For the buyers and category managers out there, especially those of you deep in the weeds of buying and managing commodities, here’s a quick rundown of news and thoughts from particular commodity markets. MetalMiner, a sister site of ours, scours the landscape for what matters. This week: ArcelorMittal closures; oil prices; nickel deficit falls; section 232 tariffs
hanack/Adobe StockIn Part 4 of this five-part Spend Matters PRO series on the emerging independent contract worker (ICW) digital ecosystem, we will examine “worker-facing services.” These are services designed and offered to independent workers by providers, many of which may not have existed five years ago.
Part 1 of this series discussed the size, growth and constitution of the ICW population in the U.S. (it cuts across many types of work/workers: freelance creatives to construction workers, Uber drivers to truck drivers, etc.). Part 2 of the series examined the extent to which a digital ecosystem has been forming to provide enterprises with the required capabilities to source, manage and maximize the value of this ICW population. In Part 3, we described (and represented graphically) the different components of the emerging digital ecosystem today (see the ecosystem graphic below).
Part 4 looks at the extent to which a part of the ICW digital ecosystem is forming to provide ICWs (and incorporated microbusinesses) with the access to the opportunity pathways and the support/services (the worker-facing services) that they require to function as viable “operators.” It provides an overview of the service and service provider landscape and concludes with some comments leading into Part 5.
