Elance | Connect with Qualified Professionals

Elance is a place where businesses connect with professionals to get work done – now! With the largest network of rated and certified business professionals, Elance facilitates the entire work process from hiring to collaboration to payment.

Since its opening, Elance has evolved into the world’s leading project-based marketplace and workspace, helping tens of thousands of small and medium businesses outsource their projects to service providers in a wide variety of categories—these include graphic design, web design, software development, engineering, writing, translation and market research. Most of the businesses today use Elance to achieve more by finding great people and getting work done in a new way. In the same way, talented professionals find meaningful work that fits their lifestyle.

Elance, the leading online workplace today, was founded in 1999 and is said to have been established to help small businesses, easily and efficiently, hire freelance talent. Its office is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, California.

A BEAUTIFUL BEGINNING:

“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 changed 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 re-define work in the twenty-first century.”
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.”
( Source: http://www.elance.com/p/corporate/about/history.html)

After 3 years from its birth, Elance brought its services vision to endeavor customers with the industry’s first complete resolution for Services and Contractor Management. Elance’s solution, intended to restructure and computerize the method of finding, buying and managing services, was rapidly adopted by aggressive institutions including American Express, BP, FedEx, GE, Motorola and other top companies.

More than 200,000 people are making use of Elance nowadays to locate, acquire, direct 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.

After major undertakings including the target of over $7 billion in services spent dynamically by customers across multiple service categories from suppliers including Accenture, BearingPoint, Cognizant, Deloitte, Infosys, IBM, Keane, Oracle, Tata, Wipro and others in 2006, Elance sold its Enterprise business unit to Click Commerce.
Elance, Inc. and its products are widely recognized as being among the best in the world. Recent distinctions include:

Supply and Demand Chain Executive 100, 2005

Elance, Inc. was named as one of the top 100 software providers that are helping to lead the way in transforming companies’ supply and demand chains. The ‘100′ list of companies selected by Supply and Demand Chain magazine showcases providers that have completed successful and innovative real-life supply chain implementations.

AlwaysOn “AO 100 Top Private Companies,” 2003

Elance, Inc. was named as one of the top 100 private companies by AlwaysOn, the media company that covers innovation in technology and business. Companies were selected by surveying more than 1000 venture investors, investment bankers, top entrepreneurs and executives who nominated more than 700 companies for this competition. AO 100 winners were selected based on market traction and innovation.

iSource “iSource 100” Top Companies Transforming Supply and Demand Chains, 2003

Elance, Inc. was named as one of the top 100 software providers that are helping to lead the way in transforming companies’ supply-and-demand chains. ISource magazine selected winners based on an evaluation that included customer satisfaction, ease-of-use, financial stability, easy adaptability, customer service responsiveness and ease-of-implementation among other factors.

Forbes “Best Of The Web,” 2003

The Elance Marketplace has been honored repeatedly by Forbes Magazine as one of their “Best of the Web,” most recently in spring 2003.

Elance is Better Business Bureau Reliability Certified
Elance, Inc. meets all BBBOnLine Reliability participation and Better Business Bureau membership standards and is authorized to display the BBBOnLine Reliability seal. The BBBOnLine Reliability Seal confirms a company is a member of their local Better Business Bureau, has been reviewed to meet truth in advertisement guidelines and follows good customer service practices.
( Actual Facts from: http://www.elance.com/p/corporate)

Average # of daily active users	40000
Average # of new projects added daily	15000
Minimum bid amounts	$50
Maximum days project open for bidding	21 days
Year established	1999
Country	USA
Traffic Rank	4000

If you are a buyer, posting a project in Elance is just as easy as A-B-C. You just need to sign-up for free then choose several options such as Work Type [Fixed Fee. Best if scope of work is well defined. Pay a fixed price.; Hourly. Best if scope of work may change. Pay by the hour.] and Who can bid? [All Elance providers; Only the providers you invite to your posting (you can invite providers later)]
(Source: http://www.elance.com/p/landing/provider.html)

For the service providers, Elance has a Free Basic Membership plan that includes a free listing in Elance’s directory of professional service providers. There are two types of basic plans: Individual and Business. You can create your individual or business profile, where you can enter a marketing message about the services you offer, business contact information, relevant experience, and upload a portfolio of your best sample work. You have a limited number of Connects, which you can use to submit proposals. You can later upgrade to one of Elance’s paid memberships in order to receive Connects, allowing you to submit more proposals on projects and receive more potential buyer phone calls and chats. Elance generates revenue by collecting a small percentage (4% to 6% depending on the service provider’s level of earnings plus 2.75% for payment processing fees) of the billings you will generate using our Payment Service. Almost 1/2 of this amount goes to payment processors such as credit card companies and banks, when Elance collects payment from the employer and transfers the money into your account.

What gives Elance its sought after quality is the Basic Admission Test which all service providers must take and pass first before they can be able to bid and have their profile be located in the search results. This test covers concepts found on the Elance University web pages, the Provider Guide, our Terms of Service, and the general Help section. The purpose of this test is to ensure Service Providers have taken the time to understand how the Elance system works before engaging with the customers which will then attract a lot of buyers in the website knowing that all of the company’s service providers are top calibers. To pass the admission test, Service Providers must correctly answer 80% of the questions, but can retake the test as many times as needed to pass at no cost.

True enough, sometimes the quality of an environment will depend on the quality of its population. Consequently, if the company has highly qualified service providers as proven by their membership and admission tests, then quality customers will soon follow which would further result to quality transactions, quality results, and quality compensations.