Growing your business by letting go
👉 How bol.com grows by enabling instead of dominating their partners
For our book ‘Metasystems, how trust can change the world’, we interviewed 15 different people from very different backgrounds. We had the pleasure to speak to Sacha Buyck, country manager Belgium at Bol.com.
With 27,000 partners — and counting, bol.com is one of the biggest and fastest-growing online shopping platforms in the Benelux. We thought we might learn a few things from the way their network of partners operates.
Sacha explains how bol.com has built its ecosystem and why they are evolving from a retailer to a platform. The answer lies in bol.com’s strategy, which is to fulfil consumer’s needs as optimally as possible. As they see it, ‘the market’, aka their partners, are better placed to define the right offering at the right price. Bol.com acknowledges it can’t possibly know everything: being active in 42 different categories ranging from clothing to household appliances, it would be bold to pretend otherwise.
At the same time, the platform adds knowledge and expertise on e-commerce. Partnering creates a perfect match.
“We are an open platform,” Sacha says. “Every merchant can sign up and use it to reach ten million consumers who have an account with us. While we leave it up to them to decide what to offer and at what price, we are very strict when it comes to servicing those end customers. Consumer satisfaction is at the top of our list, so we don’t make any concessions to guarantee their satisfaction.”
“The most difficult part is to let go of control.”
However, bol.com doesn’t just wave around strict rules, it provides partners with the means to finetune their services. “We support our partners to reach the right quality standards and help them to optimize their offer, for instance by doing white spots analyses. These white spot analyses, based on search behavior of the customers, indicate product opportunities and are shared openly with all partners.
We’ve also created a partner management department that helps partners hone their business model, and gives advice on logistics and assortment. Our success is measured in three ways: turnover growth, consumer and partner satisfaction.”
“Human contact is essential in collaboration, even with 27,000 partners.”
Sacha admits building trust in such a big ecosystem isn’t easy. “You have to do what you promise. On top, we give partners the guarantee we won’t create private labels that would compete with theirs. We believe in human contact. If there is a problem, we just pick up our phone.”
SACHA’S TIPS:
- The most difficult part is not putting yourself in the centre and letting go of control. Empathy and entrepreneurship are essential for our people.
- The world is too complex to be able to manage it on your own.
- Put the consumer at the centre.
- Have a few simple but strict rules of engagement. In the case of bol.com, this is delivery performance. The bar is put as high for bol.com as for the partners.
This interview is an excerpt from the book ‘Metasystems, how trust can change the world’ by Dado Van Peteghem and Nils van Dam. Discover more via http://www.metasystemsbook.com
