How to Win in an AI-Driven Marketplace Economy—Top Lessons from 2025

Insights, best practices, and tactics to help you thrive in 2026

As we head into 2026, one thing is clear: the way businesses find, buy, and manage, technology has permanently changed.

Throughout 2025, AppDirect published dozens of deep-dive articles exploring how leading technology companies, advisors, and marketplace operators are responding to this shift—from modernizing marketplace experiences and expanding routes to market, to rethinking ecosystem strategy and partner enablement.

Together, these insights reveal a clear pattern: the companies that will win in 2026 are the ones laying the groundwork now—by simplifying buying experiences, scaling ecosystems intentionally, and meeting customers where they already want to transact.

In this blog, we’ve curated the most impactful ideas, frameworks, and tactics from AppDirect’s top-performing blogs of 2025—and reframed them through a forward-looking lens to help you plan for what’s next.

1. Create modern, buyer-centric marketplace experiences

In 2026, marketplaces won’t compete on breadth alone. They’ll compete on the experience and value they create for customers.

Buyers increasingly expect B2C-level ease in B2B environments—fast discovery, curated offerings, and seamless transactions that don’t introduce operational complexity behind the scenes. Throughout 2025, our research and customer stories consistently showed that marketplace leaders are prioritizing experience design as a growth lever, not a nice-to-have.

The blogs in this bundle explore how top companies are modernizing their marketplaces by combining composable commerce, curated catalogs, and strong vendor governance—so they can increase relevance and conversion without sacrificing control or scalability.

Winning at Scale: Practical Tactics to Grow and Differentiate Your Marketplace

Marketplace growth isn't just about more products—it's about the right products, delivered seamlessly. Clients want more choice, flexibility, and relevant offers—but without complexity. With millennials making up 51% of B2B buyers, digital-first catalog expansion is mission-critical. In this blog, see how leaders like ACP Group drive both engagement and revenue with curated, well-integrated offerings.

Discover proven tactics for market differentiation, cross-selling, and partner success. And if you’re an advisor, learn how to help customers grow smarter, not just bigger, by guiding strategic marketplace expansion and simplifying complex integrations (like Microsoft).
Get actionable advice in our latest blog.

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How White-Labeled Storefronts Can Become Your Most Powerful Customer Engagement Tool

80% of B2B buyers now expect seamless B2C-style digital buying experience, with unified, branded platforms as their top choice. That’s why it’s more critical than ever for partner ecosystems—technology advisors, MSPs, channel partners, and more—to leverage digital storefronts that showcase solutions front and center, in the way customers want to buy.

White-labeled storefronts let advisors and channel partners launch marketplaces fast—helping you capture leads and deliver standout engagement. They:

• Empower partners to sell your full portfolio under their own brand

• Deliver the unified, self-serve experience buyers crave

• Capture more leads and accelerate sales cycles

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How to Create a Better Marketplace Experience with Composable Commerce

Your marketplace won’t thrive by selling the same experience everyone else does. With changing buyer needs, personalization is no longer optional—it’s the competitive edge that composable commerce delivers by putting you in control of every customer interaction.

Based on a new white paper, this blog dives into how composable commerce helps marketplace operators:

• Deliver bespoke omnichannel experiences with headless APIs

• Automate complex workflows using Extensions UI and FaaS

• Boost customer engagement and partner loyalty by personalizing every touchpoint

• Future-proof your business with modular, API-driven architecture

For any company building or operating a marketplace, this deep dive offers actionable steps to drive growth, agility, and operational efficiency—without sacrificing platform stability.

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How to Choose a B2B Marketplace Platform—The Top Forrester Criteria, and How AppDirect Measures Up

What makes a B2B marketplace provider great? And what are the top factors you should consider when choosing a marketplace platform?

With 80% of B2B sales going digital by the end of this year, this is an important question for every business. In this blog, we dive into insights from The Forrester Wave™ Marketplace Development Platform, Q4 2024—The Nine Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up.

Get detailed insights into:

• What’s fueling today’s rapid marketplace platform growth

• What to look for in a marketplace platform

• Why the Forrester rating matters

• How AppDirect stacked up in the report

• Exclusive access to the Forrester report

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2. Expand your ecosystem and routes to market

Scaling your business in today’s market is a discipline that blends finding the right routes to market, building an optimal market presence with rigorous product and catalog readiness, and partner enablement. These articles offer best practices for building your ecosystem and optimizing your sales channels.

Grow Your Revenues Through New Routes to Market

Selling into the SMB market can be tricky—but with the right strategies, it’s also filled with opportunity. This blog breaks down four proven routes to market to help advisors and providers alike accelerate SMB deal velocity. Discover actionable tactics to overcome common SMB buying challenges and position your offerings where SMBs prefer to shop—via trusted marketplaces and curated product bundles.

Get practical insights on how to build trusted relationships, expand your influence, and become the go-to partner SMBs rely on.

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How to Build a Thriving Marketplace Ecosystem: Lessons from Top Companies

This blog focused on actionable strategies for optimizing marketplace ecosystems. It lays out a practical path for moving from a simple listing to a commerce-ready marketplace, emphasizing the need for a clear business case, an MVP approach, and selective, commerce-ready catalog curation. It emphasizes the need for cross‑functional alignment (sales, ops, legal, partner management) and recommends concrete governance points — rules of engagement, billing flows and phased integrations — to limit risk while enabling iterative growth.

See how top companies like PrismHR, Workday, and Archer transform their marketplace ecosystems for growth. Learn best practices, overcome challenges, and leverage lifecycle management for measurable ROI.

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Scale & Optimize your Channel Sales: How a Streamlined Marketplace Strategy Fuels Growth

90% of global businesses are now prioritizing partner experience, according to Forrester—and for good reason. Omnichannel expectations are raising the bar for effective channel management. Companies with the best omnichannel experiences retain 89% of customers—those with weak ones keep only 33%. Retaining and empowering resellers is mission-critical. Discover how a streamlined marketplace can strengthen loyalty and fuel ecosystem growth.

Don’t let channel friction slow you down. See new approaches in this blog.

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3. Fast-track your AI journey to solve real business problems

AI has moved beyond being a novelty and it’s time to prove its value. In this series you’ll find use cases that deliver measurable outcomes quickly and emphasize secure, human-oriented, purpose‑built agents over generic, unsanctioned tools.

 

The 4 Keys of AI Transformation—A Blueprint for AI-Driven IT

AI transformation has become the defining factor separating businesses that thrive from those that struggle.In our latest blog, discover the four essential keys to AI transformation—digital platforms, ecosystems, channels, and hubs—that work together to fuel innovation, boost efficiency, and create exceptional customer experiences.

These 4 essential keys to AI transformation will empower your business to:

• Scale and innovate rapidly with a powerful platform foundation

• Expand capabilities through vibrant partner ecosystems

• Reach customers efficiently via optimized channel strategies

• Deliver unified, AI-enhanced experiences that keep customers engaged

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Fast‑Tracking AI Value: Strategies for Immediate Impact

Stop waiting for AI results. Start generating ROI today.

The AI revolution is here, but many businesses are unsure how to gain a quick return on their investment. It's time to turn AI's potential into a profit-generating reality for your business. Access insights and a roadmap to success in this article covering:

• Key areas where AI delivers fast impact—helping you pinpoint the right opportunities.

• A practical roadmap to AI implementation—so you can start generating tangible results quickly.

Make AI a profit center today.

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How to Build Purpose‑Built AI Agents That Actually Solve Business Problems

AI is everywhere, but most businesses still face security and adoption challenges.

With 83% of employees admitting to using unsanctioned apps, shadow IT and tech sprawl put ROI and security at risk. In this blog,you’ll learn how the future of AI isn’t generic tools, but secure, purpose-built AI agents designed for real business outcomes.

In this blog, get practical strategies to make AI work for your business, and how you can guide your customers with secure, custom AI agents and stronger governance.

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Building a Human‑Oriented AI Strategy: Elevating Workplace Interactions with AI Companions

Want to future-proof your AI approach? Focus on people first. AI is reshaping business — but it's the human-AI partnership that unlocks true value. From amplifying creativity to powering smarter decisions, AI companions are transforming how we work.

As AI rapidly becomes an enterprise essential, how can businesses ensure that technology amplifies, rather than replaces, human potential? In this blog, we explore a human-centered approach to AI strategy, spotlighting how AI companions can transform workplace collaboration, creativity, and decision-making.

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Optimize Digital Experiences: Harnessing Cloud Connectivity and Colocation

Is your infrastructure AI‑ready? Learn how targeted connectivity, colocation, and cloud strategies position your business for AI growth by reducing latency, strengthening security, and improving operational agility. This blog explains how scaling digital infrastructure with colocation delivers predictable performance for latency‑sensitive and data‑heavy workloads, enables preprocessing and burst‑to‑cloud workflows, and turns infrastructure into a measurable driver of stronger customer outcomes.

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Charting the AI Cycle of Innovation—How to Navigate the Disruption and Come Out on Top

AI is transforming business faster than any previous wave of innovation—10 times faster than the first two industrial revolutions combined.

Disruption can be daunting, but history shows that while every major innovation cycle brings upheaval, it also unlocks huge opportunities for businesses who are prepared to adapt and act quickly and smartly.

How prepared is your organization to turn the rapid AI cycle of innovation into lasting competitive advantage? Nicolas Desmarais, AppDirect Chairman & CEO, described the challenge succinctly: “Lessons from the past remind us that while innovation fuels prosperity, it also demands adaptability and resilience.”

Read this blog for a breakdown of what you need to know and do to chart your AI course and come out on top.

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4. Simplify procurement with a unified lifecycle management approach

This bundle shows how unified procurement, software and hardware lifecycle controls, and proactively managed services can cut wasted spend—and surface expansion opportunities—while improving customer retention.

Managing Your Entire Tech Stack: 6 Strategies for Control, Agility, and Value

Is your technology ecosystem a patchwork of disconnected tools? Managing your entire tech stack—from SaaS and hardware to network, energy, AI, and more—requires a unified approach to increase efficiency, cut costs, improve security, and boost your tech ROI. Dive into this blog, featuring 6 essential strategies to take control and unlock value.

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Boost Revenues from Every Technology Deal with Proven Cross‑selling Techniques—A guide for advisors

As an advisor, are you leaving revenue on the table from missed cross-selling opportunities? Existing customers typically generate 72% of revenue, yet many advisors overlook the power of cross-selling across wider technology categories.

In this blog we uncover how selling to your customers across all 8 categories of the tech stack is a winning proposition that could generate 2-3X more revenues for your advisory business. From energy, communications, SaaS, and AI to security, infrastructure, managed & professional services, and hardware, see how you can guide customers through complex technology decisions.

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Add Customer Value Throughout the IT Lifecycle With End-to-end Support

Advisors influence 70% of IT deals, but for businesses, great advisors do more than just sell technology. Their real hidden value lies in the comprehensive services they add across every stage of the IT lifecycle—before, during, and after the purchase. They help streamline procurement, ensure seamless implementations, and eliminate the complexity of managing your technology stack across every stage of our IT lifecycle.

Read this blog to make sure you’re getting the most out of your relationship. It includes essential strategies to help advisors confidently advise, streamline procurement, ensure smooth deployment, and provide proactive managed support—building lasting relationships.

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Access more in-depth resources and insights

Many of the blogs referenced here were published as part of our Thrive 2025 blog series, covering topics from Thrive main stage and breakout sessions.

We’ve pulled all of the Thrive resources together for you into a Thrive25 resource page, where you can watch the keynotes and other main stage addresses. You can also access dozens of resources related to the breakout sessions, including presentations, customer marketing toolkits, sales guides, articles, and other content that can help you take your business to the next level.

Visit the Thrive25 resource page