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"Everyday Outsourcing Center" now enables small- and mid-size businesses to subcontract different kinds of professional services projects
Sunnyvale, CA – May 17, 2004 — Elance Online (www.elanceonline.com) today launched the "Everyday Outsourcing Center," an extension of the world's largest services marketplace to provide diverse businesses a single destination for qualified professional assistance. The move is intended to help small- and mid-size businesses take advantage of the benefits of outsourcing — by providing quick, cost-effective solutions to almost any problem.
The "Everyday Outsourcing Center" is built on top of an already successful services marketplace, which has served as a hub for buyers and sellers of professional services (e.g., design & multimedia, sales & marketing, software & technology and web design & development projects) since its inception in 1998. With this launch, several improvements have been made to bring the benefits of outsourcing to the widest set of businesses to date. The results include:
By simplifying the sign-up process and making it easier for sellers to participate in the marketplace (e.g., launching a new free listing service), the "Everyday Outsourcing Center" will dramatically increase its seller base from the current level of approximately 10,000 professionals. This will create an even more comprehensive selection of service providers and provide buyers with a high degree of confidence that they will find the right expertise for any project.
Easy Ability to Find and Evaluate Experts Worldwide
By optimizing its search capabilities to sort on a complete set of service attributes (e.g., credentials, feedback ratings and location), Elance Online will provide buyers with robust tools to evaluate prospective sellers on more than just a basic business description. The result is a simple, scientific process for choosing qualified local or international candidates — for maximum efficiency and optimal pricing.
Simple Buying Experience for Outsourced Work
By adding new proposal filters (e.g., location), seller contact information and "Invite-to-Bid" functionality to an already established platform, Elance Online has made it even easier for buyers to solicit and evaluate proposals from multiple providers simultaneously. Prior to engagement, buyers will now be able to build a relationship with prospective sellers and effectively compare and contrast each before agreeing to project terms. The result is a simple buying experience that allows outsourcing novices to find and purchase the expertise they need from someone they trust.
"Outsourcing has gotten a bad rap being associated with large businesses sending jobs overseas, but small- to medium-size companies have always leveraged professionals outside their organizations to more cost-effectively and efficiently get critical projects done," said Christa Degnan, research director at the Aberdeen Group. "The new features of Elance's marketplace bring the outsourced project and supplier visibility and flexibility needed to serve small- and mid-size businesses, firms who can least afford to make expensive mistakes when bringing their products and services to market."
"Many businesses are under the misconception that outsourcing is off limits to anyone but the world's largest corporations because the process is too complex," said Raul Mujica, Vice President of Elance Online. "But this simply isn't true anymore. The Everyday Outsourcing Center has been developed to allow anyone to outsource almost any kind of project — whether you are a busy professional in an established company or an entrepreneur just starting out. It's free to try, simple to use, and a perfect tool for anyone who has more to do than time in the day."
According to Internet traffic-monitoring service, Alexa, Elance Online is the Web's most-visited site for consulting services, and one of the top 1,000 most-visited sites in the world. Elance Online also is Reliability Certified by the Better Business Bureau and received the "Best of the Web" award from Forbes in 2003.
For professionals interested in selling their services to the 100,000-plus potential buyers who arrive at Elance Online each week, four membership packages are now available, including a free listing offering. You can choose from the Select Professional Package, Professional Package, Enhanced Listing or Courtesy Listing - allowing you to choose the right set of marketing support for your business. For more information about becoming a member of the Elance Online seller network, go to www.elance.com/sell.
About Elance, Inc.
Elance is the leading provider of software solutions for Services Procurement and Management (SPM) that improve the way organizations buy and manage services – one of the largest components of corporate spending. With the Elance SPM 4 application suite, large organizations can gain visibility into services spend and performance, establish and control enterprise processes, and achieve 10-20% hard cost savings across a broad range of external service categories. For small- and medium-sized businesses, Elance provides the Elance Online services marketplace, the leading web-based project marketplace that connects businesses with a global pool of high-quality professionals. For more information on Elance, please call 650-316-7500 or visit www.elance.com.
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Elance, Elance SPM 4 and Elance Online are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elance, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
