_ April 30, 2020_ Lucian Costea

Services Marketplace – a 360-degree solution for your digital upgrade

Though the pandemic context puts us and the business environment under a lot of pressure, we have to admit that it is also an undeniable catalyst for transformation, reinvention, and discovery of new concepts and ways of doing business. A result of such combination of factors is the birth of the digital marketplace for services. A scaled and improved, business to business version, of a freelancers’ marketplace, if you like to call it that way. A virtual software services store, where you can find 360-degree solutions for your company if you’re looking to do all your “shopping” by taking just one ride to the market. The network that gathers predefined valid software solutions, along with teams of specialists that can help you customize them and implement them, project-based or under a longterm collaboration. From the position of looking at a future built on remote work from home, ongoing online connection, and unexpected business transformations, we dare to say that a digital marketplace is the next Amazon of software services.

Services marketplace – a new business wave

Time is money. No matter how pulled out of a movie and cliché that might sound, at this moment, while the world economy struggles not to suffer a fall down, it pretty much defines how business decisions are taken. As aftermath, companies prefer now to go straight to one source to solve their problems or help them make a digital upgrade of their services. To draw yourself a better picture of it, imagine walking into a giant marketplace and leaving afterward with all your items on the list checked. Efficient, time-saving, budget-friendly solution.

Only now we are talking about a virtual marketplace for services as a new business concept. A place that might become an accelerator for the digital transformation of companies that need to take things to the next level. An upgrade required by the change spiral we’re drawn into. If the end consumer’s behavior is switching, affected by self-isolation and social distancing, this naturally determines the need of new strategies in the business area.

Hence, the right answers and tools lie in a place where in-house teams, freelancers, software solutions, IT outsourcing providers, and other specialists in tech can provide ready-to-use or custom software, even if they are in remote work from home. Having access to all these from a single source speeds up the adaptation process and keeps you on the clock with market changes.

Examples of services marketplace

We envision that there will be different approaches to this relatively new wave. Some services marketplaces will be niched on certain business areas, some will address the public sector and others will be open-source for all business environments. Below we have a few examples.

One of the pioneers in this area is actually the UK government who created the Digital Marketplace – a central hub dedicated to the public sector to have easy access to IT services and solutions. It was previously named “CloudStore” and follows the basic principles of cloud-based solutions – on-demand services, application resources share via a cloud computing infrastructure. The initiative wants to create more efficient ways to deliver public services. Not to mention the cost savings and economic growth. Even more, being administrated by an official authority, the solutions are safer and more secure.

Another recent example is the European Union’s hackathon #EuvsVirus. It took place online, and is not only a consequence of a global, across generations challenge we’re facing, but also an event that managed to gather thousands of specialists in technology, software development, innovation and entrepreneurship and make them work for the same goal. Bringing them all together generated a series of new ground-breaking ideas meant to solve problems caused by the pandemic, at a community and cross-countries level.

Nevertheless, the best of them gained access to a platform and network where investors, foundations, medical units, and several other stakeholders might be interested in buying, financing, and using these new apps and software solutions. This too can become a services marketplace dedicated to a common cause – the pandemic fight, but adressing various areas of impact: health, finance, retailers.

Similarly, Overpass, one of AROBS’ fruitful collaborations, is an example of a niche marketplace for telemarketing. We’ve worked with them closely to create the best-optimized platform that offers an end-to-end process that delivers an all-in-one solution for creating a virtual call center. You can read more about our ongoing partnership in our testimonials section.

Of course, all these platforms rely on technology development that has undoubtedly surpassed any human projection of the future, with its limitless power to provide solutions.

The benefits of this “one-stop” marketplace for services

If previous to this COVID-19 era, going this path was maybe a commodity solution, as we said earlier, now it’s a matter of being cost and time effective. And the more these changes determined by the pandemic install in our day to day lives, the more everything around us: health system, economy, communication need to change and adapt. This kind of marketplace for services can be the best option to ride the wave of change, and not letting your business be washed away by the wave.

In other words, it gives you: