Company: IBM, Armonk, NY
Company Description: IBM integrates technology and expertise, providing infrastructure, software (including market-leading Red Hat) and consulting services for clients as they pursue the digital transformation of the world’s mission-critical businesses.
Nomination Category: Product & Service Categories - Business Technology Solutions
Nomination Sub Category: Electronic Commerce Solution
 Nomination Title: Marlin Commerce: Modernizing IBM’s private eCommerce capabilities for growth
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the the nominated new or new-version product or service, OR written answers to the questions for this category? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
N/A
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: If this is a brand-new product, state the date on which it was released. If this is a new version of an existing product, state the date on which the update was released:
The Marlin Commerce platform went live in March 2021, when the first IBM B2C store launched. Since then, the team has onboarded many other tenants, including significantly active B2B stores and had nearly daily deployments to Production.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Describe the features, functions, and benefits of the nominated product or service (up to 350 words):
Total 350 words used.
Marlin’s predecessor was a legacy eCommerce platform based on traditional infrastructure and a tricky-to-maintain codebase, often resulting in issues such as low availability, high costs, poor performance, and ultimately, slow speed-to-market trends. The dissatisfaction was evident in the feedback from business stakeholders and from sales projections. In early 2021, the Engineering team behind Marlin took on the challenge to create a modern replacement for the platform, leveraging an open-source eCommerce platform, Vendure.io, as well as hybrid cloud capabilities from IBM Cloud. The Marlin platform is multi-tenancy enabled and currently hosts multiple stores across various business teams and customer groups. The first store piloted in Q1 2021 was to support the IBM Employee Purchase Program, a shop that allowed employees to purchase consumer products at special prices. It quickly became evident that the modernization was a success. Since then, the team has enabled seven additional stores, all operating in the same smooth and high-availability fashion that soon became known as the Marlin brand. With each new store came customized functionality to support each new B2B or B2C business case, resulting in a broadening of the capabilities of the platform that could be enabled for use across all stores, and any future ones, in the Marlin fleet. These capabilities, in addition to the classic eCommerce shopping process, have grown to include the ability to convert carts to quotes with a checkout process to match; the ability to integrate directly with procurement systems, allowing for punchout stores; an end-to-end RFQ workflow to enable the back-and-forth solicitation of goods; and the integration of various downstream systems for fulfillment. With Marlin, stakeholders can now host multiple stores on the same platform without the need for licensing or hosting costs, while mitigating the risks that come associated with legacy infrastructure. They can request customized capabilities for their business needs, and their end users are now privy to a modern and responsive UI that works across various form factors, resulting in higher satisfaction, greater revenue growth, and higher speed-to-market trends - a clear testament to the goal that the Marlin platform had set out to achieve.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Outline the market performance, critical reception, and customer satisfaction with the product or service to date. State monetary or unit sales figures to date, if possible, and how they compare to expectations or past performance. Provide links to laudatory product or service reviews. Include some customer testimonials, if applicable (up to 350 words):
Total 306 words used.
Market performance:
- The IBM Employee Purchase Program store was aimed at IBM employees, friends and family and offered hundreds of consumer products at competitive prices. The 22K+ active users placed over 2,500 orders over the period of 1 year, yielding over$1.1M in sales, with an average cart size of $493. This store was sunset in 2022 due to a change in business strategy & contractors.
- The IBM Digital Sales punchout stores dedicated to a large US client in the Health industry and hosted in SAP Ariba have enabled millions of dollars in sales every quarter in a very stable and smooth fashion (totalling over $26M to date in sales, in the past 1 year).
- IBM Global Asset Recovery Services’ Brokers & Intergeo store is crucial to their operations. It connects Brokers and WW Buyers with IBM Sellers via intelligent workflows, enabling dozens of orders every quarter which then flow to SAP for fulfillment. They sold over $1.4 M through the store in the past 8 months.
Other smaller stores have enabled around $167K to date in sales:
- The Maintenance Parts store carries over 50,000 quality parts for the maintenance of IBM products
- The Value-Add Store enables the Enhanced Support Block Hour Purchase Program to have clients engage IBM Software Support for activities outside of their regular support contract.
- Global Asset Recovery Services sells refurbished Power servers to US clients via their IBM Certified Pre-Owned Solutions store.
Recent Growth
- 1000%+ growth year-to-year between 2021 and 2022
- Average cart size went from $500 in 2021 to $92K in 2022
- 2023 sales are on the rise, with single orders as high as $11M in value.
Customer Reviews / Testimonials are available here:
https://external-awards-docs.s3.us.cloud-object-storage.appdomain.cloud/Marlin%20Clients'
Marlin’s Sales Performance report can be visualized here:
https://external-awards-docs.s3.us.cloud-object-storage.appdomain.cloud/Marlin%20Commerce%20Sales%20Performance%202021-Q1-2023.png
- You have the option to answer this final question: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 148 words used.
Vendure is an open source project leveraged by Marlin that provides B2C e-commerce functionality out of the box. Vendure did a case study on Project Marlin showcasing how Marlin leveraged Vendure to build new modern solutions for e-commerce stores at IBM. In this case study, it is highlighted how Marlin reduced costs for IBM and improved user experience by leveraging Vendure: https://www.vendure.io/case-study/ibm/
In another instance, Michael Bromley, the CTO at Vendure was asked about his favorite use case of Vendure and mentioned Marlin as the answer. In this portion of interview, Mr. Bromley talks about our story where Marlin was looking into reducing costs and modernizing legacy platforms whereas Vendure was utilized to help in our mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oYu3H61i90&
Customer Reviews / Testimonials:
https://external-awards-docs.s3.us.cloud-object-storage.appdomain.cloud/Marlin%20Clients'
Marlin Sales Performance report:
https://external-awards-docs.s3.us.cloud-object-storage.appdomain.cloud/Marlin%20Commerce%20Sales%20Performance%202021-Q1-2023.png
| Attachments/Videos/Links: |
|---|
|
