fbpx

Gentrifi GPS

In recent years, marketplaces have become increasingly popular in both business and consumer industries. As consumer and service marketplaces have exploded, a new form of marketplace has emerged – the managed marketplace. 

Cloud computing for cloud marketplace

Consumer

Chances are you are familiar with consumer marketplaces. Several of these marketplaces you may use often to purchase goods. A few popular consumer marketplaces are Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, and Etsy

What exactly is a consumer marketplace? A consumer marketplace is a digital market that offers goods from numerous sellers to consumers.

This type of marketplace usually offers less security in the quality of products offered. Buyers often rely on reviews to determine the quality of products.

However, they provide a great platform for individuals and less-known companies to sell their individual goods.

Managed

As mentioned above, managed marketplaces are a newer addition. Compared to the consumer sector, managed provides higher quality products. 

A managed marketplace vets goods and services to ensure they are offering high-quality products to their buyers. With this form of marketplace, there is greater trust with the products since buyers know the products are reviewed.

While these marketplaces have a more target audience, a few you may have heard of are ThredUp, Luxe, and Opendoor.

Service

The service marketplace is where companies offer a service / intangible good to a buyer through a digital platform.

This form of market is heavily prevalent. There is a high chance you use these services in your day to day life.

Within the consumer sector, a few well-known services are Uber, DoorDash, and Airbnb.

As for the B2B sector, Fiverr, Upwork, Faire, and Mirakl are great examples that you may have heard of.

This new trend of selling has shifted the way consumers and businesses purchase goods and services. Over the next decade, marketplaces will continue to emerge and affect how we do business.

What is a Cloud Marketplace?

Advancements in technology and the internet have led to the creation of cloud marketplaces. This type of application market can be found within the managed and service marketplaces.

What exactly is a cloud marketplace? A cloud marketplace is a digital marketplace that offers cloud-based applications that build-on or integrate with the company’s products or services. 

The owner of the marketplace selects specific applications to upload to their market. This process stimulates innovation by motivating developers to create applications. As a result, companies can offer high-quality cloud applications in their market and improve their customers’ experience.

Cloud Marketplace

Within one location, customers can find applications that can suit their business needs and easily connect into their current process. 

This digital store allows customers to save their time by finding easy to implement solutions. No longer do customers have to deal with the hassle of a long integration process.

With the accessibility and benefits of the cloud market, it is not surprising that they are becoming more popular. 

How does this relate to you?

You may be thinking to yourself “Why is this important and how do this relate to me?” 

We have seen that many transportation management systems (TMS) and fleet management providers are already starting to incorporate integration partners into their cloud-based platforms. Open marketplaces are driving innovation. As a result, cloud-based solution providers are now providing integration partner options to their users through their own service.

For example, the freight marketplace has been expanding. Omnitracs launched a freight marketplace called Omnitracs Sylectus in 2016 to help connect shippers with nearby trucks.

The Future of the Transportation Industry

Types of transportation vehicles - ships, delivery vans and trucks, airplane, and train

Within the transportation industry, the cloud marketplace is set to explode. Transportation Management Systems and Fleet Management providers are gearing up to integrate cloud marketplaces into their solutions. 

Below are four main areas management providers in the transportation industry are innovating and implementing into their own solutions.

Open Ecosystem

The transportation industry is on the edge of opening up the ecosystem. This push for an open market is encouraging rapid innovation.

An open ecosystem will give developers access to data and API to encourage new products and integrations. The goal is for these applications to help your fleet run smoothly and painlessly.

The best thing about this system is that it will all be accessible to you. An open ecosystem will give you access to beneficial applications that you most likely wouldn’t know about otherwise. At the click of a button, you will gain knowledge of integratable applications that solve problems you may be experiencing.

Hardware Agnostic

TMS and Fleet Management companies are moving away from device specific solutions. In the past, management solutions had compatibility limitations.

Hardware agnostic solutions will allow customers to use a platform regardless of the system or device a customer uses. This advancement in software will reduce the limitations companies are currently experiencing.

Hardware agnostic and cloud based solutions

Integrating with the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) will cause companies to no longer sell hardware but become service / software based. As a result, manufacturers will offer a variety of service providers, providing the consumer with the opportunity to select who they want.

Leveraging Data

As we have all heard, big data is in. 

With the heavy push of innovation, management solution providers are emphasizing the importance of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. With a better understanding of complex data, TMS and Fleet Management companies will be able to advance their solutions.

Recently, Omnitracs was able to use COVID-19 data to help fleet managers protect their drivers as they work during the pandemic. They were able to implement a feature into their Fleet Mapping tool that enables fleet managers to see location based COVID-19 data.

Going forward we will see companies merge different systems into one cloud-native platform.

At the moment, accessing data is a major hassle for companies. Every product they have produces its own database. This becomes a large problem for companies as they start analyzing their data. Trying to merge the various databases into a unified one is a long, grueling process.

Soon we will see fleet management providers streamline their platforms. 

They will converge the data from all their products into one, large cloud database. Rather than having multiple portals for each product’s data, their customers will have access to all the data in a single database.

This will greatly increase efficiency for fleets. Fleet managers will be able to fully analyze their data, which will allow them to get better insight and understanding of their fleet.

Cloud-Based

On-premise sites are now a thing of the past. Cloud-based software is easy to use, efficient, and accessible. 

Businesses no longer have to invest large amounts of time and money in order to scale up their business. 

Cloud-native infrastructure, systems built fully in the cloud, are empowering organizations to get better insight into their data faster. Technology companies with this type of system are using business intelligence and data analytics in order to better understand complex data. 

As a result, users are able to get insight to data in near real-time, access application integrations easily, and quickly optimize their resources.

Our Recommendation

Omnitracs

Omnitracs has been a leader in the transportation industry for years. Their cutting edge technology has empowered thousands of companies in the transportation and logistics industry to optimize their system.

Recently, Omnitracs released their Omnitracs One Platform. This new platform uses advanced cloud-native infrastructure to provide best-in-class applications for their ELD users.

The new platform is emphasizing the use of a cloud-native infrastructure, open APIs, better data, and hardware agnostic capabilities.

Conclusion

The Cloud Marketplace is the future of the transportation and logistics industries. More and more companies are pushing towards an open market to increase user experience and innovation.

As technology companies continue to move towards this structure, an open market, device agnostic software, big data, and cloud technology will become critical. AI systems and business intelligence tools will propel transportation and logistics management technology to become more innovative.