Whether it is aggregation of taxi drivers by Uber or technology skills like freelancer.com; crowdsourcing has taken an enormous leap the way both an Enterprise and end user gets benefits. What it means that you are getting away from the regularly organized clout of Service Providers(IT/Vendors/SMEs) who charge you super premium even for very mature technologies; while the crowd can only get you the same stuff done in 10% of the original cost. Though it has its overheads of quality and communication; but the benefits are definitely worth the traction.To be able to ask community input in bringing in new offerings; organizations have to have a supply chain enabling them to quickly deliver new products to market.
Nowadays; businesses are no longer looking for programs to meet single business objectives for limited periods of time. They are searching for the opportunity to position crowdsourcing communities as a more constant; controlled and long-term part of their strategies; going beyond IT design or development into physical stream distribution chains. Most companies embracing crowdsourcing are interested in both innovation and in wanting to be quick turn around of outputs. Some of the Enterprises have even gone out to their customers and are now highlighting the benefit of a friendly crowd for their disposal.
In a B2B context; one favorable impact of crowdsourcing is the reduction of supply chain risk; because it enables companies to interact and communicate with their suppliers in real time. Partners discuss their internal data and contribute information that affects the supply chain; such as transport timelines; severe weather conditions; and production interruptions. This fast information and output exchange through cloud or non-traditional channels; creates increased productivity that enables key stakeholders to mitigate risk rapidly.
Key Benefits
1. Reduced Administration overhead
Every new design project has to be handled; from conceptualization through revisions to final selection. With crowdsourcing; you submit your idea and allow the tens of thousands of designers to manage the job for you.
2. Maximize Alternatives
You’ll almost certainly receive a considerable number; hundred; as well as thousands of innovative choices to choose from. Even though this could be a diversion; sites like Envato permits you to eliminate unappealing designs in real time; reducing the number of alternatives in addition to providing designers comments.
3. Better Creativity
Without a paradigms; emotional attachments; or insecurities; the designers are free to be as creative as they want. Really; the more creative; the more likely they’ll get noticed and chosen. I have heard that even NASA is looking for crowdsourcing when it comes to original algorithms for analytics.
4. Crowd your Branding at your hand
You can tap your professional; personal; and social networks to vote on your top choices; which will enable your fans and make enthusiasm and anticipation for the contest. In a manner; the crowd you’re reaching for help becomes advertising channel for yourself.
5. Reduced Cost
Crowdsourcing immediately opens your gateway to whole new set of people and skills tools who can get things done at much lesser cost. Lately; I had been using Envato themes for my own project. And I was surprised by the output from some of the unheard ability from Vietnam or Thailand were able to fix it for me in 48hrs time frame. Some businesses prefer to have graphic designers on staff so as to control the creative aspects of the company carefully. What we all now understand that creativity and technical skill has its own hype cycle. The majority of creativity or technical skills are now uberised by open knowledge forums. So there is no need to keep your own army of SMEs and manage their financial nuances. At the same time; on-staff designers will not be fully utilized throughout time.
Key Risks:
1. Hit or miss – Crowd doesn’t know your business context and nuances in detail. So you need an excellent SME on your side who understands the end to end value chain perfectly and can drive the crowd to get the required outputs. Discipline on the input side is essential else you might miss the right output which you would have expected during crowdsourcing.
2. Quality – You really can’t expect a crowd to deliver something which is 100% quality proof or six-sigma oriented. Most of the crowd doesn’t even understand these terms and nuances.
3. Middleman takes some revenue: Crowd is not direct; but they are also organized towards a platform. So somewhere; even though its cost effective; there is still a middleman who anchors the deal and takes his own share. e.g.; a basic design exercise directly by crowd might cost you only USD 2000; but with a mature well-marketed platform will charge some USD 15000 to get the same job done.
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