Challenges of B2B marketplaces in transport, logistics.

• Author: Frese, Florian
• Position: Business-to-Business

Byline: Florian Frese

Logistics marketplaces are taking highly specialized areas by storm. With Container xChange, we're building the first online platform for container logistics - more than 300 companies already find SOC Containers and identify partners on our marketplace. In this article, we share the challenges we face as a logistics marketplace and explain how we try to overcome them.

Chicken-and-egg problem

In the realm of marketplaces, the concomitant chicken-and-egg problem is inevitable. Demand from container suppliers on the platform drives users to join, but if there are no suppliers to begin with, where would the users come from? With xChange, we focused on shipping lines in the beginning before opening our platform for leasing companies, forwarders and container traders as well. They joined xChange to have access to a global equipment pool and avoid empty container moves. What made them stay on the platform though? Of course, shipping lines saw the number of members growing, and they made deals that saved them a good amount of money, but we think that an excellent customer service team is vital!

To solve the chicken-and-egg problem, you need to go above and beyond to make sure the platform solves a problem for its users. That's why we put much effort into helping every member individually and for instance, looking for potential matches on behalf of our members even outside of the platform to make sure they get a good deal.

Shifting the mentality behind legacy processes

"We've been organizing SOC Containers with emails and calls for years now, and we see no reason to change that" is something which sounds familiar to you? Shifting perspective of those long-time bosses who are still relying on paper order requisitions, hand-written stock reports and phone calls call can be a long process. It worked for them for a few decades, why should they change it? As a marketplace, you need to incentivize and outline that positive impacts by far outstrip the hassle of introducing and adapting to these changes.

For us, it was surprisingly no considerable challenge to convince the Managing Director of a shipping company to use xChange - the argument of saving money and time was clear enough so that they gave us a try. That's only the first step, though! It took us some time to improve user experience and simplify processes to make sure companies not only sign-up but use xChange. The person that pays for the membership and the person that...