How to start with an online platform: alongside or integrated?

An breakfast session, then. With our friends from Rotterdam at Werf&, the knowledge community for experts in the recruitment sector. Together we updated agency directors about the value of online platforms in the industry. Everyone agreed that platforms are valuable. But precisely because of this, the change-minded directors present faced a serious choice: do I set up a new platform business beside my existing organization, or do I platformize the organization itself step by step? During the session, Geert-Jan Waasdorp, Martijn Arets, Wout Withagen, and Sepp Haans provided more insight into the options and considerations regarding this question.

Why online platforms?

Geert-Jan Waasdorp, founder of Intelligence Group, has an unparalleled overview of developments in the labor market and is able to place the emergence of online platforms in the sector into context. “The hourly rate of recruiters has increased significantly recently, and the tools they work with have become more expensive,” says Geert-Jan. “The lower the added value per recruiter, the more open mediation organizations are to other solutions to mediate between candidate and client.” Additionally, it is a vulnerability for organizations to place recruiters at the heart of core processes. “Recruiters nowadays only work for a few years at your organization, and you don't want your business to depend on the personal network of individual recruiters,” says platform specialist Sepp Haans. “Moreover, platforms fill a gap in terms of retention. Where mediators are good at bringing in candidates, platforms excel at intelligently automating the part that follows: retention.”

Martijn Arets, an independent platform expert, completes the picture by adding the candidate's perspective: “Individuals innovate and experiment a hundred times faster with tools than any innovative organization does. Knowing that you, as an organization, are slower, the question revolves around: how do you want to relate to this? To what extent do you want to keep up with candidates?” The agency directors who came to Rotterdam this morning already have an answer to this question. They see that platforms can contribute to optimally facilitating their target groups.

Does good technology equal a good platform?

It seems simple: candidates are used to running their lives via platforms and communities, so if mediators create a technically good platform, they give candidates exactly what they want. Right? “It doesn't work that way,” says Martijn Arets firmly. “You can have something technically very good without achieving success. It’s about platformthinking: the way platforms are set up, very facilitating, positively forces organizations to focus more on optimally serving the target group.” Wout Withagen, author of ‘Build a Successful Online Marketplace,’ adds: “You only make a difference with your platform if you think about what pain you want to remove for your candidates and clients.” And with that last sentence, we have the central theme of the inspiring morning. The party that best facilitates its candidates and clients holds gold.

Align your technological choices with your USP's

Okay, online platforms, by the way they are set up – focused on transparency, trust, and convenience – can certainly be of value to mediation organizations. But how do organizations extract that value? How do they harness that potential? By focusing on your organization’s distinctive value and on the pain you want and can remove for your candidates and clients. Sepp makes this very concrete by indicating there are three questions you must ask yourself in this regard.

1. What are the needs of your target groups (both candidates and clients)?

2. What is the character of your organization and what position do you want to claim in the market?

3. What does your (platform) business model canvas look like, also in relation to your current business?

When you have this clear, you can align your technological choices accordingly. Because if you know how you want to embody your own identity in the platform, you also know which part of your architecture you want (and must) keep in control and for which part you can choose standard solutions. “It is often wrongly thought that you have to develop a platform entirely by yourself,” Sepp adds. “I would advise only developing the part yourself where you want to uniquely express something as an organization.”

Online platform: beside or within your organization?

Back to the central question, especially for those who already know they want to work with a platform: do you set up the online platform beside your current organization or right through your current organization? The answer is not as straightforward as you might hope. Sepp: “This is different in every situation and is totally dependent on the character of your organization.”

Both scenarios have their challenges, but Sepp and Wout indicate that they currently mainly choose the option to set up the platform within the current organization. “This makes it possible to start small, with a small part of your customer journey,” says Wout. “And as you build the platform step by step, you make your own organization more digital, efficient, and transparent. So you notice improvement right away.” Martijn adds another beautiful conclusion: “Don’t see the legacy within your organization as an obstacle to innovate, but rather as a strength. Ask yourself: what does my organization have that a party starting from scratch tomorrow does not have? You have your brand, your data, the trust, your people. Beautiful elements that can relatively easily give you an advantage.”