalization within the Basware Marketplace allows users to search for products with multiple search criteria, save frequent searches for future use, and set search results to only show approved or permitted products and services. They can use dynamic features such as “certified” or “recyclable” to narrow down searches even further. Personalization means that users have an experience tailored to their needs and are more likely to come back each time they need to make a purchase.

7. Optimize Mobile Searches: Users can now enjoy an eCommerce shopping experience on any mobile device. Mobile searching lets the company buyers and category managers control and optimize the users’ search experience to best fit company purchasing policies and the users’ preferences.

8. Get Quick Quotes: The RFQ process just got a lot easier. Sometimes you need a product or service that isn’t in a catalog of your supplier. With Quick Quote, you can launch an RFQ to the suppliers in your network.

9. Manage Buyer Content: Sometimes the buyer may need to load content into the marketplace on behalf of the supplier. A buyer can load content into the Marketplace using a CSV file or image file.

10. Tag Content: In some cases, a buyer administrator may want to provide access to different segments of supplier content for different users. If that’s the case, tags can be added to an agreement, so that users only see the content most relevant to them. This helps users easily find the items that are best suited for their roles.

Basware Marketplace helps you increase user satisfaction by making the buying experience as simple, easy, and familiar as possible. This is what you need to achieve 100% user adoption.

Learn More

Download the Basware Marketplace factsheet, read about how we help you increase compliance with guided purchasing, and as always, contact us – we’re here to help!

¹ Driving Procurement Transformation: A Benchmarking Report by ProcureCon, WBR Insights 2018