Building a successful Digital Marketplace

A digital marketplace is an online platform that gives buyers and sellers access to a huge range of solutions and services. B2B digital marketplaces allow businesses such as CSPs to co-create services and solutions by working with an ecosystem of partners and scale their offerings fast. Buyers can utilize a digital marketplace to search for the specific products or services they require, compare offerings from various suppliers, and make well-informed purchasing decisions.

CSPs can leverage a digital marketplace to improve their customer satisfaction. A digital marketplace can help CSPS’ customers to effectively manage all of their technology requirements in one place. CSPs often try to develop their own digital marketplaces, but tend to find value in collaborating with digital marketplace providers to bolster their digital platforms, and connect their customers and partners. Their customers can browse, compare and purchase various digital products and solutions, including Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and numerous other digital offerings. 

One recent example of a digital marketplace is Magenta B2B2x, a customizable, cloud-based, multi-tenant marketplace launched by Telekom Deutschland in 2023. This platform allows the digital procurement of various ICT products.

Telekom Deutschland chose Beyond Now's Infonova Digital Business Platform to facilitate the procurement and exchange of services among partners and customers in a B2B2X digital marketplace, allowing them to orchestrate the sale, ordering and fulfilment of their services and solutions. These services range from voice, connectivity, 5G and data analytics, to IoT, AI, and more.

A digital marketplace has several key functions that designed to optimize user experience and facilitate seamless operations. B2B digital marketplaces have advanced ecosystem orchestration and monetization capabilities. Users can automate processes like packaging, ordering, fulfilment, monetization, and settlement. They can do this across multiple vendors or partners involved in a solution. This includes effectively managing dependencies between different components, ensuring accurate and timely delivery.

The digital marketplace emphasizes a digital customer experience. It features a user-friendly shopfront and self-service capabilities, allowing end customers to easily explore pre-integrated solutions. Marketplace users can also request personalized quotes, place orders, and independently manage and monitor their solutions. The streamlined and intuitive approach not only ensures convenience but also empowers customers to take control of their technology needs.

Digital marketplaces emphasize cutting-edge partner enablement, self-onboarding, self-management of services, and performance monitoring, providing full visibility into orders and service inventory. The digital marketplace also supports flexible commercial and settlement models. It allows users to define settlement partner agreements for selling services via the marketplace. Users can also support various pricing and multiparty business models. Digital marketplaces also offer control, governance, and insights for users. They grant full oversight, fast onboarding, visibility of orders, and transparency in payments and revenue.

Our Digital Marketplace is powered by Infonova Digital Business Platform, incorporating cutting-edge technology that includes Open APIs and a cloud-native containerized micro-services architecture. Delivered as SaaS, this adaptable and scalable framework makes our digital marketplace an ideal solution for organizations aiming to quickly create and introduce offerings that align with their customers' digital transformation needs. Whether you're a CSP focused on selling B2B, B2B2X, or B2C solutions, our platform enables you to harness a blend of technologies to meet diverse customer requirements.

Designed as an overlay solution to multiple IT and partner systems, our Digital Marketplace is engineered to empower you in delivering outcome-based solutions for your customers. It seamlessly integrates a variety of technologies, encompassing ICT, IoT, 5G, Security, AI, and more. This seamless integration enables you to effectively tackle B2B business challenges across various partners and channels, in an automated and scalable way.

Through our Digital Marketplace, you can efficiently bring partners onboard, collaboratively develop solutions, and distribute them through digital channels. This streamlined approach simplifies the configuration and purchase of your services for customers. Additionally, the platform facilitates orchestration and monetization processes across multiple partners, allowing you to go to market quickly and authentically address your customers' business challenges automatically at scale.

Digital Marketplace use case: NTT DOCOMO, a leading Japanese mobile operator with over 73 million users, has achieved remarkable success with our unique digital marketplace. The business was aware of the potential of the SMB market and the growing demand for digital transformation, enhanced business resilience, and agility with flexible workspaces. As a reliable provider with an extensive customer base, DOCOMO was strategically positioned to provide the necessary solutions in response to these evolving trends.

With Beyond Now’s digital marketplace, DOCOMO transitioned to a digital business platform model, enabling collaborations with various technology partners. This approach grants their SMB customers access to a range of tailored solutions that align with their specific business requirements.

DOCOMO has successfully grown revenue by introducing multiple solutions to the market at speed, efficiently identifying successful offerings, and rapidly scaling them. Leveraging our Digital Business Platform, DOCOMO was able to orchestrate a partner ecosystem. On a digital marketplace, powered by our Digital Business Platform, DOCOMO’s partners can independently onboard DOCOMO's products and services, allowing each ecosystem member to maintain autonomy and manage their solutions. Partners can also collaborate with single or multiple entities to engage in cross-selling, re-selling, and integrating diverse services and technologies, streamlining the complexities associated with service provisioning, especially in the realms of 5G, Edge, and IoT.

For CSPs like DOCOMO, our digital marketplace simplifies the intricate challenge of service provisioning, which involves multiple partners, networks, and solutions. As a result, CSPs like DOCOMO can maximize efficiency and customer satisfaction, and grow revenue fast.

Implementing the marketplace model provides CSPs with the chance to thoughtfully assemble a diverse range of services that go beyond traditional offerings. This includes the integration of 5G and network capabilities, cloud and Edge services, value-added services, collaboration tools, IoT connectivity, and industry-specific applications. This strategic expansion is in line with the digital transformation requirements of today's business landscape, addressing not only basic connectivity needs but also intricate technological and digital demands that CSPs’ customers have.

A thoughtfully assembled ecosystem empowers CSPs to elevate customer loyalty and satisfaction by presenting a comprehensive set of solutions tailored to evolving business requirements. Additionally, it assists CSPs in capturing a larger portion of the customer's spending by leveraging the influence of network effects and forming strategic partnerships.