“Enabler” and “Fulfillment” Platforms Support the New Era of Online Marketplace

Not long ago, I met one of my colleagues who works in a French cosmetics and personal care product company. His job is to take care of supply chain, including thinking about product distribution through retail stores and E-commerce. With a fairly high transaction intensity in online marketplace, my colleague had boasted that he did not need a large number of team members. Because the service e-commerce enablers make it easier for businesses to manage these needs, even in their entirety.

Initial concept e-commerce enablers to facilitate brand principal enter the realm online. Through a single dashboard, they can manage their product presence across multiple services online marketplace at a time. Not only that, some startups even provide solutions fulfillment. This includes warehousing, packaging and logistics solutions. Instead of just being a transaction channel, e-commerce enablers has been the solution end-to-end to the distribution process.

It's still a matter of my colleague's experience above, the digital approach makes it easier for his company to get transaction trend data, it is said that it is very useful for business analysis. For example, to help brand principal presenting promos for products that have not reached the sales target – even at this stage even partners enablers used by my colleague helped formulate his strategy.

It could be that my partner is just one of many managers brand (big) in Indonesia who feel the benefits of the service e-commerce enablers. When looking at the list of clients through the sites of related platform providers, there are indeed many brand many who have taken advantage of its services, including FMCG, fashion, and even furniture.

Logistics ecosystem

In a report entitled "Tech Logistics in SEA" explained about the logistics ecosystem that supports business E-commerce at the moment. The services required are very diverse, especially when talking about specific challenges in a region. For example in Indonesia, which geographically is an archipelagic country, sometimes requires at least 2 modes of transportation used for shipping, for example land-sea or land-air.

These challenges are then interpreted by startup players as opportunities. Some platforms eventually roll out with more specific services, such as truck or ship logistics vehicle management. With attractive income potential, giant E-commerce Indonesia is starting to try to find a comprehensive solution independently, for example what was done Tokopedia through its IaaS vision or Shopee via service "Managed by Shopee".

Customer demands are also driving the transformation of the logistics system E-commerce. According to a survey conducted PwC in 2018, pointed out the fact that 51% of consumers prefer same day delivery (same day delivery) for the items they buy. Even 74% of consumers are willing to pay more to get the fast delivery process.

In the city tier-1, especially in the Jabodetabek area, the model has been massively implemented by players E-commerce who work with service providers last mile delivery. A new challenge appears after talking delivery in the city tier-2 and tier-3. The mileage and limitations of expedition services make the one-day model uneven.

Fulfillment center (fulfillment center) which are placed in strategic areas can accelerate the distribution of deliveries from one day to the next. The development of course must be equipped with very comprehensive data, to determine the point and also help brand principal determine what products will be "entrusted" in the warehouses of these third parties. On the other hand, logistics management platforms are also competing to build systems route planning logistics vehicles can work more efficiently.

Business trends

Initially, the platform online marketplace presented to facilitate transactions customer to customer (C2C). However, internet penetration managed to significantly increase users E-commerce across the country. Whether you want it or not, brand (big) also have to rethink their strategy, by trying to take advantage of distribution channels through online. The result is effective, and even continues to increase attendance brand it is in online marketplace.

The research entitled "2020 Ecommerce Fulfillment Trends Report” presents interesting data. 86% of the respondents, who are e-commerce merchants, said it sells its wares on more than one channel. Not a few also sell through social media. In the future, 69% merchant plans to continue to increase sales channels online to increase potential. System utilization fulfillment will be one of the moves performed.

Many factors will increase the relevance of players enablers and fulfillment. Still from the same research, merchant have many reasons to entrust the service to a third party. Expertise, technology, customer service and the capability to manage multi-channels are among the most conveyed.

Regardless of the business practices carried out, these patterns indirectly change the order E-commerce. If previously C2C was identified with the purchase of merchant individual or SME, now brand big ones started to take part. Even massively will surpass. We haven't found any consumer surveys that validate this, but at least there are patterns that point to it. For example, there is a special channel on E-commerce dedicated to brand principal (eg LazMall, ShopeeMall, BukaMall, TokoMall) or features that make it easy for users to filter the products sold pincipal brand.

Around the early era of growth E-commerce, maybe we have seen a trend of companies flocking to make E-commerce themselves. However if you look at the visit statistics, it seems the system online marketplace tend to be more suitable to be adopted to reach market share online. For stock management and fulfillment, third-party solutions also continue to be pushed up.

Recently, player e-commerce enablers start extending their service to the system fulfillment. The newest one is ShopTalk who just introduced their service. Previously there were Sirclo, GudangAda, Jet Commerce which also strengthened the system fulfillment they.

Next phase: cross-border?

At the local level in a country, perhaps the system enablers and fulfillment there is now sufficient. However, the trade barriers that began to blur pushed merchant nor brand principal to start doing cross-border commerce or cross-border trade. In Southeast Asia, several platforms have tried to be present to facilitate these needs, for example aCommerce, Boxme, Anchanto, Janio, Perpule, and Qxpress.

This potential is seen as good, including by investors. One of them MDI Ventures which is quite intensive in providing support for Anchanto. Anchanto provides SaaS-based products that make it easier for businesses to manage operations E-commerce. It includes a management system warehouse and inventory. Currently they have operations in Singapore, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, South Korea, and Indonesia.