Blur app allows clients to tender projects with mobile
blur Group, an online marketplace for business services, has made finding and tendering top-notch management consultants even easier. With the launch of a new mobile app, anyone can now from the backseat of a cab or hammock on the beach brief a multi-million pound contract within the space of a few clicks.
The blur Group’s blur platform, which offers a huge range of business services, has recently taken off. The past 12 months have seen the online marketplace receive more than $225 million of accounting, marketing, IT and management consultancy projects including many big tickets briefs from global brands such as Tesco, GE, Amazon, Argos and Caterpillar. The platform replicates the traditional RfP process in online environment, and then facilitates the transaction between client and consultants. The network encompasses a database of around 60,000 firms, and takes around 75 new briefs a week.
While the services was in its early days eagerly adopted by small and boutique advisories, blur’s expanding footprint has not remain unnoticed, off late attracting the attention of also the larger professional services firm. Large consulting giants such as Deloitte, KPMG and Accenture have now embraced the platform and have started throwing pitches with resultant clients.
Yet the digital future is not just online – it’s also mobile, and with this in mind blur has grown its offerings to the smartphone landscape. With the new app, any registered business user can using their mobile app create briefs for services needs– thus deployable as soon as the need is identified, or on the move. “You can be riding in a Tuk Tuk in Bangkok, arranging a pitch from an American consultancy for a project in France. It’s devastatingly simple and a very smart way to get business done,” remarks, Jon Hogg, blur’s Chief Marketing Officer.
The initiative is part of blur’s strategy to simplify the what it dubs as “complex process of traditional tendering” and face-to-face pitching, says Hogg. Theoretically, a process which typically takes several weeks to complete can now be concluded within the space of a few hours.
Advocates describe blur’s platform as disruptive to the advisory landscape, while sceptics highlight that its proposition aligns well with commodity services, but is not (yet) up to the standard for high-value or big bucks work. Hogg says his team is convinced the trend is inevitable, perhaps one that will take a matter of time, and require a change in mindset, down the line blur’s influence in the consulting industry is set to grow. With the platform recently facilitating a massive $17,000,000 engagement, the largest brief pitched to date on blur, one thing is clear: the potential has been demonstrated.
The new blur app is available for download on Google Play and Apple’s App Store.
