A new website for Skillfair

The Skillfair website is currently being re-developed and I thought it would be useful to share our plans for it with you, and to ask for your comments and ideas – particularly if there are features that you think would help you and that we haven’t thought of.

Phase 1

We’re taking a phased approach to the redevelopment to minimise the risk and potential disruption. Phase 1 is concentrating on;

• Upgrading the technology platform to give better stability and ease of maintenance for the future
• Focus on capturing new clients and encouraging them to contact consultants
• Improving some aspects of the user interface while avoiding major change.

Some new features that you will see immediately are;

For casual visitors/clients;

• A streamlined site with easier access to Search for consultants
• Wider variety of articles and advice aimed at encouraging clients to use the service
• Showcase consultant information on the home page alongside projects
• Links from consultant profiles to ‘other consultants with these skills’ to encourage browsing

For Consultants;

• Improved interface to edit your profile, broken into smaller chunks for ease of use
• Ability to display company name on the directory if you wish
• Skill search facility
• Matched project listings – will show projects on all markets
• Facilities to help you manage your project contacts, showing which are new, active, lost etc.
• Improved account status page with details of your membership, ability to reprint invoices manage alert settings etc

For Clients;

• Matched consultant listings will show consultants from all markets
• Consultant search will show all markets
• Improved facilities to manage responses to projects, showing which consultants are new, active, rejected etc.

Phase 2

Once Phase 1 is live we plan to use the new technology platform to further improve the interface and particularly to allow you to provide more and richer content about your services. The main changes we currently plan are;

• A web 2.0 style interface for profiles – this means you will be able to format your profile, add images, links, documents etc
• Allow you to add articles, press releases, white papers etc to your profile
• Add details of your professional memberships, testimonial letters etc
• Add features to help you manage the ‘incoming’ projects – indicating which you’re interested in and filtering out those that are of no interest

Phase 3

Other features that we are thinking about but would like your input on how they would work best and/or whether they’re of interest include;

Allowing consultants to run their own subject based ‘special interest groups’ through Skillfair

Using the site to encourage collaboration and joint bidding – we’ve had a number of suggestions about this and are currently looking at a mechanism whereby you could indicate your interest in collaborating , on any project or on a particular project

We welcome any ideas or suggestions you may have on how the site could be improved either to capture more clients or to make using it easier and more efficient – just comment on this blog to let us know what you think.

Remote Working

There's been much discussion in the press about the pros and cons of remote working – many of our members are experienced home workers and are well placed to identify what works and what doesn't, so we recently surveyed them to find out how important technology is to remote working and what other factors are involved in a successful remote relationship. To see the results and read the full article visit:

http://www.changeboard.com/resources/article/2768/enabling-remote-working-trust-and-communication-/

- we'd be very interested to hear your comments and experiences.

Jo Bausor

Real projects for real consultants

We've seen quite an upsurge in projects posted directly by clients over the course of 2009, perhaps because clients are keen to get value for money and avoid the overheads of larger consultancies and agencies. But what's most satisfying about what has become a regular flow of projects is that the majority of them are what I call 'real projects for real consultants'.

Engineering consultants AdrianTaylor put the point well, "I'm most impressed at how the real solidly engineering jobs are rolling in to Skillfair at the moment. Recently it was those troublesome trucks on the railway, then it was advice on how to take a significant piece of plant to pieces - and now it is the deliciously tantalising matter of potentially supervising the supply and installation of small scale gas-turbine and steam-raising power for electricity generation.
And before all that, I got a problematic railcar to drive (ahem - 'assess') for a couple of days. Congratulations!"

Not all our recent projects have been engineering related but they have generally had a satisfyingly 'meaty' flavour and have been well received by those consultants with the particular specialist skills required.

The art of the tendering process

I noticed a comment on Twitter about the problems an extremely experienced consultant had with tendering, in that as a newly set up limited company he didn’t have the financial history that’s often required for larger public sector tenders.

Our members frequently tell us about the same problem and our advice is that Skillfair can be used to find associates that have got the appropriate requirements to join a bid team. It's also worth checking with the client too - sometimes even though they say '3 years accounts' they are happy to look at newly formed companies.

It seems that there’s a real art to the tendering process and I’m looking forward to Marcus Eden-Ellis’s session on Tendering skills at our conference this year , which should help to de-mystify the process and give some insight into the knowledge and skills required to submit a winning tender. For more information visit: www.skillfair.co.uk

See Skillfair Members on LinkedIn

One of the nice things about Skillfair is the feedback and comments we get - all of which help us to keep in touch with what you're doing. Some of the comments on this blog have developed into quite extensive and useful discussions as well.

The Skillfair website has been around for quite a while now and over the last 6 months or so we've started to redevelop it to allow us to make use of the kind of facilities that are now available on the web, such as blogging, tweeting etc. The first phase will focus on encouraging more clients to post projects on the site and making sure that information about consultants is readily available to them.

While working on the site we've spent a lot of time considering whether to build a forum or discussion facility - in the end we've decided that it makes more sense to piggy back on a system that many people in consulting already use, so we've set up a members-only Skillfair group on LinkedIn.

The group facility allows you to discuss issues of interest, post news items and network with other Skillfair members and also provides an alternative way to access our tender & project feeds. LinkedIn users will be able to see that you belong to Skillfair alongside any other affiliations you may have.