By Dr Eugene Bojé, Eunique’s owner practitioner, who qualified at the University of Stellenbosch in 1999 and went on to gain a Masters’ degree in cosmetic dentistry at the University of Warwick. He’s one of a group of UK dentists with full membership of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry.
Marketplaces have become the beating heart of the digital economy. In the consumer world, Amazon, Booking.com and Uber have normalised the idea that convenience, transparency, and choice should be available at the swipe of a screen. Yet what’s happening beneath the radar is even more transformative – the rise of business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces that are quietly redrawing how entire industries source, procure, and allocate resources.
For years, B2B transactions lagged consumer platforms. Procurement often meant opaque pricing, fragmented supply chains, and layers of intermediaries. Today, business leaders are asking a simple question – if I can compare hotel rooms, delivery slots, or rides in seconds, why can’t I do the same when sourcing raw materials, equipment, or even staffing cover?
Two factors have accelerated this shift in expectation. First, businesses increasingly demand real- time agility in volatile markets. Second, digital-native decision-makers are moving into leadership roles and bringing consumer-grade expectations into B2B processes. The result is a situation where marketplace models, once confined to retail, are becoming central to how companies operate. The true power of marketplaces lies not in transactions but in information. By aggregating suppliers, standardising data, and surfacing peer-driven feedback, platforms reduce friction in decision-making. They convert uncertainty into clarity.
In B2B contexts, this is especially valuable. A procurement manager choosing between suppliers, a practice manager filling a clinical rota, or a CFO reviewing spend patterns all benefit from marketplaces that provide transparency on availability, price, quality, and performance in one place.
Information becomes a form of currency – enabling faster, more confident, and more defensible choices.
Healthcare offers a great example of this evolution. Dentistry, facing workforce shortages and rising demand, has historically relied on traditional locum agencies characterised by slow processes and opaque fees. Into this gap has stepped Airlocum – a digital staffing marketplace described as the
“Uber of dental locuming.”
With over 1,300 practices onboard, Airlocum has reframed locum staffing as a marketplace problem rather than an agency one. Practices gain immediate visibility of available clinicians, transparent pricing, and the ability to book cover in under 15 minutes. Clinicians, in turn, access more autonomy and control over their working patterns.
The numbers tell the story. Practices using Airlocum report 94% success rates in emergency rebookings, a 40% reduction in booking times, and cost savings of up to 39% compared to traditional agencies. More than 9,500 bookings were processed in the first half of 2025 alone. These are not
marginal improvements but structural shifts in how an entire profession organises itself.
The lesson extends well beyond dentistry. Airlocum demonstrates how B2B marketplaces can remove the need for traditional recruitment agencies, solve sector-wide inefficiencies, and reallocate time back to practices for more important task.
Unlike consumer platforms, B2B marketplaces must contend with higher stakes, longer-term relationships, and more complex compliance requirements. Procurement is rarely just about price – it’s about reliability, integration with existing systems, audit trails and strategic alignment.
That’s why successful B2B marketplaces go beyond simple matching. They embed themselves in workflows, integrate with enterprise software, and provide governance features such as digital contracts, compliance checks, and real-time reporting. Airlocum, for example, doesn’t just match
practices with locums; it creates a digital paper trail, ensures verification, and integrates into group- level oversight for multi-site operators.
The winners in this space will be those that understand that in B2B, trust is as important as transparency. Platforms must not deliver on ‘seen’ promises but also create confidence that those options meet regulatory, operational, and strategic needs.
For businesses, the adoption of marketplace models brings far-reaching benefits. They enable organisations to operate with greater agility, allowing them to pivot quickly in the face of disruption – whether that comes from a supply chain breakdown or a sudden staffing shortfall. Transaction
costs are lowered as intermediaries are removed, processes are automated, and time-to-contract is significantly reduced. Resilience is also strengthened by the ability to access a more diverse supplier base, supported by real-time visibility of available options. At the same time, these models generate valuable strategic insight, with data-rich reporting that informs long-term workforce planning, supplier strategies, and financial forecasting.
Taken together, these benefits explain why B2B marketplaces are projected to outpace consumer platforms in growth over the next decade.
The rise of B2B marketplaces is not a passing trend but a structural change in how organisations access resources. Once businesses have experienced real-time comparison, transparent pricing, and integrated oversight, the idea of returning to opaque phone calls or static supplier lists feels archaic.
The “Uberisation” of services, once a consumer phenomenon, is now becoming the template for B2B. Whether it’s securing dental locum cover, sourcing industrial parts, or booking logistics providers, marketplaces are creating an expectation that information should flow freely, decisions
should be fast, and value should be shared fairly.
The bigger picture is this – marketplaces are not just digitising transactions, they are democratising access to information. In today’s fast-paced business world, which is fueled by uncertainty and speed, that may prove to be their most valuable contribution.
