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.

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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.