The B2B procurement platform Mercateo is strengthening its international presence with the foundation of its own national subsidiaries in Italy and Spain and with the Spanish and Belgian platforms going live. Companies can now network with their international branches via Mercateo in 13 European countries. Mercateo AG is therefore responding to their customers’ growing demand for new infrastructures for digital networking in the B2B environment.
More than 1.3 million business customers all over Europe are already using the procurement platform to standardise and digitalise the purchasing of indirect procurement and networking with their business partners. These mainly include major international corporations and SMEs as well as public organisations and also freelancers and associations.
“With our international platforms we enable companies to connect Mercateo to their merchandise management system European-wide as a system solution and therefore use a standardised procurement solution for their national companies,” explains Peter Ledermann, Director for Personnel and Finances at Mercateo AG. Companies can process their procurement through one creditor with a huge range and integrate electronic catalogues of contractual partners. Company business processes are not only standardised as a result but also digitalised. This helps companies to get rid of unnecessary processes, save on costs and create the freedom for strategic tasks without losing direct contact with their providers.
With the foundation of the Italian and Spanish national subsidiary, Mercateo is taking the growing demand into account . “Our country managers who are supervising and gradually developing the platforms confirm that the markets are responding positively to our offer.” Although the operational business has only just started, Mercateo is already working together with many important providers in Italy and Spain. “Our local contacts not only speak our customers, suppliers and manufacturers’ language but they also know the market and its needs. This is a major advantage for our national partners in these countries,” says Ledermann. Elisabetta Bollini is managing the Italian platform where more than three million items are available. The country manager for Mercateo Spain is Vicent Marqués. The range includes more than 875,000 items at www.mercateo.es.
Recently, the Belgian platform was also made available for all business customers. “Up until now the offer was only available to system customers with an OCI interface. In light of the huge interest we decided to open up the platform to all business customer segments,” explains Dorina von Heland, the country manager for Belgium. “Small and medium-sized enterprises can therefore also use the integrated approval process with multi-user capability for their purchasing. More than 3.4 million items are now available on the platform. The offer is initially available in Flemish, as the customer focus is currently here.”