New Investment: Arbolus, changing the way knowledge is used in companies
The world’s leading companies today understand the importance of building networks to stay abreast of the latest industry developments and gain expert knowledge. Aside from the fact that it’s hard to keep contacts organized and tidy, there are a number of other reasons companies don’t use their networks to their full potential. Additionally, conventional approaches to interaction with independent experts fail to support beneficial knowledge-sharing processes.
In a world where knowledge is power, expert interviews have become essential for researching new markets, developing products, defining new strategies and differentiating from the competition. Consultancies, advisors, strategy & marketing departments, and investors regularly use the services multiple times a year. They account for a market of more than two billion dollars, growing with double-digit numbers over the last five years. Even so, innovation in the market remains minimal.
Legacy players operate as professional services businesses, failing to deliver value from an expert introduction after a one-hour interview. Interviews are usually held by a single department and its findings end up lost in PowerPoint presentations or reports. Therefore, companies only build up a short-term view on matters without tracking and organizing the knowledge long-term.
Arbolus makes the most of your existing professional network
When we first met Arbolus, we immediately knew that their solution was a game-changer. Incorporated in 2017, they already have more than a hundred clients that trust them and this number is growing by 20% every month. Having a combined experience of more than 20 years in the expert interview industry, the founders knew clients' pains and what processes needed to be improved.
At Plug and Play, we have decided to support Arbolus’ goal to create the most agile platform in freelance collaboration. Sam and Will aim to provide an all-in-one solution that makes expert knowledge accessible to anyone. In the future, firms won’t have to bring on full-time employees but can contract dedicated professionals to increase agility, save money and have the right person for the job at any time.
The Arbolus platform comes with a full tech suite for expert management, data collection, and network building.
Its tool offers:
- Project Management: When launching a project, businesses can easily and securely collaborate with their colleagues and freelancers.
- Recommendation engine: AI-based expert recommendation
- Referral process: Organic growth of the platform through adding own contacts
- Payment & Compliance services: In solution payment and invoicing
- Conferencing & transcript tools: Web / mobile calls with direct transcripts
- Communication Tools: Users can message, schedule, and share documents with individual contacts. They can also initiate a group channel as well as providing a mobile app to facilitate effective communication.
Arbolus’ unique selling proposition is clear: they create trusted networks for each client with the dedicated knowledge database. It includes transcribed expert calls, tagging of key findings, a search engine, invoice and payment histories. The highest level of trust and relevance is guaranteed by the transparency and reliability of their recommendation and verification engines.
This year they are launching Canopy, their new video insights platform, which will provide access to knowledge to enterprise clients and SMEs.
At Plug and Play, we support over 450 corporates worldwide in their innovation activities and efforts. We definitely see the value our cooperation could foster in the implementation of the largest and most innovative experts and corporates network in the world. We are amazed by the milestones achieved by Will and Sam so far and we are looking forward to enhancing their effort by creating the right synergies with our global network.
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