History

The Dawn of the Elance Economy
In May 1998, Professor Thomas W. Malone and Robert J. Laubacher published an article in the Harvard Business Review titled, "The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy." This landmark article spurred much discussion in the academic and business press. Its core proposition was that "the devolution of large, permanent corporations into flexible, temporary networks of individuals" was already underway.

This trend was being driven by Internet-related technologies that lower business-to-business transaction costs. The lower transaction costs enabled by personal computing and electronic networks change the "economic equation." This change reduces the value of centralized decision making, diminishes the economics of conglomeration and encourages companies to outsource a wider variety of business functions—especially specialized functions that are peripheral to a company's core competencies.

The authors went on to say that while "no one can yet say exactly how important or widespread this new form of business organization will become, but judging from the current signs, it is not inconceivable that it could define work in the twenty-first century."

The Birth of Elance, Inc.
Inspired by this vision, Elance's founders began planning the infrastructure required to support the "E-lance Economy." They realized that the biggest impact of this vision would be felt in the services industry—because of its large share of the world economy, its high outsource-able quotient and the substantial inefficiencies found in today's services supply chain.

Elance saw the need for technologies and solutions that made virtual work possible and improves the way businesses buy and manage services.

Elance for Small and Medium Businesses.
Since its debut, Elance has evolved into the world's leading project-based marketplace and workspace, helping tens of thousands of small and medium businesses outsource to service providers in a wide variety of categories—including graphic design, web design, software development, engineering, writing, translation and market research.

Elance for Enterprises.
In 2002, Elance brought its services vision to enterprise customers with the industry's first comprehensive solution for Services and Contractor Management. Elance's solution, designed to streamline and automate the process of finding, buying and managing services, was quickly adopted by forward-thinking companies including American Express, BP, FedEx, GE, Motorola and other leading companies.

Today, Elance is the most widely used application for Services and Contractor Management. More than 200,000 employees are using Elance to find, buy, manage and pay external services and contractors from more than 2,000 suppliers across 50+ services categories, including information technology, consulting, contract and temporary labor, marketing, print, human resources, engineering, maintenance and facilities.

In 2006, after significant accomplishments including the milestone of over $7 billion in services spend actively managed by Elance customers across multiple service categories from suppliers including Accenture, BearingPoint, Cognizant, Deloitte, Infosys, IBM, Keane, Oracle, Tata, Wipro and others, Elance sold its Enterprise business unit to Click Commerce (NASDAQ: CKCM).