19 Feb 2013 07:00
Embargoed for release at 7am
London, February 19th, 2013
blur (Group) plc
("blur," the "Group" or the "Company")
blur Group enhances its services exchange platform with the launch of Premium Account
blur (Group) Plc (BLUR), operators of the world's leading Global Services Exchange at www.blurgroup.com has launched Premium Account - a new function that allows its customers to handle multiple briefs and users from one dashboard. The service aims to make the whole delivery process faster regardless of location, price, service type and industry across businesses of all sizes.
Since formally launching the Global Services Exchange in early 2010, blur Group has seen an evolution in Exchange usage. Early adopters were typically smaller businesses, seeking to fulfill one or two projects a year in the area of marketing or design. With the growth of the number of Exchanges, and the proven benefits of s-commerce such as increased quality, decreased time and cost, the Exchange is now seeing exciting growth in the number of larger businesses as users, placing multiple briefs on the Exchange for projects ranging from IT, through legal, accounting and design and Premium Account has been designed to enhance the experience for these users.
Premium Account integrates directly into blur Trading, the Exchange's cloud-based s-commerce platform, allowing customers to handle multiple briefs and multiple users from a single dashboard. It means Exchange adopters can take full advantage of the services delivery across multiple project types, locations and service providers.
Premium Account Administrators manage all the users in the business who are involved at any stage of the project delivery - whether it's briefing, running or recommending as well as managing project status and tasks within the Project Space app launched earlier this month. There are two other security and privilege levels - coordinator and contributor - to ensure that blur's Exchange can easily be rolled out across any size of business.
In addition to the management capabilities, Premium Account users are provided with a subscription to Services Pricing Data, allowing them to understand current trading prices for the plethora of projects briefed across all of the exchanges on the Global Services Exchange.
Philip Letts, blur Group CEO explained the importance of Premium Account: "The promise of s-commerce is to accelerate the entire delivery process of business services online regardless of location, price, service type or industry. With Premium Account we're providing businesses with a way to manage the entire delivery cycle, while retaining control and ownership within each function. And of course it increases convenience to the customer, so the process runs faster and even more cost-effectively."
The premium account, pitch app and project space are all working towards a more uniformed platform and streamlined operating system to benefit users and blur Group. Its pricing starts at $10 per user per month, scaling down to $5 per user per month depending on number of users in a business. The Basic Account for single users, briefs and pitches is, as always, free. Future updates for the premium account will include multi currency payment and payment management.
ENDS
blur (Group) plc | investors.blurgroup.com |
Philip Letts, CEO/ Belinda Wrigley, Group FD | Tel: +44 20 3176 0548 |
N+1 Singer | |
Shaun Dobson / Matt Thomas | Tel: +44 20 7496 3000 |
Newgate Threadneedle | |
Caroline Evans-Jones/ Josh Royston/ Hilary Millar | Tel: +44 20 7653 9850 |
About blur (Group) plc at blurgroup.com
blur owns and operates s-commerce exchanges where businesses in any country can buy, sell and pay for services like marketing, advertising, technology, legal and accounting. Businesses brief projects and expert service providers pitch for the project and the entire process runs online right through to project delivery and payment.
In early 2010, when the Exchange formally launched, just over three briefs per month were submitted. In Q4 2012 this had risen to around 80 per month from companies like Broadridge, Coral, Exceed, Fantasy World, Red Commerce, the Financial Times, Berlitz, Butlins, GE Healthcare and Tyco. Over the same time, average brief value has grown from approximately $1,500 in 2010 to an average of $16,050 in Q4 2012. Now more than 1,500 briefs have been submitted with a combined brief value approaching $22 million, with these briefs coming from the US, UK, Europe, Africa and Asia.
Today, blur Group has over 24,000 experts, agencies and service provider firms in over 133 countries on eight crowd platforms who benefit from networking, peer advice as well as new business opportunities. All are reviewed and approved by the Group's Exchange Support executives before joining.