We’re excited to announce the launch of a buyer referral program, which will reward our provider community with cold, hard cash for referring new buyers to the OnForce marketplace.

To participate, providers just need to refer a buyer to OnForce, and instruct them to include their Tech ID as the “Referral Code” during the sign up process. OnForce will keep track of all buyers who sign up using a pro’s Tech ID. Then, anytime one of these buyers closes their first work order, the pro will receive $25 in your OnForce account.

The more active a referred buyers is, the more cash we’ll pay out:
• If that buyer closes 10+ more work orders within the next three months (after the month of their 1st work order), the pro earns an additional $100; OR
• If a buyer closes 100+ work orders within the next three months (after the month of their 1st work order), the pro earns an additional $1,000.

So each referred buyer can be worth $25, $125 or $1025, depending upon how active they are. There is no limit to the number of buyers a provider can refer, so the payouts are unlimited.

Check out the complete details of this program.

I’ve been meaning to post these pics for a while, but haven’t had a chance until now. As many members of our buyer and provider community noticed and pointed out, OnForce was a prominent sponsor during the NBA Eastern Conference Championship and the Finals. And while the on-court results weren’t what I wanted personally (go Pistons!), there were a lot of smilin’ faces around the halls of our Lexington, MA headquarters. Beyond that, we were extremely pleased with the exposure that the OnForce brand received.

In addition to the 10-15 minutes of LED advertising that we received each game, we were fortunate enough to have our LED ads make it into a two-page spread in Sports Illustrated (see pages 8-9 of the June 2nd issue), the Celtics home page, and some serious exposure during the ESPN / ABC primetime telecasts (see below).

This is the first time we’ve done awareness-oriented marketing on this type of stage, but I suspect that you’ll see more such placements in the future. Here were a few of our favs:

Kevin Garnett takes a break under the glow of the OnForce LED ad…

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The C’s on their way to the title, and our ON button smiling down over the scene…

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The main scoreboard at The Garden, lit up with our “Find Pros Here” ad…

We’re happy to announce the launch of version 4.7 of the OnForce marketplace. This release includes several new features for both buyers and our provider community. In no particular order, here are the highlights:

Giving Consumer Electronics Its Due: OnForce has split Consumer Electronics out separate from IT into its own category. This will enable providers to specify their CE skills more accurately, and buyers to find the pros with the right skills for CE work like installations of flat panel TV, home theater or audio devices.

Provider Skills Selector: As part of splitting CE into its own top-level category, we’ve revamped our skills selector that pros can use to profile their skills.

Work Order Templates: Buyers can now create work order templates that contain pre-defined information. This will save buyers time, hassle and keystrokes in creating new work orders from these templates. When a buyer creates a new work order, they can select a template to pre-populate some or all location, attachments, and routing rule info for that work order. Buyers can use templates that do or do not specify price, address or custom fields. Work order templates can be accessed in the BCC under “Company Settings”. Learn more.

Document management: You asked… we listened. Now, providers can submit work order documentation by uploading and emailing scanned versions of documents. Providers can print, complete and submit a doc by uploading the scanned TIFF files to the online work orders, by emailing the TIFF as an attachment to documents@onforce.com, or by submitting them via fax. Learn more.

*New Certifications: Based upon feedback from our buyers and pros, we’ve added new certs to the OnForce platform. Going forward, providers can add (and buyers can find pros with) the following certifications:

·Dell: Point of Sale Product, Foundation 2008 Desktop, Foundation 2008 Portables
·CompTIA: PDI+
·HP: MasterTech TV, MasterTech PC
·Apple: Apple Certified Macintosh Technician

Today we released our first-ever State of the Industry report for the 1st quarter of ‘08.

We wrote this report and made it a completely free download because we recognize that this type of real-world, transactional info doesn’t exist anywhere else in the industry, and because it can inform the decisions of our community of buyers and professionals as they grow and sustain their IT service businesses. For example, we uncovered the following:

• Hourly rates are highest for work in VoIP, consumer electronics, and wiring & cabling, as much as 80% higher than some other IT categories.
• Wyoming, Vermont and Alaska are the most expensive states in the country (by hourly rates), whereas the lowest rates are in Georgia, Arizona and Oklahoma.
• New York, Houston and Chicago are the busiest cities for IT services; while Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando and Richmond all ranked surprisingly high our top 25 list.
• The most expensive cities for IT service work include Akron, Ohio; Topeka, Kan.; Irvine, Calif. and Parsippany, N.J.

Even though it was just released this afternoon, we’ve already gotten some amazing media coverage of this report, including from Channel Insider, SearchCIO and PHONE+. And while we love to see our name in lights, we’re mainly excited that these industry gurus and the buyers and providers that we’ve shared this with, see as much value in this type of info as we do.

If you have specific data requests (whether it’s for pricing a formal RFP response, or just trying to learn the cost of finding contract pros in an unfamiliar geography / category), drop me a line and we’ll help wherever we can. Or if you have information that you’d like to see in future editions of the State of the Industry report, we’d love to hear those ideas too.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, “I am not a smart man…”

As a growth-oriented business, we break company records on a regular basis. But the really big, all-time records are always tougher to knock off. So when we recorded our highest-ever weekly volume a few weeks ago, it elicited some back-patting around the halls of OnForce. When we re-set the record the very next week, it was cause for some real celebration. And when I decided to throw down the gauntlet, stating in writing that I would shave my head if we broke our all-time volume record for a third week in a row… well, it just affirmed that Forrest was speaking for me too.

So what have I learned?
- First, the vp of marketing should never, ever make an offer like that in writing to a hungry, driven, talented (yet vindictive!) sales organization.
- Second, I never should have bet against the OnForce marketplace itself… there’s far too much momentum behind it. In the past six months, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in adoption by our buyers. I should’ve known better than to bet against that overwhelming trend and momentum.
- Third, B.A. Baracus would be proud (ok, so maybe I just hope that one’s true).
- Finally, I’d make the same trade any time… as soon as my hair grows back, that is.

Congrats to our sales, bizdev, market support, and all the other teams here at OnForce. And most importantly, sincere thanks to our community of IT service companies and professionals for helping us achieve back-to-back-to-back record volume weeks!