May 6, 2021 How Work Actually Gets Done: Two Ways to Engage Topcoder Talent

We say: Topcoder makes talent access simple
You say: Ok, but what’s actually happening? 

This article explains the two unique ways that work gets done at Topcoder. Our customers use one or a combination of the following engagement models to supercharge their teams’ productivity. Watch the videos and read on to learn the differences between Freelancers On-Demand and Enterprise Crowdsourcing.

1. Freelancers on-demand (TaaS)

Simply put, with TaaS (Talent as a Service), you’re able to request specific talent via Topcoder’s platform. For example – I need 3 AngularJS developers for the next 4 months – and then we bring you tremendous candidates based on their verified skills. 

This “verified skills” thing is important and makes us different. With Topcoder, the individuals are proven, and verified skills means that they have done high-caliber work in that exact skill set for Topcoder customers before, so you know you’re getting high-caliber talent.

With Talent as a Service from Topcoder,  you can:

• Interview candidates
• Receive fair, flat, and transparent weekly pricing
• Use our NDA or have candidates sign your own 
• Add candidates to your team on a full-time OR fractional-time basis
• And easily extend TaaS agreements when you find talent you want to continue working with 

In terms of how work gets done, there is one important thing to note about TaaS, which is that you manage the talent directly. If you want to bring them into your Teams, Slack, or Git environment, go right ahead. They are your direct resources and they’re really good and efficient at what they do. Plus, these are folks who are very used to working on remote teams and collaborating across time zones.  

To learn more or to make a Talent Request visit go.topcoder.com/freelance

2. Enterprise Crowdsourcing

Enterprise Crowdsourcing is a little bit different from TaaS. If you’re running a project on Topcoder or many projects as a part of an enterprise program, much of the work is done via crowdsourcing challenges – essentially small competitions – that we host and execute on our platform for you. 

Enterprise Crowdsourcing is different from TaaS in several key ways:

1. You’re not in charge of directly managing the talent. Instead, you’ll be provided with a platform architect, a role we call your Copilot. 
2. With TaaS you’re paying for the time of a Topcoder community member and you’re managing their workload directly. With Enterprise Crowdsourcing, you’re paying for outcomes.
3. Paying for outcomes starts with breaking down requirements from the project level to the activity level. We call this atomization. By decomposing a project into smaller components, crowdsourcing reduces the “lift” that any one individual is being asked to do. It also allows us to execute multiple concurrent work streams to increase speed to market and limit the amount of information any individuals in the crowd require.
4. A traditional enterprise project is going to involve many skills, and you won’t find all these skills in one unicorn developer. By breaking work down and hosting it as small competitions on our platform, you get top talent, with the right skills, working on specific aspects of your projects, right when you need them.
5. Since the work is completed through open competitions, that means you get the benefit of the strongest outputs from several contributors along the entire Software Development Life-Cycle. Because these challenges are outcome-based, you only pay for the outputs that meet your requirements.
6. Don’t worry—you don’t have to become some crowdsourcing expert to use Enterprise Crowdsourcing. You’ll have the support you want to get the outcomes you’re after.
7. Work where you’re already working – many customers use our Open APIs and platform extensions, allowing their internal teams to run work on our platform directly from their GIT or Azure DevOps environments.

Is Enterprise Crowdsourcing right for me and my organization?

If you want to execute on parts of technology projects, or whole projects where you’ll need a wide range of technology skills throughout the work, then our Enterprise Crowdsourcing model will work really well for you. And of course, you can use both TaaS, our freelancer model, at the same time you are using our crowdsourcing model. We have customers who use TaaS as a better way to add capacity or specialized skills to their team who also run competition-based projects on our platform. 

This is how Topcoder is truly different and why it can be so impactful for you. You get the most flexibility so you can decide how to engage the right talent at the right time. For 20 years we’ve served enterprises and growth companies and what was a radical idea in 2001 is now simply seen as a smarter way to access talent, so you can get more technology work done. 

To learn more about how Topcoder’s on-demand talent platform can serve your unique business and role, go here.

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