Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Charue-Duboc Florence *
Doumit Farah *
* Centre de recherche en gestion, CRG-i3
Résumé :
Le marché numérique interentreprises (B2B) montre aujourd'hui des signes de développement
remarquables. En effet, de nombreuses entreprises créent leurs propres plateformes pour soutenir
l'économie du partage. Cet article vise à explorer l’émergence d'une plateforme B2B dans le
secteur de l'énergie et à questionner sa contribution à la durabilité. Il met également en lumière les
limites de cet outil digital.
Mots-clés :
plateformes numériques, économie du partage, modèle circulaire, équipements énergétiques.
1. Introduction
Digital technology have been identified as a mean to reach a circular economy. In fact, business
to business sharing digital platforms not only represent a growth opportunity for companies but
also a mean to achieve sustainability. These internal marketplaces create new business models. On
the one hand they aim to optimize the purchasing and inventory processes, produce economies of
scale, revenue streams and reduce the direct cost of spare parts. On the other hand, the sharing
approach puts forward circular economy business models such as reusing, refurbishing,
redistributing and reselling products. By doing so, a product’s lifetime is extended and intensified.
Therefore, fewer products which serve for the same objective have to be manufactured, and less
resources are then used.
This is why the study of these new B2B market platform seems very appealing to be investigated
particularly in the energy equipment. In fact, attention to issues related to idle stocks of assets and
equipment used in various types of energy production, is growing in the public debates. Therefore
companies are questioning the reuse of industrial assets and the positive externalities of sharing
business.
This paper delve into the case of a leading energy company who innovated its business model by
developing a digital platform to support a sharing economy. It aims to explore the emergence
process of this B2B platform and investigate its links to sustainability. It also highlights the
obstacles to the deployment of this digital platform.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical background mobilized.
Section 3 describes the methodology, including how data was collected. Section 4 presents the
first findings on the emergence of the digital platform, its specificities, characteristics and limits.
Section 5 presents a preliminary discussion and conclusions.
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Circular economy and digital technology
In the field of energy, the question surrounding the dismantling of nuclear power plants, their "end
of life" management and the costs associated with it has taken an important place in the public
debates. It brings to the forefront issues regarding the assets used in various types of energy
production such as photovoltaic panels and wind turbines (Chowdhury et al., 2020; Liu et al.,
2019). The circular economy approach may be relevant to tackle such issues. Authors highlight
that the circular economy principles inspire the advancement of promising solutions to deal with
resources constraints (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Linder & Williander, 2015; Saidani et al., 2019).
It not only strives to optimize their use by increasing and intensifying their period of utilization,
but also to find adequate strategies to deal with component’s end of life (Bocken et al., 2016).
While, circular economy approaches have been mainly developed for raw material, resources and
simple products (Nußholz, 2017), these approaches could be extended to equipment. In fact, the
equipment that is used in the production process of energy for instance is less considered in the
literature.
The objectives of circular economy approaches seem to be clear and many praise its power to reach
the goals of Sustainable Development (Linder & Williander, 2015; Saidani et al., 2019). However,
what is less apparent are the means to achieve them (Corpakis, 2019). One way to boost such
transition is digital technology (Pagoropoulos, 2017) coupled with adequate business models (de
Jesus & Mendonça, 2018). For instance, various studies draw the attention on the role the Internet
of Things, 3D printing, big data and analytics have in facilitating the circular economy
implementation. Thus, bringing more interest on how these digital technologies of the fourth
industrial revolution can support a shift towards circular economy (Bressanelli et al., 2018;
Corpakis, 2019; Despeisse et al., 2017). Some authors explain that digitalization can help put in
place some of the strategies developed by N.Bocken (2016) (Antikainen et al., 2018). The first
strategy aim to slow down the introduction of resources to the system by extending and
intensifying the utilization period of a product. It can be done through repair, maintenance and
remanufacturing activities. The second strategy seeks to close the resources flow by putting
recycling activities forward, as well as industrial symbiosis and synergies. The final strategy strive
to narrow the resources flow by using fewer raw materials and resources per product.
Prior to the interviews, two interview guides were designed. The first guide was addressed to the
project manager, business developer and supporter of the platform and intended to obtain a more
in-depth understanding of the history and the process of emergence, its functioning, its business
model and the challenges faced by the team. The second guide was addressed to users to gain
insights about the context in which they discovered the platform, the reason and advantages, the
use phase, the barriers they encountered and their suggestions. The interviews lasted between 30
and 60 min. They were conducted via Visio conference and were all audio-recorded and
transcribed.
4. Preliminary results
4.1. History of the digital platform’s development
4.2.2. Features
The digital platform has four main features :
a. Sharing stocks: Product’s are displayed with information such as pictures, specs and
references
b. Finding and buying parts easily: Operational effectiveness is an objective set up by the
developers. The platform aims to facilitate the access to many business units’ inventory. In
the event of a breakdown, a buyer can quickly find a spare part and be delivered in shorter
delays than traditional suppliers.
c. Analyzing stocks with an addition feature named “Analytics”: It provides a vision of the
stock’s allocation and offer a guide to better manage it by capturing and analyzing the
stocks and their consumption.
d. Discussing with the community: the platform aims to create solidarity around the common
good by displaying the inventories in a common collaborative e-market place. The
objective is to federate the operational purchasing and maintenance between the different
business units. The discussion section can be used by users to post which parts they are
looking for. That's also where information about the digital patform newest features and
the team's upcoming webinars are displayed.
60000 57659
50000
38318
40000
34173
30000
20677
20000
10000
4132
101
0
Electrical Mechanical Renewable Industrial Gas value Facilities other
and air equipment and Power sites and raw chain solutions and
equipment and services Train materials services
Equipment
150000
100000
50000
308 1 6 58 467
0
Like New Second Hand Refurbished Overhauled Unused Not specified
project
surplus
4.3. Limits
As depicted in the table 5, the use of the platform over the period 2018-2021 grew significantly in
terms of number of created accounts internally in the company. The accounts created mainly
concerns one of the four global business units of the company : Thermal and Supply. It somehow
succeeded in engaging several entities by referencing a large number of products. However, the
number of transaction realized is still modest.
Table 5 Number of referenced products and users over the period 2018-2021
2018 2019 2020 2021
Number of accounts
created 0 1 000 3 500 4 330
Number of referenced
products 0 2 500 110 000 219 000
The objective of this platform is to centralize the company’s stock. This goes against the dynamics
of the organization evolution who aims to give more autonomy to the different business units. In
fact this digital platform links the different business units’ stock and implies more collaboration.
Some users confessed the difficulties they had after finalizing a transaction to handle the
administrative process and logistics of delivery from the seller to his entity. In addition to that, this
digital platform creates a sort of collective responsibility, where it is hard to define who is
responsible for the product presented on the platform. Another issue related to the product’s
quality, guarantee and insurance was therefore highlighted by the users. According to them it is
hard to evaluate the actual condition of a product on the platform (even if pictures are sometimes
displayed). Many confirmed their reluctance to buy a product with no insurance purchase contract.
Also, the prices constituted another limit, preventing some users to proceed with a transaction. On
the one hand, they were not convinced by the price set by some seller to like-new products,
expecting it should be lower. On the other hand, they estimated that the cost is not appealing
enough compared to a brand new product. Finally, another limit that can be associated to this
digital platform is that the gains linked to it are somewhat unclear. For certain users, the risk taken
when purchasing a product on the platform is far more important that the economic or
environmental gains they can claim; even if the delivery time is shorter.