Ten years ago SI ran a piece on how it’s not the portal or the network … it’s the facilitation in response to a piece in Global Logistics & Supply Chain Strategies, now on supply chain brain, that asked if supplier portals were so great, then what went wrong?

The article concluded, somewhat correct, that most suppliers who originally embraced the “portals” pushed back because they quickly realized that a “portal” offered little value and was just another way for a buyer to boost a discount. But more accurately, it turned out to be yet another system they had to access to receive orders and send invoices in a buyer’s own custom format, and instead of having to deal with a common XML or EDI format, they now had to deal with dozens. It was an amplified nightmare, even more so when they not only had to deal with a different portal for each customer, but multiple instances of each customer’s portal as early portals didn’t even have the decency to provide suppliers with centralized access to their customer requests — they had to log in separately to check the status of every customer!

The article also claimed that the survivors have evolved into networks with real value, which SI questioned, and still questions, as many networks were just searchable supplier directories with the ability to send electronic communications, and did not really enable any value for the supplier. They would have to enter their profiles in multiple networks, hope to get discovered, check and answer queries in each network and then, when selected for a contract award or PO, they would have to … you guessed it … use the portal associated with whatever Sourcing or Procurement system the buying organization used to submit the signed contract or order acknowledgement, submit the invoice, and generally interact with the buying organization.

So why are we bringing the subject up again? Because marketplaces and networks are on the rise again. With respect to marketplaces, we’re not sure if it’s because a number of the instigators see the recent M&A frenzy as an opportunity to fulfill a need and are thus trying to bring marketplaces back or if there are actually silent screams from pending customers that a select few hear. But in the case of networks, it seems that all the S2P players either believe that they need a network to compete with Ariba or that it will make their platform a lot more valuable.

We don’t agree with either. Marketplaces didn’t really work before, so there’s no reason to think that they’ll work now if nothing changes. And we don’t see anything changing. And another network doesn’t add value just by its existence as it’s just another copy of the half dozen that came before it.

If you’re going to build another marketplace or network, please, please, please remember the following:

• no one cares about a marketplace or a network anymore, they care about doing business
• the platform needs to make the supplier’s life easier — it should be less work to communicate, interact, and process e-documents
• the platform should be differentiated and probably industry focussed — not another generic be-all end-all consumer-like marketplace (that’s what Amazon is for, right)

Because another copy-cat platform is just going to follow it’s brethren to the bit-bucket. That’s just the reality.