(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors - UK) Fast-growing crowd sourcing firm blur Group UNwill go on being described as "fast-growing" for a while yet, judging by its fourth quarter metrics
The number of projects submitted in the final quarter of 2013 was up 188% to 719 from 250 a year earlier, while even more impressively, the value of the contracts submitted in the quarter was up 1,509% year-on-year to US$64.52mln
It was, as hardly needs saying, another record breaking quarter for the services commerce (s-commerce) firm, and provides further evidence to support the company's assertion that s-commerce is being adopted by business for significant services projects
"We've described 2013 as the year of s-commerce adoption. This quarter not only confirmed that s-commerce is changing business globally, particularly evidenced by growing project submissions from Asia Pacific, but also showed how high-value, long term projects with staged delivery cycles provide visibility of Exchange use and uptake through 2014," said Philip Letts, chief executive officer of blur
"This quarter saw us build the organisational infrastructure to shape our business for the next three years, allowing us to grow and scale globally. Building on the exceptional growth in s-commerce adoption 2013, 2014 will see a focus on enterprise s-commerce and mobile s-commerce accelerating the uptake globally," he added
The total value of projects submitted to blur's business services exchange is now over US$115mln, with US$64mln in the fourth quarter alone, so the service is clearly gaining momentum, helped by a platform upgrade in 2013 that enabled the exchange to handle bigger projects
The impact of the upgrade can be seen in the rise in the average submitted project value from US$16,100 in the final quarter of 2012 to US$89,700 in the fourth quarter of 2013, though the 457% increase in the average value of submitted projects is also an indication of increasing confidence of big businesses in the crowd sourcing model; having initially taken a "suck it and see" approach with small projects, existing customers are now confident enough to scale up while new customers take heart from the confidence in the model of their peers
Projects kicked off in the quarter totalled 180, slightly more than double the number (89) started a year earlier, while the number of what blur terms 'experts' - professionals looking for work - climbed 47% to 34,109 at the end of the year from 23275 at the end of 2012
In 2013 as a whole, 2,086 projects were submitted, bringing the total number of projects submitted to the exchange up to 3,497
Particularly notable in the quarter were the rising number of projects from India and Australia/New Zealand, the company's statement noted. The company plans to open an Asia Pacific office later in 2014
The USA and Canada remained the largest market with 47% of all projects submitted coming from this region; Europe was next largest with 31% while 15% of projects came from India, the sub-continent's highest share to date
The largest number of projects were for marketing services; however, the technology services field continues to be the fastest growing and is now accounting for over 20% of submitted projects
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