Elance Crowdsourcing

In the ideal crowd sourcing model, corporations on the one hand use collective and combined expertise, as well as knowledge to benefit, while on the other hand they reduce expenditures that are imperative to maintain a full-time employee workforce. Individuals, small business contractors, home based businesses and freelancers have a ready market for their skills that eventually enable them to compete with anyone else, either private or corporate. That's the asset of crowd sourcing and it appears that the future business world is ready to embrace it.
Another company that uses “crowd sourcing”’ is Elance, which is a World of Talent Online. Its key concept is to deliver excellent work and get paid for results in return. Elance outsource to expert crowd: programmers, designers, writers, translators, marketers, researchers and admin contractors with tested skills.
The main idea is to find clients and freelance jobs through small businesses in order to do freelance web design, programming, SEO, xml programming and graphic design.

Elance’s focus consists of “outsourcing to freelance programmers, web and logo designers, copywriters, illustrators and consultants.”
People that hold the jobs are the employers, namely called “buyers” on Elance, whereas the web workers with the skills are called the “providers”.

The company has mainly worked so as to increase offerings and integrate some features to create more than just a job site or a work tool.
Elance’s concept surpasses global marketplace job. It is a remarkable Remote Work System that aims at creating an isolated workspace for freelance workers while providing them with the additional encouragement to continue using the site after the job match has been made.
The features intend to help service providers in managing a part of their work through Elance and give buyer and service provider more ways to connect and transact business.

The areas that Elance has been improving in order to create their “Remote Work System” include, first the Interview Process; Beyond matching up a buyer with a service provider with specific skills that meet their project needs, Elance also offers an integrated chat function and a click-to-call function that enables the buyer to call the provider anonymously and for free. Providers can also take “certification” tests through Elance to evaluate their level of expertise which apparently give buyers more of a guarantee of a provider’s skills.
Another important part is The Payment System; Elance now offers an escrow account that enables a buyer once he has matched up with a seller to place the payment into an escrow account via Elance. The main objective here is to ease the provider’s mind that the money is there upon completion of the project. Elance also offers dispute assistance for both buyers and providers.
And finally the Tracking Project Status ; With a new status reporting system in place, buyers can on the one hand set targets that providers need to achieve, and providers on the other hand can report on their status showing progress against targets on a percentage basis. Elance has recently implemented a time tracking widget that a provider can apply in order to achieve targets, add notes for the buyer, and attach files. The time tracker can also cover units of work such as blog posts. Status reports can then be converted into invoices once work is complete.

The company states that while offering enhanced features aimed at helping the buyer and provider manage a portion of the project; their site is not necessarily a replacement for a more robust project management system. However, the new Elance features offer an archive of interactions and communications between buyer and provider that especially helps a provider who is simultaneously working on multiple projects.

Elance’s Benefits:

1. Ease of use. These jobs are quick and easy to apply for. Freelancers can do it while watching TV or while waiting for other client feedback.
2. Potential client information. The potential clients can in fact get all sorts of referrals and testimonials about them. This enables Elance to stay away right from the beginning of clients who have not paid their last freelancer or a person that has posted 20 jobs but never awarded one.
3. Guarantees. Although it’s not 100% fail-safe, these services do offer escrow services and complaint departments that can help intervene when Elance encounters problems with a particular freelancer. Once used effectively, Elance can limit its potential for a non-paying or trouble client.
4. Testimonials. The site really encourages satisfied clients to leave feedback. Instead of poking the client to give a testimonial for the site, it is an automated process and gets a good review to use as chosen.
5. Warm calls. Eventually, everyone posting a job on a bidding site wants people to contact them about their project.
6. Elance contains a wealth of well-paying, high-quality writing jobs for established Web content developers.
7. It could be a good place for beginners to find their first jobs. Moreover, the site provides some extras to help manage these jobs.
8. The more precise you can detail your job the better that Elance or the others will work for you. Providing a wide range of projects to make the perfect choice
9. Elance provides positive experiences, creativity and for building a portfolio, Elance is a great option because of its variety.
10. Elance is a good place to make money with more than 3500$ in earnings.

Elance’s Negatives:

1. No written contracts, non-disclosure agreements, or even agreements that outline terms for a particular project often leads to confusions and frustration for both corporations. The payment still needs to be triggered by the buyer. This means that once a provider has completed the job, there is no guarantee that the provider will be paid.
2. Freelancers are not well qualified or well experienced, and the providers are not loyal.
3. The quality of service is inferior comparing with the experts and may therefore also cause communication misunderstandings.
4. Freelancers decide to leave after having zero projects awarded throughout a month as an average.
5. Incredibly bad business decisions, dreadful customer relations management, negligent account management practices and the inability, or unwillingness.
6. Monthly huge fees to pay.


Please go to: http://www.slideshare.net/assafleaghattasdarine/elance-crowdsourcing

“Argos’’ is one of the most successful, valued and reliable retailer in the United Kingdom. Its well-known online catalogue enables customers to browse and select items to purchase. They can also pay for the items and collect them either from the store or have them delivered to their homes.

There is no need to create an account if you are only looking through their catalogue. However, when it comes to purchasing items, an account is required. There are two ways for browsing the catalogue. Indeed, you can either type the item’s code or browse by category. You will then get a brief description of the specific item that will help you decide whether it is the item you are looking for, choose to complete the transaction if you wish to and eventually choose the mode of delivery. Whenever you buy something, you will find the opportunity to leave feedback about your experience. This is a very important part of your transaction as it enables you to post a positive, negative, or neutral rating, along with a short comment, that would help future buyers in making a decision whether to buy the item or not.

When comparing Argos to a typical store that may have a few dozen products, one can notice that by having an online shop with a large selection of products you save shop space. You can in fact find a wide range of items that are no longer available for purchase either because they were taken off the market for poor selling ratings or replaced by a newer version. Indeed, you will find items such as kitchen equipments, home furniture, garden furniture and accessories, health and personal care, Televisions & set top boxes, Musical instruments & karaoke, consoles and games accessories, cameras, printers, computers, monitors, laptops, jewelry, watches, CDs, DVDs, Books…and much more.

Argos has recently introduced a pre-owned games service that enables customers to buy pre-owned titles from the home retail giant and sell used games in exchange for in-store credit rather than cash. It accepts selected games for the PS3, Xbox 360 and DS, restricted to not more than one copy of each title per customer. However, import games or those in poor condition without a box and instruction booklet are not accepted. By enhancing its put-away and stockroom management and by launching line positioning, Argos benefits from greater efficiency, space utilization, cost savings and improved service levels.

The long tail strategy can be applied to Argos as its scale and diversity does not enable consumers to find all the items in-store. Indeed, only a few of this huge variety of online products are available for pick-up in-store. Shelf space is very important and therefore the tendency consists in stocking only new hits. As a virtual store, Argos can afford to have a huge warehouse in the middle of nowhere storing many more products than the little shop where you can find all the non-hits or niches that are inexpensive and that targets customers all over the world because of the free/reduced shipping service.

This strategy has in fact led Argos in realizing important profit following their selling of small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers rather than selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. Sales have indeed reached £4.282 billion.
In January 2010, as part of its rebranding process, Argos introduced a new slogan, namely "Helping you live for less...”. Great value offers were hence added to the well-known Argos 16 day money back guarantee in order to enable customers to buy with confidence.

According to Anderson, two big principles need to be considered when creating a thriving long-tail business: making everything available & helping people finding it. This is basically what Argos does, combined with the possibility of shopping from your own home.
Here are seven ways that make a business successful, by applying the Long Tail concept:
1. The Long Tail of income
In the head of the tail, besides its main sources of income, ARGOS also tries to look for every possible opportunity to add new sources of income, no matter how small these may be.

2. The Long Tail of readings
The main point here is diversity rather than depth which can be perceived at ARGOS as it indeed diversifies its items.

3. The Long Tail of relationships
ARGOS got a lot of connections that enable it to remain powerful on the market as they often know things that other stores ignore. This phenomenon is known as “The Strength of Weak Ties” and is explored in Malcolm Gladwell’s.

4. The Long Tail of knowledge
ARGOS has acquired deep knowledge in many fields that became part of its specialization (the head of the tail). This helps ARGOS in a way or another to understand what the available options are and hence quickly recognize emerging trends.

5. The Long Tail of workflow
ARGOS has also some routines, known as its “best practices”, which are proven to work best for it and therefore spends most of the time applying them (the head of the tail). On the other hand, they also spend time experimenting doing things in different ways (the long tail). This gives ARGOS new ideas to improve its workflow.

6. The Long Tail of tools
Many tools are used by ARGOS in order to do business. Some of these tools that were established as working best have helped the company in doing better than other stores and have hence been kept in place (the head of the tail).

7. The Long Tail of experiences
There are some experiences such as working in the office that you come across almost daily and that somehow consume most of your time (the head of the tail). However, in addition to the daily experiences of ARGOS, time is also spent on doing something new (the long tail).

Please go to: http://www.slideshare.net/assafleaghattasdarine/the-long-tail-of-argos-3828858

Pepsi Refreshing Campaign

By using Social Media marketing strategies Pepsi has instead of allocating $20m to event based traditional advertising, launched the Pepsi Refresh Project.
Pepsi is basically funding refreshing ideas that would change the world in many aspects. The idea is based on the fact that people, businesses, or non-profits would come up with suggestions that would have a positive impact on issues related to Health, Education, Food & Shelter, Neighbourhoods, Arts & Culture, or the Planet. People are then invited to vote for their favourites and the idea with the most votes would receive grants.
This campaign encourages people to increase their involvement with the brand by letting the consumers decide which projects to fund and how the money is distributed. One could assess that this is not a cause marketing initiative, neither an advertising campaign. It is somehow a new way of doing business that is mainly based on Pepsi’s belief that doing well means doing good.
Besides the large format billboard campaign of Hit Refresh in Australia, Pepsi has also put in place a social networking based scavenger hunt and has created a partnership with youth channel MTV and has used online media, in-store media, in-store promotions and product sampling.