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B2B Player, Bigboli Plans Transformation

Bigboli Ltd is a 40-year-old B2B marketplace operating display pavilions in major Indian cities. However, it recognizes the shift towards online procurement. The new CEO plans to fully transform Bigboli into an online marketplace within 1-2 years. A consulting firm has been hired to develop a roadmap for the transition, including new organizational structure, competencies, and CRM strategy as Bigboli spins off its online platform to be managed by a third party IT company. This will allow for dynamic pricing and transactions anytime online.

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452 views3 pages

B2B Player, Bigboli Plans Transformation

Bigboli Ltd is a 40-year-old B2B marketplace operating display pavilions in major Indian cities. However, it recognizes the shift towards online procurement. The new CEO plans to fully transform Bigboli into an online marketplace within 1-2 years. A consulting firm has been hired to develop a roadmap for the transition, including new organizational structure, competencies, and CRM strategy as Bigboli spins off its online platform to be managed by a third party IT company. This will allow for dynamic pricing and transactions anytime online.

Uploaded by

NitinKhare
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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B2B Player, Bigboli Plans Transformation

Bigboli Ltd. is a 40 year old leading offline marketplace company that operates as a chain
of display pavilions in major cities of India targeted mainly at businesses and organisations
for their common usage items requirements like office automation products, housekeeping
items, clothing, furnishing, sports, automobiles, books & stationary, industrial & scientific,
construction and building maintenance related items etc. Established in 1975 with corporate
office in Delhi Bigboli caters to diversified categories of business and institutional customers.

Currently, it operates through 22 display pavilions with an employee strength of 1450 which
includes staff posted at the corporate headquarter. Bigboli pavilions are like trade fair pavilions
with multiple showrooms of different product categories where buyers come, decide on the
product quantity, brand, supplier, variant etc. and pay part money as advance. The inventory
in the showrooms is for display and sample purpose only. Updated product catalogue is also
displayed on company website so that regular buyers can initiate transaction without visiting
pavilion. Once the order is placed with a specified supplier (which could be an OEM, OEM
Partner, Dealer etc.), the supplier is responsible to ensure delivery and installation as per the
committed schedule. The balance payments are paid only after the satisfactory receipt of items
at the buyer place or identified consignee/s from the buyer side. The items are thoroughly
inspected at the time of receipt by the buyer / consignee. In many case cases, the buyer uses a
third party experts to inspect the quality of items.

The nature of products handled by Bigboli is such that prices don’t change frequently.
Bigboli’s value proposition to its customers is quality goods at minimum possible price which
remain fixed a period of 4-6 months. Bigboli’s vendor specialists decide on inclusion of
products in the catalogue based on customer inputs and product specialist define the technical
parameters of the products. The product prices are negotiated by Bigboli with eligible suppliers
through a rigorous and transparent process which takes few months to conclude the final price
given a set of product specifications. Bigboli allows mostly reputed and established sellers to
participate in the supplier enlistment process. However, small or new firms can also participate
as suppliers in certain products which are mostly domain of smaller companies.
Bigboli does the periodic update of technical specifications. Prices in catalogue are modified
periodically every 4-6 months and new contracts are worked out with suppliers. Bigboli has
been able to sustain its differentiation of its value proposition and outperformed most of its
competitors in B2B space.

Its key competence has been its core team of product category specialists and supplier
management experts. The organisational structure is based on functional roles and divided into
verticals of product categories seen directly by supplier management, and product management
functions supported by human resource, finance & accounts, MIS, legal and strategy.

To project a trust based engagement, Bigboli follows a strict compliance system for its
suppliers who are required to adhere to detailed product specifications, delivery schedules and
service commitments. The supplier is required to carry out the fulfilment process within a time
window of 5-20 days which depends on the nature of the product. A random check of supplier
facilities, product tests and other possible actions are followed to assure good quality product
get transacted through Bigboli’s system. Any variance in quality specifications, delivery
commitments, service failure etc., can result in strong penalties for the suppliers. Similarly
buyers can get blacklisted in case of a payment default. However, payment defaults occur
rarely but there have been cases of delayed payments. It has built a strong network of suppliers
and regular buyers covered by comprehensive legal contracts to avoid defaults. Suppliers have
adhered to this compliance system and sustained over time.

In 2004, Rattan Sinha was inducted as CIO who championed few IT enablement projects which
include automation of supplier inclusion, e-procurement, and buyer invoicing. All these
applications’ are meant for buyer supplier transactions. There has been no IT enablement of
internal processes like HR, Finance and Accounts etc. However, in recent years Bigboli has
been recognising the shifts in procurement strategies of firms and organisations towards fully
online dynamic methods of price discovery. In the customer retail market space, players like
Amazon, Flipkart, Snap deal etc. are chasing aggressively offline retail players.

Nilesh Kant has joined early last year as CEO of the Bigboli. Kant earlier served as Chief
Marketing Officer of major online service aggregator firm. Gaurav Singh, Chief Supplier
Officer and Joseph, Chief Product Officer along with Rattan Sinha, and other Heads ( Finance,
Legal, MIS etc. report to Sagar Chander, Deputy CEO. At present there are more than twenty
product categories and each category has many subcategories and many products in each sub
category. The head of category team reports to Deputy Chief Product Officer who in turn
reports to Chief Product Officer.

Five months before, Kant has got approval from the Board to run its entire offering online
where in B2B transactions can happen any time and price can be discovered dynamically. The
buyers can buy from an online product catalogue with offered prices from suppliers, or call a
tendering process online or run a reverse auction. The supplier can change price any time. Kant
has also got go ahead to spin off a new outfit to run online B2B market place. The facility will
be operated through Managed Service Provider. Last month , a major Indian IT company
has got into partnership to develop, maintain and run Bigboli’s B2B platform along with front
end help desk for technical complaints. Kant is considering a strong CRM team to develop a
large base of its buyers and supplier and strengthen its brand. Kant also sees an opportunity to
add services to their existing product portfolio like house keeping, security, transportation,
healthcare targeted at business houses and other types of organisations.

Last week, Sukensy Consultancy has been hired to work on the roadmap ahead, human
resource strategy, new organisational structure, competency demands, resource hiring,
performance indicators in the proposed structure and detailed CRM road map. Sukensy has
been also tasked to suggest the road ahead for current offline model and resource mobility
between the two models. Looking at the massive digitisation everywhere and specifically firm
and organisations embracing digital processes for efficiency and business facilitation systems
getting more and more IT enabled and integrated, Kant is very keen to go fully online and
withdraw from offline model in 1-2 years.

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