Marketplaces and channels · Modanisa · 2018 – 2022
One catalogue for every channel, and a store on WhatsApp
Suppliers waiting on engineers, marketplaces integrated one at a time, customers queuing for support.
In short
Situation: Product data was edited in several systems, suppliers had no self-service way to sell through the platform, each external marketplace was its own integration project, and customers waited for support on things they could have done themselves. Decision: Build the product source once, inside the internal marketplace and with product-information management built in. Connect external marketplaces through one integration layer. Move routine customer actions into self-service and a WhatsApp commerce bot. Result: Suppliers managed product, stock, price and orders themselves. External marketplaces were added through one integration layer. Customers could order, track shipments and resolve requests without a support agent, on the web or in WhatsApp. My role: Product manager for the platform products: supplier and marketplace requirements, integration design, the conversational and self-service flows.
- My role
- E-Commerce Product Manager
- Period
- 2018 – 2022
- Scale
- Internal marketplace · external marketplaces · WhatsApp · self-service
- Key figure
- 7 products · 1 product source
Situation and complexity
Four problems shared one root. Product data was edited in several places, so the same item could be described differently on the site and on a marketplace. Suppliers who wanted to sell through the platform had no self-service way to send products, stock and prices or to collect orders. Every external marketplace was being integrated as its own project. And customer support spent its day on questions that a good interface would have answered.
The root was the absence of a single product truth and of self-service: every channel was a copy that drifted, and every routine action needed a person.
Options on the table
- Integrate each marketplace directly from the commerce platform
Rejected. Every new channel would have been a new project, and the catalogue would have kept drifting.
- Add support staff and a ticketing tool
Rejected. Cost would grow with demand, and the customer would still wait.
- One product source, one integration layer, self-service channelsChosen
Fix the source, open it to suppliers, syndicate it, and let customers act for themselves.
The decision and how it was organised
The internal marketplace gave suppliers and business units an API-based way to push product, stock and price data and to pull their orders, with product-information management (catalogue, pricing, inventory, campaigns and coupons) built in. Onboarding a supplier stopped being an engineering task.
External marketplaces were connected through one integration layer with automatic catalogue and order synchronisation, so adding a channel no longer meant a separate project. The affiliate programme, with its links, tracking and commission settlement, was built on the same source of sales truth.
On the customer side, a self-service product let people resolve enquiries and support requests through automated workflows, and a WhatsApp Business bot let them place orders, track shipments and perform the key site actions in chat. An automated prize-draw system completed the set: customers entered, saw the results and arranged delivery without a person in the loop.
Result
Volumes and support-time figures are shared in conversation as relative changes.
What went wrong, what I learned
Intent: Get every team that touches product data onto the new source in one go.
What went wrong: Adoption followed the teams' calendars rather than the project plan. Some teams kept using their spreadsheets after the planned switch-over.
What changed afterwards: Each later rollout started with the team that had the most pain and the least to lose, and used their result to pull the others in.