Online marketplaces have exploded into a major channel for many businesses. Whether it’s older standbys like Amazon or newer marketplaces looking to grab a piece of the Amazon model’s success (Walmart and Target have both introduced marketplaces to their online stores), selling into these prebuilt audiences is an attractive choice.
But one challenge some businesses are running up against is the shift away from traditional EDI connections on these marketplaces. Many require an API connection – and if your existing EDI solution can’t communicate well with these API channels, you could make a lot more work for yourself. You can also rack up bigger labor costs. Let’s face it: your in-house resources have more important things to focus on than building out to every API you add.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Rise of Marketplaces
Launched in November 2000, Amazon’s marketplace was one of the first to allow third-party sellers access to the retailer’s platform and audience. Now boasting 9.7 million worldwide sellers accounting for 61% of all sales on Amazon’s website, the marketplace is an established part of Amazon’s model.
But Amazon’s not the only – or even the biggest – player in online marketplaces these days. The total gross merchandise value across marketplaces is an estimated $3.82 trillion as of the end of 2024. With consumers all but trained to shop on marketplaces thanks to the variety of choice, that number is likely to keep rising.
That makes online marketplaces seem like a no-brainer for businesses looking for new channels. But if your system isn’t set up to seamlessly process and fulfill orders from these marketplace channels, you won’t see the success you were hoping for.
Marketplace API Requirements Cause Headaches
If you’re working on a traditional EDI model (or manually processing orders), some of these marketplaces may cause more headaches than you expected. Many have moved away from EDI connections in favor of API, which means you now have to create a new data channel.
Case Study: From Manual Order Processing to API-EDI Integration
A popular pet supplier was working with a traditional EDI solution to add their products to Amazon. Unfortunately, they found they’d have to manually process orders through an Amazon Portal because their existing EDI solution couldn’t work with Amazon’s API connection.
Looking for a better solution with less manual input required, the company found Better EDI. In a matter of days, we were able to leverage existing API connections to send that data to their existing EDI provider in their native format – without expensive API/mapping development.
There are several issues with this:
- First (and most obvious) is that you incur additional costs as you get your system set up to communicate with the marketplace via API.
- On a related note, you also have the cost of training your team to learn how to manage two different data flows: the EDI data they’re used to, and the new API data.
- Because older EDI solutions don’t “talk” effectively with APIs, you also lose productivity as your team has to view order information in two places instead of having one cohesive view across all sales channels.
- Working with two different data sources makes your supply chain management more complex. Everything from inventory tracking to demand forecasting becomes more challenging as you have to piece together information from different sources.
Solving the Marketplace Challenge: Better EDI
Getting the best of both the API and EDI worlds can be tricky – but if you have the right EDI partner, things get a lot easier.
Better EDI considers every API as just another trading partner, which gets served through the same channel as the rest of your EDI transactions, without having to hire a developer to code a new integration.
Keep all of your data channels in one central view with Better EDI – no more jumping from screen to screen to keep up with orders in various channels.
Get in touch today to get started.