Nearly any company nowadays relies on Software for its business. Not to mention the current effect of innovative digital business models on the market.
The market for Software Outsourcing has grown as an Industry by leaps and bounds. It nowadays covers bespoke development of complex applications, design of website and e-commerce shops and more and more development of mobile apps. The B2B Marketplace of pliXos was put on this market to provide transparency on the service providers available on a global scale and to offer all reasonable selection criteria to identify the best fitting candidates on the fly.
Recently, further marketplaces or supplier portals have come up with the idea to match service providers and the Customers. Despite the fact that we see some of them more as a marketing channel for providers and are uncertain of their neutrality, this is a good situation in any case as this promotes the ideas and benefits of online tools to identify potential providers, select the final one and to administer further tasks which are typical for successful application or app development projects. This is especially true when dealing with global teams (offshore, nearshore set ups).
Today the world is a global village which is spread across a huge area but connected through links such as Air Transport, Telecom, Road Transport etc. and the best of all the World Wide Web (WWW). Through this we are able to search for the best in the world by just going online and making a few clicks in nearly all domains.
Keeping this in mind that almost everything in the world today can be done just by a click, the Customers looking for software service providers are more and more building on this channel for tasks far beyond simple online search. Providers will align with this trend and will act to be listed in the platforms seen important by Customers and – if provided by the platform - have a positive rating by the platform operator and many positive reviews from their Customers. As already seen to emerge, those efforts start to pay off and providers being listed in the right platforms and demonstrating performance get in position to win new and valuable projects.
It is becoming an increasing challenge for Customers to look for the genuine service providers who are actually providing the best service and for this they typically rely on a trusted third party to do the necessary screening for them (Look at our previous article “From “Falling in Love to a Long Lasting Marriage” - in IT Outsourcing Quality is one Key Criteria”) before they can do the final search and make the deal.
A perfect example of Cloud based online services changing the way B2B business is undertaken is the G-Cloud initiative by the British Government Procurement Service with the aim to provide procurement savings for organisations across the UK public sector by the G-Cloud framework which connects the UK government and suppliers who provide cloud-based services by a framework agreement and an online marketplace. For the case of Remote Applications Development, Sourcing Strategies and specialist Outsourcing Support Services, pliXos was awarded such a framework agreement since 2013 (starting with G-Cloud ii and continuously extended since then). Under G-Cloud, pliXos offers its Outsourcing Director, Outsourcing Adviser and Sourcing Advisory support, particularly in Agile based applications development to help government departments deliver complex projects with the required functionality, in time, to budget and at the lowest possible cost for UK citizens.
For the Customers It is very important to know which country does the Service Provider belong to, what is his industry know-how, company size, what are the subjects and tasks he is good at, what are the programming languages, operating systems, software systems he knows how to work with. The customer also needs to know what processes/methodologies will the service provider use to provide his software service.
Furthermore, these criteria help the customer to structure his needs and understand what exactly he is looking for in a Provider. In case of the pliXos B2B Marketplace he can select from the prescreened dropdown bar and refine his search down to a low number of providers to look in detail – out of a long and global list of providers fitting in general.
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