[Opinion piece] Sourcing skills: how to get the most out of marketplaces in 2025

Disclaimer: this article is a translation from the original french piece published by Décision Achats.

Marketplaces—platforms that connect companies with service providers—are clearly on the rise in Professional Services Procurement. And for good reason: they provide access to vast pools of skills, even in highly specialized domains.

Widely adopted by Procurement departments, marketplaces already represented more than €2 billion in revenue in France in 2023 (BRAPI barometer), and that growth clearly continued in 2024.

But to fully benefit from marketplaces, you need a real strategy. Knowing how to identify the right platform(s), partnering with the right experts, and unlocking their full potential can make a decisive difference. Here are best practices to leverage these solutions and optimize your skills sourcing in 2025.

View marketplaces as an agile extension of your supplier panel

Many companies still structure their supplier search around restricted panels—typically a few dozen up to a hundred carefully selected vendors. While this ensures control and continuity, it limits access to the broader market.

In IT, for example, France counts nearly 15,000 IT services firms (ESN) of all sizes. Sticking to a rigid panel means potentially missing many high-performing or innovative providers.

The challenge is that diversifying a panel is expensive. Our observations show onboarding a supplier costs on average €4,000–€5,000 per year for Procurement (contract drafting, regulatory compliance, administrative follow-up, etc.).

This is where marketplaces come in: by complementing traditional panels, they let companies access a much broader market without increasing fixed costs.

Use marketplaces to optimize your supplier panel

Marketplaces are a strategic lever to diversify and energize your supplier base. The panel covers complex needs and structured projects with a limited number of strategic players for long-term, simplified management. Marketplaces add agility for more targeted needs.

They open access to under-represented providers in large-company panels:

• Freelancers, offering sharp expertise and valuable flexibility for technical or complex projects;

• Small IT firms, often excluded from panels yet known for responsiveness, commitment, and competitiveness.

Marketplaces also facilitate competition and exploration of new solutions. By probing the market, they can surface tier-2 or tier-3 providers who, through performance, can progressively join tier-1.

This approach fosters intelligent renewal of your supplier portfolio while maintaining high quality and competitiveness.

Bet on a small number of carefully selected marketplaces

Rather than spreading efforts across many platforms, focus on a few that match your needs. You don’t onboard a platform like you onboard a company, and working with too many platforms undermines consolidation effects that depend on centralization and volume.

Ideally, pick one to three platforms able to cover:

• Varied skills: IT, Finance, Marketing, CSR, and more;

• Diverse provider profiles: freelancers, consulting firms, agencies, engineering offices, creative studios;

• A wide geographic scope: local providers plus nearshore/offshore pools to maximize flexibility.

Coverage isn’t everything. Quality of support is crucial—a winning combination of human expertise and technology. A proactive team to support projects, structure sourcing strategy, and animate a large supplier community is a real asset. Paired with advanced technologies like AI and semantic analysis, it enables fast, accurate matching between needs and skills.

This is where the most innovative marketplaces stand out, offering triple-sourcing:

• Spontaneous applications enriching the talent pool;

• Proactive sourcing led by experts maintaining strong relationships with the community;

• AI-powered matching for speed and relevance in shortlisting.

Turn your marketplaces into strategic partners

A high-performing marketplace is not just a tool—it’s an evolving ecosystem that continuously adapts to client needs. That adaptation is only possible through close, transparent communication between Procurement and the dedicated Account Manager.

B2B platforms are nothing like B2C marketplaces: the partnership must be jointly steered.

Regularly share strategic objectives, priorities, and feedback. Medium- to long-term ambitions, specific needs, desired adjustments—continuous improvement is an opportunity for the marketplace to adapt and evolve its offer to meet real expectations.

This collaboration transforms the marketplace into an agile, tailored instrument capable of supporting strategic transformations, optimizing Procurement, and delivering fast, relevant responses to shifting market challenges.

Embed marketplaces into your Responsible Procurement policy

With CSR criteria gaining importance in Procurement strategies, marketplaces can play a decisive role in surfacing high-impact suppliers. Providers with active social or environmental commitments are still under-represented in panels and often lack the scale of traditional players.

Some marketplaces now include advanced features to identify providers that meet specific impact and sustainability criteria—for example, those with recognized certifications or labels. This makes it easier to find suppliers engaged in concrete, measurable CSR actions. By integrating these features and criteria into responsible-procurement policies, marketplaces become strategic levers to align sourcing with sustainable impact.

Bottom line: in 2025, marketplaces are indispensable allies for Procurement, offering both agility and performance. By fully tapping their potential, companies can turn sourcing into a true engine of competitiveness, innovation, and even positive impact.

Disclaimer: this article is a translation from the original french piece published by Décision Achats.