‘A WIP a Week’ — Our New Series for Contingent Workforce and Services Procurement Professionals

Work Intermediation Platforms (WIPs) are configurations of digital technologies that enable those in need of labor services and those providing labor services to directly engage in work arrangements, typically from sourcing to payment. Effectively, work is arranged — and often to some extent organized and enabled — across a digital platform. Examples of WIPs include many different kinds of platforms, such as Upwork, HourlyNerd, Work Market, MBO Connect, 99designs, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and others. There are more than 300 WIPs in the world today, with the number of platforms and volumes of spend increasing.

From a contingent workforce and services procurement perspective, WIPs represent new sources and ways of engaging contingent talent and services. To raise awareness and help to educate our contingent workforce and services procurement audience on this topic, we will be starting a series we are dubbing “A WIP a Week.” Every week, we will select and briefly profile a different WIP on our site. In addition, from time to time, we may also do deeper-dives, for our Plus and PRO subscribers.

We have been analyzing and writing about WIPs over the past year. So in case you’ve missed those content pieces, we are providing links to them below. We start with our infographic and, and after that, our initial four-part research series on the subject. That is followed by many links to WIP pieces that we have published over the past year.

While standing by for the start of our “A WIP a Week” series this month, we invite you to explore the content below. Note that links to several pieces marked as Plus or PRO will lead public audience to useful summaries, but not to the full content, reserved for our paid members.

“A WIP a Week” is just what the doctor ordered.

Infographic

• The Emergence, Main Stages of WIPs Evolution Over the Past Decade

Initial 4-Part Research Series

• Work Intermediation Platforms — Transformation Engines of the Modern Labor Procurement Supply Chain (Part I – Introduction)
• Work Intermediation Platforms — Transformation Engines of the Modern Labor Procurement Supply Chain (Part 2 – What Did We Catch?) [PRO]
• Work Intermediation Platforms — Transformation Engines of the Modern Labor Procurement Supply Chain (Part 3 --The Emergence of New Labor Services Ecosystems) [PRO]
• Work Intermediation Platforms — Transformation Engines of the Modern Labor Procurement Supply Chain Procurement (Part 4 -- Practitioner Opportunities and Challenges on the Road Ahead) [PRO]

Other Selected Content

• Upwork: A Factor in Changing the Course of the War for Talent? [PRO]
• Freelance Marketplace Platform Fiverr Raises Additional $60M in Funding
• LinkedIn Releases ProFinder Pilot, Quietly Enters Freelance/Independent Workforce Market
• From Crew Connection to CrewCloud — A Staffing Business’ Remarkable Digital Transformation
• HourlyNerd Starts its Move to Engage Large Enterprises
• Field Nation Raises $30 Million of Private Equity Funding, Bringing More Capital to WIP Space
• The Promise and Challenge of the Evolving World of Work Intermediation Platforms
• Freelancer Limited — Anatomy of a Large Global Work Intermediation Platform [PRO]
• Online Legal Marketplace UpCounsel Raises $10 Million – WIPs Continue Their Rise
• Online Consultant Marketplace Expert360 Raises $4.1 Million — Should Services Procurement Take Note?
• The Washington Post Launches WIP for Freelancers
• WIP Wildfire Alert: Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures Adds Fuel to Fire With Lystable Investment
• Elance-oDesk Becomes UpWork — Unveils New Online Freelance Talent Platform