November 20, 2020 One Year of Talent as a Service – TaaS Turns One

When we launched Talent as a Service (TaaS) nearly a year ago, I spoke onstage at TCO19 about the importance of timing. Good timing means things are aligned. We were looking at the trends in technology platforms, talent strategy, and workforce management. 83% of businesses reported having trouble recruiting suitable candidates for their open positions, particularly highly skilled STEM positions, and work-from-home was on the rise. 

That was November of last year, and then we had this unfortunate global event. Amidst disruption and uncertainty there’s been this great acceleration: 

• 32% of enterprises are actively increasing contingent labor during the pandemic (Gartner) 
• 97% of enterprise decision makers believe the pandemic sped up their company’s digital transformation by an average of 6 years (Twilio)
• 74% of firms plan on maintaining the increase in work from home (BBC)
• The freelance revolution is large and growing, according to a Payoneer Report featured in Forbes

We thought the moment was right before, and now, it’s beyond right. COVID removed the biggest hurdle for many organizations—the resistance to remote work. Now, the table has never been more set for this adoption. Talent-as-a-Service (TaaS) provides our customers with a fast, scalable digital workforce, and like all offerings on Topcoder, it is crafted for the enterprise. 

TAAS AS PART OF A BLENDED RESILIENT WORKFORCE 

Another trend noted in the aforementioned Gartner report: businesses are transitioning from designing for efficiency to designing for resilience. A hybrid, on-demand talent strategy that blends FTEs, contractors, and on-demand talent (aka crowd) is proven to be an effective way to bolster enterprise resilience. Here’s how Paul Hlivko, CTO & CXO of Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, describes the value of an all-in talent strategy for his organization:

“When the crowd is woven in, and it’s given to the teams as something they could use to amplify and increase pace, increase speed, and increase experimentation—that’s really powerful.”

—Paul Hlivko, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield

Our position is very simple: If you’re not already exploring on-demand talent as part of your workforce strategy, then you’re missing a key piece of the puzzle, and putting your company in a compromised position. As we know, disruptions don’t stop happening. Look who has succeeded in the past six months, what do they have in common? They’re digital, and they’ve been willing to pivot quickly to deliver for their customers. 

As an example, Australian telecommunications company Telstra recently won our Enterprise Resiliency award as part of the 2020 Topcoder Innovation Awards for exactly this reason. They saw an opportunity to incorporate crowd into their workforce, and they throttled their use of TaaS into what were extraordinary headwinds. They made a choice to do something bold. Now, Telstra has become a model for others in terms of workforce strategy innovation.

THE IMPRESSIVE GROWTH OF TALENT AS A SERVICE

We brought TaaS to the market not knowing that COVID was around the corner. And now, TaaS has seen huge growth.

Here are the metrics that continue to support that this offering is both timely and valuable:

• 35% of Topcoder customers are now using Talent as a Service
• 32% of Topcoder member payments are now tied to TaaS work (this represents an important uptick in earnings opportunities for our members)
• TaaS is serving customers in over 10 industries including: Banking, Consumer Goods, Energy, Entertainment, Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Public Sector, Technology & Technology Services, Telecommunications, Travel & Hospitality 

“We appreciate the work put in to deliver a quality product. With almost zero bugs every release and delivering on all features well ahead of timelines, Talent as a Service has been very valuable to our delivery team.”

—Leading Video Game Studio using TaaS

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

While it’s been a wild year, we’re proud to be in the position we’re in, helping customers realize the benefits of on-demand talent as part of a new workforce strategy. We’re proud to have launched TaaS ahead of the pandemic, and we’re even more excited for what we believe happens next. Topcoder is going to keep helping our customers and our industry to take the bold steps required for positive change. We will help our customers move to a more flexible, agile, on-demand workforce model that will benefit their organizations and become an incredible service to the growing community of freelancers looking for rewarding gig work. TaaS is where it starts, but not where it ends! The talent supply chain will continue to evolve and become more efficient and rewarding for both the talent and the organizations wielding the power of the gig economy.  

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