Is your marketplace working for you?

  Is your procurement marketplace really helping employees buy smarter, or is it adding more complexity to the process? While eCommerce has transformed the way people shop in their personal lives, workplace purchasing often lags behind. Without the right marketplace in place, organisations risk off-contract spend, inaccurate data and lost savings opportunities. A modern marketplace provides a retail-style experience that makes buying easy while keeping every purchase under control.

What is a Marketplace?

A Marketplace (sometimes referred to as an eMarketplace) is an online platform where staff can purchase products and services from approved suppliers under agreed contracts. In a business-to-consumer (B2C) context, familiar examples include Amazon Marketplace and Facebook Marketplace. In procurement, however, the aim is to provide employees with a structured, contract-compliant directory of goods and services tailored to the needs of the organisation.

By connecting employees with pre-approved suppliers, products and pricing, a procurement marketplace ensures control, compliance and confidence in every purchase.

Common eCommerce buying challenges

• Out-of-date or incorrect information leading to pricing errors.
• Constantly changing supplier offerings that are hard to keep current.
• Maverick, off-contract buying – even when using approved suppliers.
• Inadequate product information, making it difficult to compare and make informed decisions.

How Proactis Marketplace helps

Proactis Marketplace delivers a familiar, retail-style experience that employees recognise and expect. Categories are defined by the organisation, aligned with industry standards, and populated with up-to-date catalogues, contracts and supplier content.

By guiding users towards approved items and contract-compliant suppliers, Marketplace enables a Guided Buying experience that reduces maverick spend. The result is a streamlined purchasing process that empowers employees to self-serve with confidence, while keeping procurement firmly in control.

Empower employees with Guided Buying

Proactis Marketplace makes it easy for employees to find and buy what they need, when they need it. By providing convenient access to authorised supplier catalogues, contracts and websites, the system directs users to preferred suppliers and pre-approved items.

The intuitive interface speeds up purchasing, approvals are faster and employees are more likely to buy on-contract. This not only improves compliance but also frees Procurement to focus on strategic priorities such as supplier performance and risk management.

When purchasing is simple and guided, the result is:

• Higher on-contract spend.
• Reduced risk from unqualified suppliers.
• Greater employee satisfaction.
• More spend under management.

Keep content accurate with supplier self service

Maintaining catalogue accuracy is one of the biggest challenges in procurement. Proactis Marketplace solves this by enabling supplier self-service. Suppliers can manage and update their own information, pricing and product content directly within the platform – keeping data accurate and transparent at all times.

The system acts as a central catalogue repository, providing rich item details, advanced search, and side-by-side comparisons to support informed decision-making. Catalogues can be hosted publicly or privately, with simple tools for bulk uploads, item management, and offline editing before publishing.

The benefits are clear:

• Real time, accurate product information.
• Reduced manual administration.
• Faster onboarding and procurement cycles.
• Stronger collaboration and supplier relationships.

Key benefits at a glance

• Streamlined purchasing and seamless spend control.
• Electronic catalogues of goods and services.
• Lower admin effort with supplier self-service.
• Better search, retrieval and consistent information for every requester.

Without the right marketplace, employees may default to off-contract purchases, suppliers struggle to keep catalogues current and Procurement loses visibility and control. With Proactis Marketplace, you can combine a retail-style buying experience with robust procurement governance. Employees get the convenience they want, suppliers keep information up to date and your organisation maintains control of spend.

Is your marketplace really working for you – or is it time to take it to the next level with Proactis?