Elance

Oslo, Norway

Elance is a global platform for online outsourcing. Contracting entities may engage independent freelance professionals and use online tools to coordinate teams and projects worldwide. Independent Contractor put online profiles and portfolios to give bids for jobs from, collaborate with their clients via the website of Elance and also get their payment on the platform. Largest competitor in the online outsourcing are freelancer.com, oDesk, as well as in Europe twago.

Background

The founder of Elance were from a Harvard Business Review article from 1998 titled "The Dawn of the E- Lance Economy " (such as: the advent of the e- lance economy ) inspired the founding of the company. They saw the need for a technology that made ​​it possible to support virtual work. Thus, the first version of the website was launched in 1999. Two years later, an Elance provider a management system for contractors and third party services for large enterprises. In 2006 Elance sold its enterprise software division and began the development of the current network-based platform for online work. As of February 2012 Elance registered approximately 140,000 companies and 1.4 million contractors will be used, which have so far taken together more than 500 million U.S. $.

Elance

Client

Companies can use Elance ' website in order to advertise jobs, search for contractors and obtain bids. You can contractor who compare themselves to apply for the job by look at their qualifications, previously completed jobs, reviews, portfolio and the results of ability tests. Once a contractor is selected, the entire communication, file sharing, and payment will be handled directly between two parties via the online workspace of Elance. For hours based jobs are automatically time cards ( timesheets ) are created and Elance ' optional WorkView instrument provides an official record of work completed. For project- based jobs milestones are set to subdivide the project and to get an accurate overview of the progress. The payments are held in trust retained by Elance and paid only once a landmark and thus an intermediate goal has been achieved and confirmed. If a contractor offers a client an hourly rate or a fixed price, Elance automatically translates add a service fee of between 6.75% and 8.75 %. After Elance receives payment for invoiced work performance by the customer, the fee is deducted and the balance credited to the account of the contractor.

Contractor

Professional Freelancer can make the site from Elance Browse for possible jobs, looking for clients, to bid for jobs and then work together via the online workspace. There messages are exchanged with the client and uploaded data files. Each contractor is an individual profile, which previously completed jobs and their reviews, a portfolio and skills as well as background information on Education. This information can be checked by any prospective client. Registered users can monthly up to 15 bids for jobs product free of charge, while paid memberships allow additional bids. The payment for completed work is guaranteed for both hourly based and for project-based work, if it the system of Elance was used. A survey of contractors from the year 2011 showed that among 36% of respondents Elance was the only source of income. Furthermore, reported 69 %, at least to possess a bachelor 's degree. The contractor may from the same country as the customer come ( Onshoring ) or come from abroad ( offshoring ).

Skills

IT jobs such as web - and app programming and development contribute the vast majority (59%) to Elance ' revenue, followed by creative jobs ( 24% ), marketing (7%) and operational jobs ( 7%). A profusion of jobs for writers and graphic designers. Elance has a list of the 100 most sought-after skills and in 2011 stood PHP programming, Wordpress programming, article writing, graphic design and HTML programming at the top of the list. Detailed information, including the global figures on job growth and earnings in the most sought-after skills, Elance provides on its website.

Awards and Recognition

Elance is cited as an example of the resulting pattern of informal workplace communication, the use of instruments of social media and cloud-based applications in order to increase productivity. Elance also responds to the increasingly liquid job market by facilitating direct contact between contractors with specific skills and clients with specific needs. The losses and the effort in finding skilled workers and thus reduce the economic benefits from it altogether. The fact that companies are increasingly keen to engage project-based staff, rather than employ traditional full-time, freelance sites like Elance are becoming increasingly important. Entrepreneur support the trend since their personnel spending is reduced, while workers will benefit from greater job security because they are working for several employers. Project-based appointments also allow smaller companies access to highly trained professionals at a significantly lower price compared to permanent employees. In 2009 Elance 100 was selected as one of CNET's Webware, an award which recognizes products and services that embody the ideals of Web 2.0 collaboration and cloud computing.