When we first started building the MeasureMatch platform, little did we know how much blood, sweat and tears would go into it.
It's a lot.
Now that we have cold, hard data from two years of client accounts, including demand requirements, technographics, budgets through the platform, services provided, ratings, reviews, plus several customer and service provider conversations, we think we've reached a pricing framework that's aligned to a fair value-for-money equation, and also rewards longer term commitments to our service.
So, from today (20 October 2020) we'll transparently calculate and show a "Platform Fee" in proposals and confirmed contracts.
If you've used Airbnb and similar services marketplaces, then you've paid this kind of platform fee before, and likely many times.
For startups to large enterprises, MeasureMatch is the marketplace platform connecting business leaders with amazing consulting and professional services partners.
The MeasureMatch Platform Fee for client account holders will start at 12.5% on top of the first $/£/€ 10,000 spent through the platform and that fee will drop to as little as 4%, as spending grows each calendar year.
Here's some math to break it down in a scenario:
Let's say you've already completed a single $45,000 contract in 2020 AND you're currently in a $17,000 contract AND you're in the process of locking in another contract, the budget for which is $24,000. In the aggregate, because your total contract value crosses three tiers, your effective fee, across all contracts, would net out to 9% or $7,780 on top of $86,000 of total contract value.
A traditional recruitment or contractor service would markup by 20-30%, costing as much as $25,800. The savings, in this scenario, is right around $18,000. Not insubstantial.
The MeasureMatch platform fee is nowhere close.
Because we're seeing a growing number of clients returning to the platform for several engagements, sometimes running concurrently, we're offering the opportunity for you to negotiate and secure a lower fee level in return for a longer term budget commitment.
When clients pre-pay a minimum of 30% of pre-committed budgets (held in escrow) they (you) can benefit from even better pricing. Get in touch to get a deal done.
When you come back for another project between now and Tuesday, 15 December 2020, all contracts are eligible for our lowest fee tier of 4%, which is reserved for clients spending $1 million or more!
Creating a valuable service for three sets of customers (buyers of services, providers of services and software vendors in need of both), plus ourselves - since we use our own software every day 😉- is hard and costly stuff.
And we still have a long way to go. Our product development roadmap is easily 12+ months long, at least with the current team (there are just 4 of us).
We've learned that in order to serve you and every other customer well, we need to craft intuitive, seamless, useful and valuable human and business experiences. Each touchpoint in our platform needs to be carefully designed, tested, built and refined over time. Many of these touchpoints will need to be torn down and rebuilt, time and time again.
We've learned that our human-first customer service is a critically important ingredient for success and something we need to maintain. It's part of why 95% of contracts have ended with 5 star ratings and glowing reviews.
We've also learned that our human-driven vetting of Client, Expert and Vendor account applications is worth the effort to maximize signal connections, and to lessen the noise.
Importantly, we learned that our earlier monetization model didn't align to a meaningful value-for-money equation.
Like with many things, we started with a simple framework to get going, which was based on a handful of business plan theoreticals. It's time for a balanced value exchange.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for your custom. Thank you for everything.
All feedback, ideas and questions welcomed.
James
The business world was ill-prepared for the current crisis, but a new breed of professional services marketplace platforms is providing valuable access to much-needed enterprise software and data specialists to curb the
Your success is our success. It's trite and a truism, we know, but important all the same. Just like "the customer is always right".
