Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Online Services Marketplace – Further Considerations #2

Published
by
Product Team
on July 14, 2008
in Business, Freelance, Freelancing, Innovation, Knowledge Networking, LimeExchange, Person to Person Outsourcing, Product Update, SMB, Service Providers, Small and Medium Business, Technology and outsourcing
. 1 Comment

Question & Answer, Ask, QuestionThe vision of LimeExchange is of building a focussed Knowledge Sharing & a Business Networking platform. Our vision has made us realize that for business proliferation, a greater need exists for sharing of knowledge via dedicated medium. Internet penetration has provided real time access to information and knowledge sharing, but with the amount of information getting published, figuring out forums, which share your passion and relate to your business need and has become more pertinent.

This is where a platform needs to adapt and solve to the process of Information problem solving:

  • Recognizing that an information need exists and to define that need.
  • Find the right information medium
  • Evaluating the information
  • Using and Communicating the Information

In a Knowledge for Business environment, having Information at hand as sharing of Tips, Experiences from global entrepreneurs, testimonies from subject matter experts would definitely provide valuable first hand knowledge to make an informed decision.

So, What if there was a dedicated forum to provide feedback and share global experiences, from mission critical queries on Whether setting up a captive in China was better than Outsourcing To whether choosing and Open Source Technology is better Vs a Proprietary technology for a particular business application? & What if you were able to get Industry experts to provide early market feedback or opinion-ate on your soon to be launched product, services, strategy, campaign etc, getting realtime advice should only help hone and adapt better to prevalent market needs.

Is there a need for such a medium or is Internet already crowded with such forums and now the need is for a secondary classification of information? Is this going beyond Knowledge Sharing and becoming a Knowledge Networking medium?

As James Surowiecki amply stated in his book ‘Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations’, a focussed community would benefit immensely from active participation of its users to effectively utilize the Wisdom of Crowds and provide a natural medium for access to On Demand information.

What would set a platform apart would be Information in Context and solving the Information problem process. The information need will always exist, the key is to provide a platform as the medium for context and a platform providing credibility of the Information giver as Subject Matter Expert, to easily evaluate and consume the information. This would be a natural extension of a Socio-Business networking platform to provide avenues to all its users to freely exchange thoughts, ideas & knowledge and create a Focussed Knowledge Networking platform.

We encourage all our readers and users alike to actively suggest and participate with feedback on what would be best suited for solving this challenge. We dedicate ourselves to create LimeExchange as the platform of choice for its users driven by its users.

Online Services Marketplace – Further Considerations #1

Published
by
Product Team
on July 11, 2008
in Business, Freelancing, Innovation, LimeExchange, Person to Person Outsourcing, Product Update, SMB, Service Providers, Small and Medium Business and outsourcing
. Closed

Question, OSM, Online Services MarketplaceBased on early feedback provided by 3000+ LimeExchange users, it is evident that for buyers it is difficult to select and evaluate a service provider’s skills based only on the quality of profile. In such a scenario, Buyers typically want to see experience and quality work product as a sample before making the final decision. At the same time Service Providers want an equal opportunity platform where they can literally show case their skills and expertise. Doing this as a pre-sales activity for free during selection and evaluation process becomes an additional cost burden for service providers and Freelancers, vying for this business. And Buyers remain unsure about capability, dedication and commitment of the vendors.

So what if there was an innovative way to provide the benefit of selection based on quality of work. What would be the considerations for making a decision? Would an equal competition playing field, where all units vying for the same business are demanded to work under same Scope, Cost & Schedule parameters yield an output which could help gauge quality of work?

And why would the Vendor/Service Provider be interested in making an investment? This could be huge cost consuming effort for the Vendor, given its size and the work demanded and still having put in all the effort there is always insecurity from the fact that there is still competition and evaluation before final selection. What if, the Buyer attaches a monetary incentive as fair compensation for this initial effort, would it be sufficient enough to excite the vendor?

To summarize from a Buyer perspective:

- Would it be enough to have ability to compare Apples to Apples?

And From Vendor perspective:

- Would it be enough to have an even playing field and fair compensation as cost recovery?

Given that in real life business scenario, getting a Pilot project conducted has been a proven method of evaluating the final vendor from multiple vendors. Given the level of competition, a Vendor is always looking for truly fair competition, where final selection would be based on the skills and expertize shown as a tangible output. Having a benefit from knowledge of definite recovery of cost for making this investment would further excite the vendor to do a better job.

At LimeExchange, we believe that mimicking this model to bring it online could be a natural extension of the offline business model.

We encourage all our readers and users alike to actively suggest and participate with feedback on what would be best suited for solving this challenge. We dedicate ourselves to create LimeExchange as the platform of choice for its users driven by its users.

Update: 10 Things to remember to Improve your Online Visibility & Earnings

Published
by
Pawan Agarwal
on July 7, 2008
in Freelance, Freelancing, LimeExchange, Person to Person Outsourcing, Product Update, SMB, Security, Service Providers, Small and Medium Business and outsourcing
. 1 Comment

Identity, ProfileLimeExchange understands the nuances of a highly competitive Freelance & Online Services Outsourcing market and calls out the following 10 steps from its experience and feedback, to help you differentiate yourself, gain better visibility/responses and better your chances of sharing & earning via LimeExchange:

1. Create your Detailed Profile – “Your Profile represents your online Identity“. Try and provide as much detail as possible about yourself, your experience, skills, certifications and education to help users gauge your competencies realistically.

Profile, Online portfolio

2. Profile Portfolio – Emphasis should be given in attaching a detailed portfolio of your past work, certain references, which would help increase your credibility. Invite Friends, Colleagues to create your Business Network to provide credible references.

3. Profile Image – It always helps for a online user to relate with a Photograph/Picture and put a face to a name. A Picture speaks a thousand words, so rather than using Icon’s use your profile photo and help establish a credibility to your online user name.

4. Profile Video – Very relevant to SMB’s (Small Medium Business) to showcase their office, Infrastructure and Team. Showcase any Corporate Flash Video (If published on YouTube) helps you provide any user with attractive medium information about your organization

Rating, Feedback, Profile

5. Rating & Feedback - Use Profile: ‘English Fluency’ self rating to provide a clear picture, to users who want to exchange information/services in English, and enable them to understand your communication abilities better and early and create a valued relationship. Provide references & candid feedback to ensure you serve the community and the community is enabled to serve you.

6. Relate to Categories – If you require or provide services in more than one category, then update your profile and add all relevant categories to your profile. This helps you participate in your relevant service categories.

7. Detail your Requirement/Bid – When posting a project or bidding on a project, provide as much references, relevant information to enable either party to understand each others requirement better. Try and answer the questions on What? Why? When? How? How Much? within the content of your post. Just having this information reduces the overhead communication, builds a level of confidence in one’s abilities to collaborate and enhances everyone’s experience.

8. Define Business Agreement (Terms of Engagement) – At any time during Bidding stage, try and provide as much detail on Scope of Work, Cost and Timelines. Create a Draft in LimeExchange and tailor it for every Bid to relate to the project requirement. Any Buyer of services wants to ensure first hand information about Cost & Schedule and this goes a long way in establishing trust with the Buyer.

Business Agreement, Milestone, Terms of Engagement

9. Define Milestones – Within Business Agreement or Terms of Engagement, ensure along with Bid, Milestones are clearly defined with corresponding schedule and payment terms. Again as much information to a Buyer on Cost and Schedule implications involved helps build a mutually beneficial relationship.

Business Agreement, Milestone, Terms of Engagement

10. Rely on PMB – Using ‘Private Message Board‘ ensures that users engaged in a discussion are alerted early via email, alerts about messages, responses. Your messages are kept confidential within parties involved and ensure provide the right level of trust to the Buyer & Service Provider about you.

Once engaged in an execution providing candid feedback about either party only enables the community know about the users via Live Experience and Feedback, which is much valued by one and all.

Help LimeExchange platform, Help Us Help you. Provide any feedback by leaving a comment here or write to us on support.

Is it the right time to outsource?

Published
by
Pawan Agarwal
on July 4, 2008
in Business, Innovation, SMB, Small and Medium Business and outsourcing
. 4 Comments

It has been a roller coaster year so far for the global economy, with lots of ups and downs. U.S. economy is in a perceived state of recession with a visible impact on global economy.

Global EconomyEven for developed countries, a sense of economic insecurity is also growing with rising inequality, indebtedness and the squeezing of social provisioning. Left to their own devices, markets are not delivering the desired levels of economic security, Industry economists argue. Globally, Businesses, SMBs and Entrepreneurs are facing serious challenges to show quick results, because of increasing demand for profitability and ROI. While this might be all right for established enterprises, which have proficiently waded through these turbulent economic tides, Small Medium Businesses are still plagued by trying to balance maximizing sales and revenue while achieving optimal operational efficiency. Agility and cost effectiveness are equally important for startups and SMBs and outsourcing work to global talent helps achieve both.

Fears of recession, and high economic volatility, has forced giants and big enterprises to cut costs on their IT investments, thereby resulting in direct impact on revenues of bigger outsource service providers. Whereas, SMBs use global sourcing as a key strategic tool to drive innovation and sustain growth by focusing on the core competency. Increased productivity, improved quality, flexibility and control, in addition to reduced costs are some of the benefits to global outsourcing by leveraging the maturity and expertise of service providers.

As Cliff Justice, Equaterra puts it:

You know, outsourcing – especially global outsourcing – is counter-cyclical: when the economy’s good the outsourcing business is good; when the economy is bad, the business gets actually a little bit better! So we’ve seen companies move a bit more aggressively towards outsourcing as a result of the credit crunch; companies that need to stretch their dollar more than they have are looking at how they can maintain the level of service that they have, at lower cost. So they are looking at how outsourcing can help them reduce their cost.

OutsourcingWith SMBs becoming ‘Value-Buyers‘ vs. ‘Price-Shoppers‘, Selling pure services, thriving on cost benefits, is not going to be the main driver of outsourcing, demonstrating ability to manage risk, repeat excellence in execution, increased productivity and quality in combination with faster ‘Time to Market’ would be the key to success. Innovation in terms of technology, right processes and improved service delivery models is required to get an edge over the rest.

To summarize, SMBs need to leverage the value proposition of outsourcing, and use on demand software, services and talent as key strategic tools to achieve the target agility and growth.