I often ask OdeCloud’s community members what makes OdeCloud’s Netsuite service platform different from other managed service providers.

The usual response follows along these lines: OdeCloud combines the scale, breadth and depth of a Freelancing platform with the guarantee of getting our assignments done efficiently and effectively — the latter of which is normally provided by most managed service vendors.

In other words, the one thing that makes the OdeCloud model different is its ability to leverage an on-demand, “Information Technology” workforce while eliminating many of the common issues customers deal with when working with freelancers:

• Fear that the freelancer lacks a certain level of expertise and cannot deliver on their own
• Uncertainty with what exact level of expertise is needed to complete the task at hand
• The constant onboarding and provisioning of external resource

There is a tremendous opportunity for businesses — especially midsize businesses — to gain more agility by leveraging IT freelancers. According to a recent study by Mavenlink, “79% of business leaders state that leveraging contractors is a competitive advantage, and as a result, plan to increase their use of contractors in next 12 months.”

That said, effectively leveraging the on-demand workforce is a not an easy task. As the level of expertise increases within the IT domain, so will the level of complexity in vetting and orchestrating this workforce.

Just a few years ago, companies with limited internal bandwidth were constantly hiring IT freelancers to offload some menial, low-level tasks.

Nowadays, companies expect the freelancer to be an expert in solving every complex, technological challenge known to man, or they expect the freelancer to assist in constructing an improved business strategy by leveraging whatever the market deems to be the best technological opportunities currently out there.

Managed service providers play a critical role in providing cutting-edge technology services to their clients, especially for midsize businesses with limited IT budgets; but at the end of the day, it all comes down to the personnel and the technical skills they have available.

With more IT workers transitioning to freelancing, the business model of managed services and consulting firms is facing an unprecedented crisis: What happens when the majority of IT workers completely transition to the gig economy?

However, the rise of the gig economy also presents a great opportunity to overcome significant issues found on both ends of the client-freelancer relationship.

We already mentioned a few on the customer side, such as the uncertainty surrounding what level of expertise is actually needed to complete a specific task and whether the freelancer in question has the necessary level of expertise.

As for the other end of that relationship, there are a number of prominent issues that constantly plague freelancers:

• Fear of being isolated
• Fear of not being able to deliver the work on time without assistance
• Inability to efficiently scale in expertise
• Lacking the capacity to take on and deliver more complex projects

This is often where the journey stalls for most experts in traditional freelancing platforms. They have maxed-out the number of hours they could bill in a day, week or month. They are unable to keep up with the new changes in their domain of expertise. They are unwilling to take the risk of building a team that they would have to financially support until client payment comes in.

So what is next?

Well, this is exactly the question that led me to developing OdeCloud. After 2 years of freelancing, I had reached that point where I could not scale myself.

Due to my limited support network of other IT professionals (and, by extension, lack of ability to crowdsource ideas and solutions), I could no longer provide my clients with leading practices or deliver on incredibly complex jobs without having to ask for assistance.

I technically designed OdeCloud to scale myself to better service the clients I was working for at that time. The concept truly took off when 2 other NetSuite freelancers combined their expertise with mine to create a top-notch service for our clients.

Our collaboration led to more creative solutions, and we successfully developed a service bundle, delivering high-quality consulting at a lower cost to clients. Eventually, other experienced NetSuite freelancers joined our fast-growing OdeCloud community, helping us build to where we are today.

Now, if you ask what the difference is between OdeCloud and a traditional freelancing platform like Upwork, Fiverr or Freelancing.com, it is truly the power of collaboration and crowdsourcing.

Allow me to show you the latest example of the OdeCloud concept in action.

Ahad is stuck with a Netsuite problem, so he reached out for help from the community

I saw his message before going to bed and quickly dropped a few names of folks I knew could help.

Up early on the east coast, TJ responded to Ahad, adding a link to a post he had previously wrote on the subject.

On the other side of the globe, Lea also saw Ahad’s question, and forwarded a very detailed blog post she had written on her professional NetSuite blog.

Just a few hours into his morning on the next day, Ahad had read the suggested solution, implemented it and tested it successfully.

This is but one example of how OdeCloud leverages the agility and expertise of a global network of on-demand Netsuite freelancers to help crowdsource solutions and provide best-in-class NetSuite services.

Keep on the lookout for more examples as we dive further into the year with our growing community.

The post OdeCloud NetSuite Services: What Crowdsourcing Means to Us appeared first on OdeBlog.

And now that January 2019 has come and gone, we’re back with yet another infographic, and there’s obviously a few minor differences we’d like to point out!

Although it should be noted that our more professional channel of #allnetsuite remains our most popular by far, we’ve actually added a new channel to our list of top channels last month: #allintegration.

This channel is primarily used for sharing all the neat tips and tricks many of our experts have discovered over the years. We’ve continued to encourage each of our Netsuite experts to pass on their accumulated knowledge with the intention of creating an environment that fosters lifelong learning and casual networking.

Maybe you have a question concerning new Netsuite integration processes, or perhaps you’re simply looking to further develop your understanding of Netsuite in general; either way, #allintegration is the channel you want to be in if you’re aiming to better your skills as an expert Netsuite administrator.

Our #cool_listening channel surprisingly continues to be a staple of our online community, and both Osar Iyamu and Thierry Klesse have been central to building interest in that channel.

In addition, we have related channels such as #cool_events and #cool_places that we hope to promote a bit more in 2019.

Most importantly, we added five new Netsuite consultants, resulting in a grand total of 25 active users. As 2019 continues to get underway, we definitely expect that number to continue growing exponentially.

And while our goal continues to focus around building our community of Netsuite experts, we plan on inviting more of our customers into the mix soon.

As for overall engagement, we’ve remained pretty consistent, showing an expected bit of growth that coincides with the addition of five new Netsuite experts.

Our primary hope is to not just continue adding more community members, but to have more of them engaging with each other on a more consistent basis.

The post OdeCloud Community of Netsuite Experts Continues to Grow in New Year appeared first on OdeBlog.

A brief overview of OdeCloud’s platform processes.

When utilizing traditional freelancing platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr, companies are able to post a project/job description for gigs, along with a statement of work. These are meant to be used as tools to not just attract potential freelancers, but to provide a basic framework or checklist for the task at hand.

Now the more freelance-savvy companies might know exactly the kind of expertise they are looking for, thoroughly specifying the qualifications required to complete the gig. Qualified freelancers are then able to successfully finish the project on time (and on par) with the respective company’s original vision.

Unfortunately, that’s almost always not the case.

It can be incredibly difficult to precisely communicate the qualifications needed to complete a complex NetSuite job, not to mention the company’s original vision for the project. As a result, the experience level and skillset of the freelancer they hire may not meet the qualifications required for the job.

Without a doubt, this back-and-forth in trying to source the right talent almost always results in both a waste of money and a waste of time.

OdeCloud aims to eliminate these issues by prioritizing the perfect union between client and consultant.

Unlike traditional freelancing platforms that primarily focus on offering the limited bandwidth of an individual freelancer, OdeCloud’s crowdsourced consulting platform offers customers the knowledge of an entire community of experts, as well as a fully managed NetSuite service with guaranteed results.

Customers subscribe via an affordable monthly service plan, providing said customers with dedicated freelance resource(s), as well as unlimited access to OdeCloud’s expert consultant community. This essentially translates to clients having access to more than enough resources to successfully complete a project.

After a customer subscribes to the OdeCloud — regardless of the level at which they start their subscription — they are assigned a NetSuite Solution Architect and NetSuite Application Administrator.

The Solution Architect is there to help the customer realize its technological roadmap by providing guidance in project management and assigning the right technical resource at the right time.

The primary role of the Application Administrator is to provide immediate end user support and to execute on optimization projects, all while utilizing OdeCloud platform to generate suggestions concerning who in the community is the best skill-to-project match.

Because of OdeCloud’s focus on community-based, crowdsourced consulting, the Solution Architect and Application Administrator are encouraged to reach out to the rest of the community for assistance, which results in better technology solutions for customers and faster delivery of IT projects.

And following the completion of the project, OdeCloud goes above and beyond the usual requirements of a freelance gig by providing clients with detailed documentation of all system and process changes implemented by the team assigned to the project, allowing clients to stay fully informed of their NetSuite account setup and train other end users.

Finally, at all times OdeCloud is responsible for the work to be provided to the customer under the service plan they have selected. We vet, onboard the freelance resource(s) and guarantee work done.

And there you have it!

Is there anything you would like to know more about in our next post? Let us know in the comment section, or send us a message using one of our social buttons.

And please, subscribe to our blog!

Cheers,

Osar

The post The Perfect Match: The Process of Pairing Clients with the Right Consultant appeared first on OdeBlog.

Two heads are better than one.

Building a brand is easier than ever. All it really takes is a click of a button.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen fast-growing brands such as Glossier, Groupon, and Copyblogger go from small-time online communities to renowned worldwide companies.

Following the path of online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, a number of these companies now provide features for their members to distribute products or services as merchants, influencers, or consultants.

In the same manner, social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Discord have given individuals the tools to potentially further those communities, blurring our borders and redefining communal proximity.

But what if the community as a whole WAS the product? What if the community’s collective expertise was the brainpower behind the actual service?

This is the idea behind OdeCloud’s community of freelance NetSuite experts. We serve the global demand for NetSuite admin services by providing a community of experts that act as a single entity.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfNUz2qlQkY[/embedyt]

As opposed to traditional freelancing platforms, OdeCloud eliminates the stress related to finding that one perfect contractor for a single Netsuite gig. In addition, companies working with OdeCloud would no longer have to worry about an individual freelancer lacking the bandwidth or expertise to support a fast-growing organization.

Essentially, the availability of a large pool of talent within the community provides the opportunity to offer a one-stop technology service. Companies could potentially outsource all technical functions to OdeCloud, preserving an internal business analyst role for facilitating team collaboration.

On the consultants’ end, gone are the days of freelancers having to look for gigs on their own. No more having to lower pay rates to better compete in the freelancing market. No more having to forcefully extend his or her bandwidth for the sole purpose of completing a single gig.

When choosing OdeCloud, companies essentially contract with OdeCloud’s community of consultants, who, in turn, are encouraged to assist each other to find the perfect solution to whatever issues may arise.

This focus on communal knowledge and assistance is not only there to help serve the customer, but it also helps create the environment freelancers need in order to promote healthy, long-term relationships and higher learning.

Generally, we at OdeCloud refer to this as community-based, crowdsourced consulting.

In conclusion, traditional freelancing platforms will always fall short in delivering quick and effective solutions to complex technological problems.

There’s a critical need for an on-demand expertise platform, but one that is designed and built to benefit fast-growing organizations and the long-term growth of the Freelance Economy.

This is where community-based, crowdsourced consulting has the advantage over a lone wolf contractor.

This is where OdeCloud comes in.

Hope you liked this one!

In our blog next post, let’s take this discussion a tad further and expand on how exactly the OdeCloud platform will go about pairing companies with their own “dedicated team” of consultants.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to our blog! We update every Monday with fresh content.

Cheers,

Osar

The post The Difference Between a Freelancing Community and a Freelancing Platform appeared first on OdeBlog.

OdeCloud’s Founder and CEO, Osar Iyamu, shares how the OdeCloud platform aims to alleviate this issue.

With regards to the Freelance Economy and its new generation of workers, the OdeCloud platform is on a mission to truly deliver on the promises of being one’s own boss. As it stands right now, current platforms are unable to deliver on that promise due to one simple truth:

The market they’ve created is primarily determined by who is willing to do a single job for the least amount of money.

Far too often do freelancers lower their rates to remain competitive in their respective fields, sometimes choosing to drop their individual value far below minimum wage. For some, they have little choice other than to face unemployment, so they drop their rates in hopes of attracting a company that can afford to take a long-term chance on them in the future.

In many other cases, some jobs are just too complex to be paid by the hour. Say, for example, a client is offering $100 per hour to build a high-quality site. “Developer A” is a highly-skilled and efficient web developer with years of experience, while “Developer B” is a hobbyist who thought freelancing on the side would be a good source of disposable income.

If Dev A takes an hour to build a site, while Dev B takes roughly 10 hours to develop that same exact site, then what exactly justifies Dev B making 10 times more than Dev A for the same quality work?

OdeCloud is working to tackle the more challenging issue of bringing high-quality value to all independent workers, regardless of their level of expertise. We’re designing a better platform to (1) help organize and distribute unique expertise in niche markets, and (2) to provide proportionate value to all freelancers.

While it is relatively easy to create a freelance platform that solves simple First World problems like getting a ride, getting food delivered or booking a dog sitter, a platform such as Upwork, which requires a higher degree of expertise, can sometimes suffer from vague, generic job postings and low value work.

As an example, a number of NetSuite consultants I’ve spoken to about taking on jobs from Upwork often find themselves having to lower their rates to land some gigs.

What if the rates of freelancing services (like NetSuite services) drop down so low that these independent experts are forced to work a 60-hour week — all just to make as much as a company’s entry-level, internal NetSuite Admin?

Wouldn’t these independent workers just withdraw back to their previous situation as full-time, conventional employees?

On the other end of the Upwork platform, midsize companies either settle for the cheapest labor possible — which, most of the time, results in low quality work — or, they offer only the lowest priority tasks and least strategic assignments to minimize the risk of losing organizational knowledge to external contractors.

Simply put, the aforementioned issues almost always result in independent experts dropping their rates for suboptimal gigs, a practice that could eventually prove detrimental to the overall growth of the Freelance Economy.

OdeCloud has a simple solution: a subscription model that asks clients to pay a fixed, monthly fee to gain access to our community of experts. That monthly fee is then used to help pay our experts on a flat, monthly basis, thereby eliminating the competitive issue with hourly rates in the current freelancing market.

Furthermore, what I’ve discovered in analyzing current freelancing platforms is there’s no intrinsic value behind the platform itself. For platforms like Lyft, Uber or Postmates, the value is solely driven by the external social economy context, while platforms like Upwork might also address customer access.

This is exactly the reason why it is not very difficult to hire a consultant on Upwork for a small gig, then bypass the platform in order to work on future gigs directly with that same consultant. There is nothing Upwork can do about that. Same for Uber drivers. If tomorrow it pays more to drive to drop-off Amazon packages, they would easily move over to Amazon to start delivering packages.

OdeCloud differs from platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr in that we’re not just building a platform — we’re building a community.

…but more on that in our post next Monday.

Bonjour! And once again, thanks for reading.

As mentioned above, our next post will go over what exactly differentiates a freelance community from a simple freelancing platform.

If you’d like to read more, please subscribe to our blog!

Cheers,

Osar

The post OdeCloud Platform Solves the Problem of Hourly Rates appeared first on OdeBlog.

There is no doubt that the Netsuite client base will keep growing over the 20% annual rate in the next couple of years, especially with the scale provided by Oracle. Oracle has not only provided a market scale to Netsuite but also a technology scale.

Press Release April 26-2017: NetSuite unveils major global ERP enhancements. Sneak Peak (new industry-specific features): Version 2017 Release 1.

.

In summary, NetSuite will offer more and more advanced features with more depth in industry verticals, which sounds awesome for NetSuite customers, but it also raises 2 important questions:

1. Does your organization have the right tech-minded thought leader who could recommend up-to-date industry leading practices and cutting-edge Oracle NetSuite solutions?
2. Does your organization have the right technical skills to setup and build on these advanced and more complex features available to all NetSuite customers?

As the competitive landscape rapidly evolves, so does NetSuite technology. The expertise you need to maintain, optimize and extend your ERP lies far outside the skill-set of a typical NetSuite administrator or developer. Most importantly, it is highly unlikely you would find all the business skills, technical expertise and thought leadership abilities required for this position in a single person.

At this point of your business growth, hiring, staffing and contracting are wasteful and time consuming practices that may not align with your growth plan. This is exactly why as an organization, you should explore the opportunities provided by NetSuite Admin-as-a-Service. Leverage this model to effectively and timely source the NetSuite skills you need, not only to maintain your platform in good standing but to expand its capabilities to meet the evolving needs of your customers and business partners.

.

What is NetSuite Admin-as-a-Service?

NetSuite Admin as a Service is a turnkey and affordable solution to help midsize and early stage companies uncover the potential of their NetSuite ERP – A one-stop, on-demand and managed services with a team of NetSuite experts, composed of a NetSuite Administrator, a NetSuite Developer and an Industry Subject Matter Expert, for a fraction of the cost of one full-time employee.

For a flexible monthly subscription OdeCloud’s NetSuite Admin-as-a-Service enables you to have a team of NetSuite functional and technical and subject matter experts in your industry, to support, optimize and extend your NetSuite ERP on demand. Our model guarantees you get the right talent exactly when you need it.

Imagine what you could do with more NetSuite talents, thought leaders and experts in your industry…

Hold off on hiring a new NetSuite Admin, Consultant or Developer. There is a better way.

Let me show you: www.odecloud.com

Cheers,

Osar

The post NetSuite Admin-as-a-Service: The Right Talent at The Right Time appeared first on OdeBlog.