Blog

 Most of you on Mavenlink are not software developers - you come from many different industries with many different specialties. For those of you who aren’t familiar with building software, there’s a relatively new methodology called "agile" that many of us use to develop our products, including the team at Mavenlink. Our agile methods are what we use to prioritize our work and meet your requests, requirements, and feedback in a timely manner.

If a picture tells a thousand words, I’d love to find out how many words a video gets across, especially an animatics video in the deft hands of The Incite Group.  It is an incredible medium for story telling.

In thinking about our anchor video, there was no question that it needed to speak to the independent consultants and freelancers.  After talking extensively with these independent professionals about their world, we wanted to try and capture the intersection of their story with the story of Mavenlink.

We hope you enjoy our take on how Mavenlink supports the ever changing workforce.

This morning Nicole Black released a screencast (audio & video) review of Mavenlink’s comprehensive online collaboration platform built for the consultant/lawyer and their interactions with clients.

In the screencast, Nicole asks Roger Neel and myself questions about Mavenlink in general, walks through a demonstration of the product with us, and speaks to the specific applicability for the legal profession.  It is a short 15-20 minute screencast, and provides a great opportunity to hear firsthand our impressions of the technology.  In the screencast, you will hear about:

• How to invite colleagues/clients into a workspace
• Collaboration options within the workspace
• Upcoming Mavenlink features (Private Networks, Task Management)
• Pricing

Business Week recently presented a somewhat gloomy outlook for the US worker entitled “The Disposable Worker”.  Citing numerous statistics, the article lays out in excruciating detail the challenges facing the “permanent temporary workforce”.

• Bonuses tied to managing costs and maximizing short term profits creates incentives for managers to minimize full time staff.
• The increased accessibility of talented onshore and offshore resources allows corporations to find “just in time” resources lowers the risk of delays, lower quality work or increased costs historically associated with contract labor.
• The use of temporary or contract resources spans across the entire workforce, from “sneaker footed admins” to executives.
• “A lack of job security and health-care benefits, as well as social ties to the rest of the workforce, increase stress levels for temps and contractors.”
• The decades long pattern of the American worker accepting lower pay is likely to continue.
• Pulling few punches, the authors even go so far as to point out that “temporary or contract workers face a higher risk of developing mental health problems like depression”. 

From my perspective, there is no question the US worker faces unique challenges in the face of these driving corporate changes, and I think the attention brought to the issue by Business Week is critical.  However, it seems hard to fathom that the changes afoot are being driven exclusively by corporate America.  Job satisfaction has seen a steady decline since 1987, dropping steadily from 61.1% to the 2009 response of 45.3%.   Playing into these job satisfaction numbers is the impact corporate America is having on the quality of life of its employees.  Looking at the same time period, from 1987 to 2009, non-farm workers have been squeezed for a combined 57.2% increase in output/hour, with a 26.6% rise in total hours worked.  That makes a huge difference in the amount of time spent working for your employer and the stress levels during those working hours.  It’s no wonder you hear people talking about the “rat race”, working around the clock, and never being able to leave the job behind even on vacation.  In this environment, the US worker is understandably going to be considering all alternatives exclusive of corporate initiatives.

Over the last 6 months, we learned a lot about the consultant/client relationship and what’s needed to manage this relationship in the networked economy.  This new release of Mavenlink is a testament to the generosity of our charter community and their willingness to share ideas and recommendations.

Four Key learnings that have strongly influenced our business and technology direction:

1. Mavens (Consultants) and Clients found our underlying software very valuable to collaborate to get work done by having all documents and conversations in one place.
   • There is a tremendous need for a complete application that helps consultants and clients manage their business relationships from proposal to payment to feedback.
2. The “Post a Project” marketplace presents some important challenges for professional, collaborative service engagements, including:
   • Clients often need expert assistance to clarify requirements and define projects prior to posting
   • Talented consultants are often reluctant to invest the time required to pursue projects in an open marketplace
   • Consultants are uncomfortable inviting their existing clients into Mavenlink because the public listing of potentially competing mavens being made visible to clients.
3. Businesses are seeking new and better ways to work with and manage external talent.
   • Businesses need help finding the right expertise at the right time on an as-needed basis.
   • Consultants are seeking new ways to showcase their talent and speed the engagement process.
4. Businesses and Consultants alike are seeking purposeful business networking opportunities that help get valuable work done.

 
What’s Next

Comprehensive Technology Platform:  Our core technology, released this week, supports our mission of enabling an entirely new way for businesses and consultants to work together, making it simpler, more efficient, and more economical to get work done.  Enabling both businesses and consultants to leverage the platform within a trusted relationship, rather than an open marketplace, was a frequent request that we are now making possible.  Immediately following this release, we will be making continuous improvements…daily and weekly.

A good friend of mine recently (by choice) turned a full time position into a contract position so that he could take on more clients.  In less than 2 months he had 5+ new clients, each of which on its own could turn into a full time gig.  As I listened to my friend describe his good fortune, what became apparent to me was that more than the flexibility of being his own boss or the new found financial opportunity, the thing that gratified him most of all in his new independent role was the security.  “I’ve always worked essentially for one client, my employer.  When I started, I never thought about that client not being there as long as I did a good job.  Lately, I couldn’t get the fear of that one client disappearing out of my mind.  I don’t ever plan on being at the mercy of one client again.”

80’s
In the past, choosing the independent route was considered the way of the gambler, the entrepreneur, with tons of upside but plenty of risk.  That risk profile continues to change as full time employment becomes more and more tenous.  Beginning with the first real widespread use of the “layoff” during the early 1980’s recession, the loyalty between employees and their employers has been on a steady downward slide as corporations are unable to provide or even communicate a strong sense of security.  Once the gigantic monkey wrench was thrown into the notion that your corporate employer would provide a safe, reliable career, corporations and the positions they offer became a “stepping stone”  along a migratory career path as opposed to the career path.

90’s
The downturn of the 90’s brought along another wrinkle, the onset of the full time employee turned contract worker.  Rather than severing ties completely with employees as the need for their full time help diminished, corporations began turning to them, sans employment benefits, on a part time contractual basis. 

Today
The current recession brings along its own unique impacts on the employee/employer relationship.  In the midst of the downturn, corporations are striving more than ever to become lean, agile, profit making machines, forcing renewed consideration of all resource options available to them, including full time employees, outsourcing, a contingent workforce, or a combination thereof.  Unemployment climbing over 10% is remarkable.  The fact that economists are predicting that the unemployment rate is headed for 12%-13% is unprecedented.  For the first time there is general agreement amongst the experts that the full time employment positions are not coming back.  More so than any previous recession, the core fabric, the loyalty, of the corporate workforce is being shaken, and as a result stirred into action. 
 

We’ve seen the rise of the Independent Party, Independent Film, Independent Music, and Independent Media, but there seems to be a new movement afoot that just might be more important than all combined, the rise of the Independent Professional.  While the other “Independent” movements impact, or have the potential to impact, our two party system, our entertainment, and our ways of consuming information, none have the potential to affect our economy or our livelihood as much as the Independent Professional movement.  While the magnitude of the movement is still developing, there are many reasons to believe that this “Free Agent Nation” (as Daniel Pink dubs it) is here to stay:

• Loyalty between employees and companies continues to deteriorate
• Increased Labor Specialization is driving companies to seek niche service providers from outside their four walls
• The Networked World is providing ever more opportunities for career development and learning outside of the corporation
• Technologies are arising that enable independents and businesses to engage around projects on an as needed basis, rather than extended contractual based relationships
• Costs for businesses to hire and retain employees continue to rise
• Unique providers are stepping up to fill the benefits and insurance void for independent professionals historically filled by the corporate world

Over the next few weeks I’ll explore each of these in more detail.  If there are other factors that I have left out, either supporting or undermining the rise of the Independent Professional, let me know, and I’ll do my best to incorporate.
 

 

As a team we get together early, just about every morning, to catch up, discuss direction moving forward and generally get on the same page.  I will certainly do my best to spare you from the unappealing details, but in an effort to shed additional light on our company direction and our perception of the SMB consulting market, I will be sharing a couple of relevant highlights from these meetings here in our blog.


Thought for the Day

It seems like the world of consulting proposals and contracts with their talk of scope, approach, tasks and deliverables have ventured away from the simple needs of independent consultants and their clients, "Here is what we agreed to go do".

Company Updates

Product: New Designs almost complete mapping out the new Proposal Process for consultants and their clients.  The team is focused on providing everything you could ever want in a proposal with the flexibility you need to pick and choose the pieces necessary for your project.  And if that wasn’t enough, we’ll make sure to keep it simple.

Marketing: Getting ready to launch our Innovation Group, a core group of users who have graciously volunteered to give us early feedback on upcoming product releases.  Upcoming fun for the Innovation Group includes a first look at the new comprehensive software platform designed for the independent consultant (including the aforementioned Proposal Process) and some video reviews.

After spending countless hours over the last week thinking about, researching, designing, paper prototyping, and generally becoming an online proposal, a thought occurred to me, "Is the Independent Consultant (i.e. my audience) ready to walk away from the Paper Proposal?"  It’s not an easy question.

On the one hand, there’s no shortage of griping about the current proposal process, and rightfully so.  It’s a time sink, no matter how you look at it.  No one I know looks forward to creating or adapting pages after pages of Cover Sheets, Self Promotional Marketing Pieces, Tables of Contents, Executive Summaries, Project Scope Statements, Approach Summaries, Deliverable Overviews, Pricing, Discounting, and the kicker, Terms and Conditions associated with the proposal.  You might not have to add each of these to every proposal, or you might be lucky enough to leverage boilerplate language for a bunch of the pieces, but any paper pushing is too much paper pushing for most.  Next in line you get to deal with the inevitable discomfort associated with putting yourself and your hard earned prospect at the mercy of a couple of bound pages.   It would be one thing if the waiting was short, but everyone knows yes’s never come fast enough.  How long do you have to wait before you burst through your Client’s door demanding a response?  Polite email and phone follow-ups can only sustain you for so long.

On the other hand, the upside of so much time sunk into the development of your paper proposal is that it might be quite good.  If nothing else, every word that jumps off the page reflects you, your business, and your blood, sweat and earnest brain strain.  Some of you might even say the paper proposal is a differentiator for your practice.  You’ve read Allan Weiss’s "How to Write a Proposal That’s Accepted Every Time" 15 times, and can’t wait for the Client to utter the magic words "Shoot me over a Proposal".  Even if you haven’t had the chance to get your own Ph.D. in proposal writing, others amongst you might rightly appreciate the opportunity a paper proposal presents to express yourself in another medium to your Client.  Some things are easier said in a logo, a page layout, or a well-crafted paragraph.

My new perspective is one of fascination.  I don’t know if we can put any more thought into ways to make the proposal process better by bringing it online.  Even Dr. Weiss would be proud of our efforts to focus on the collaboration and communication between the consultant and the client above all else, taking advantage of the online world to promote a highly interactive process.  Having said that, I’m sure once we release it you’ll give us plenty of good recommendations for improvements, and I look forward to the learning.  But what I’m really anxious to find out is how many amongst you will be able to once and for all leave the paper behind.  Mavenlink is going to let you choose whether or not you want to attach that paper beauty, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll decide.