17 Apr 2013 07:00
Wednesday April 17th
News Release
blur 3.0 goes live
Unified s-commerce experience for visitors, customers, experts
blur (Group) Plc (BLUR), the technology company that's reinventing commerce at blurgroup.com, today announced the launch of its new services commerce platform - blur 3.0 - designed to deliver a single, scalable and streamlined platform for all buyers and sellers of services.
With the phenomenal quarter-on-quarter growth in briefs, projects, customers and experts since the first version of blur Trading went into full beta in early 2010, the new trading platform secures blur Group's position as the leader in the market. The massively scalable technology not only enhances user experience and process but lends itself to future opportunities where third parties will be able to write to this platform.
Six years in development, blur 3.0's cloud-based platform makes the user experience even easier, faster and more unified than before. The new platform includes:
● Multi device management. Responsive-design web properties now takes blur Group to a more direct and transactional approach to briefing for services and projects from any device.
● Increased speed. As well as automated logins for partners, customers and experts, blurgroup.com provides a more intuitive gateway to the Trading Platform for all Exchange users. Individual Exchanges provide details of all projects that can easily be delivered, recommend similar projects, so shortening the time to brief and streamlining the process of expert selection, thus reducing overall project lifecycles. s-commerce has consistently delivered project kick-off in less than 10 working days and now the new platform can further reduce this.
● Scalability. With an increase of 178% in the number of briefs submitted in the last quarter (year-on-year) and a 258% increase in projects completed compared with the same quarter of 2012, the Global Services Exchange is set to grow significantly - today's 3.0 release provides the robust support to ensure that growth can continue.
● Enhanced user experience. New customer dashboards improve User Experience and enhance the use of blur Group's recently-launched Project Space for collaboration, project management and scheduling.
● Integrated services. Redesigned expert dashboards, integrating the latest pitch app technology with Community and Project Space features make it even easier to respond to briefs, with pricing and scheduling information feeding directly into new payments technology that will sit on the platform.
● Intuitive management. New partner dashboards will shortly be incorporated to support blur's 'Brief Anywhere' app which allows the brief app to integrate into other products and websites.
Philip Letts, CEO of blur Group commented:
"blur 3.0 will move the entire industry, buyers and sellers of corporate grade services, on to an s-commerce platform. The entire process - briefing services, discovering the best solutions and service providers, running the optimal purchase process, managing projects, collaboration and deliverables, rating and reviewing participants and payments has been streamlined making one seamless platform and a simple, powerful, unified experience. I believe it will be seen as our version of the launch of Windows 3.0 in the early '80's which transformed desktop computing. blur 3.0 can transform the global services industries. Starting with the 27,000 businesses worldwide that use it today."
For further information please contact:
Philip Letts, CEO/ Dorothy Mead, Head of Tel: +44 20 3176 0548
Marketing
About blur (Group) plc
blur Group is a technology company reinventing how businesses do commerce at blurgroup.com. Its Global Services Exchange delivers services differently: a new way to buy, manage and pay for core services. Over 27,000 businesses in 141 countries have adopted this s-commerce platform and changed the way they work.
blur Group (BLUR) is a public company headquartered in the UK with offices in the US and Europe. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market. blur was founded in January 2006 and launched in alpha in 2007 with the full, formal launch of the Global Services Exchange in January 2010. At that time, just over three briefs per month were submitted. Now 100 briefs per month from companies like Broadridge, Coral, eBay, Exceed, HCA, Momentive, Red Commerce, the Financial Times, Berlitz, Butlins, GE Healthcare and Tyco are received. Over the same time, average brief value has grown from approximately $1,500 in 2010 to $10,800 in Q1 2013.
Today, more than 1,800 briefs have been submitted with a combined brief value of over $24 million. These briefs have come from the US, UK, Europe, Africa and Asia with over 25,000 expert service providers on eight exchanges responding to them.