Bennett Gold LLP Earns Mention In Toronto Life Magazine, April 2005.

iTenders: Capturing the Essence of the Internet

(NetBlazer Series of Articles #2 - Part #1 is here)

This article profiles another NetBlazer - a business that is shaping e-commerce.

If you ask most anyone to define e-commerce, they will likely tell you that it's 'buying things using the Internet'. They'll probably mention Amazon.com, eBay or Victoria's Secret. They'll tell you that business-to-consumer e-commerce has the advantage of choice and that security is still a cause for concern. If you survey the popular media to see how businesses should use the Internet to deal with one another, you'll see talk about 'building communities'. But you'll find that since most businesses don't know what that means, they end up building electronic storefronts.

That's why iTenders.com is such an innovative addition to the new e-commerce. They've captured the essence of the Internet: building communities around complimentary needs.

In May 1999, Peter and his brother David Cusimano discovered an elegant solution to an age-old problem: how to efficiently bring together suppliers and purchasers of professional services. To understand why this is a problem, consider the following two common and related situations:

1) Your small to mid-sized professional services firm (i.e. accountant, lawyer, management consultant, etc.) is doing well, spending most of its time doing what it does best: providing clients with top-notch service. However, you want to see your firm grow and you recognize that while some of your new business might come from current clients, you need to acquire new clients.

At the same time, competition is fierce and new developments in industry, technology and regulations keep you busy trying to stay informed of current issues, trends and techniques. Add to this the spiraling cost of acquiring new clients and you conclude that you can't shift any more time or resources from providing service to business development. The result is that you miss out on developing new clients that will, by the challenges and revenues they present you, help ensure the continued growth, evolution and profitability of your business.

2) Your small to mid-sized professional services firm is doing well. But to continue to operate smoothly and provide more value to clients, you need some professional advice that neither you nor your colleagues have. You know that many firms can provide you with the expertise that you need but you don't have the time to find the most appropriate provider. Nor do you know enough about the profession to ask precisely the right questions that help to narrow the field of options.

As a result, you rely on the telephone book, direct mail flyers or word-of-mouth. The result: you employ a firm that isn't a good fit with your organization - one that doesn't understand your needs but is more concerned with short-term gains. The next time you need similar advice, you find yourself back at square one.

The Cusimanos, Peter, a lawyer by trade and his brother David, a Web designer, astutely recognized that the Internet provided an ideal opportunity to address both of these scenarios. They incorporated iTenders.com in July and instantly began building a network of business professionals anxious to exchange their varied expertise. The result has been one of the rare examples of community-building on the Internet.

Professionals and service providers from across Canada log onto iTenders.com and through a streamlined, focused, informed and user-friendly series of forms efficiently make requests for services to fulfill their needs. At the same time, these and other professionals identify opportunities for further business without incurring the costs and time involved in generating or following-up on dead-end prospects. For example, an accountant seeking legal advice might be contacted by management consultants searching for accounting expertise.

iTenders.com successfully creates a venue where the buyers and suppliers can and do fulfill each others' needs. For its simple elegance, iTenders.com charges only a nominal fee when professionals bid on a request for service. The result is a win-win situation where buyers and purchasers minimize the time and costs of building new business, identifying and obtaining comparable quotes for services and coordinating and managing these activities.

Also to their credit, Peter and David understood that building a community requires creating a business environment of trust. And, given the sensitivity of information that is shared during the early stages of matching-up of buyers and suppliers, building trust doesn't come easily. iTenders is intelligently building a WebTrust (http://www.WebTrust.net) compliant site to overcome just such trust and privacy concerns.

Peter and David are currently launching a marketing campaign and finalizing venture capital funding. While they may be flying under the radar of similar American-based dotcoms, iTenders.com is methodically testing and proving e-commerce ingenuity in building business around bringing businesses together.

Theirs may be a model that is new to most 'click and mortar' companies, but it is one of the few examples of Internet businesses taking advantage of what the technology has to offer. There's no question: they'll succeed. Big Time.

If you think you or your company currently are, or will soon be NetBlazers, contact us. We want to share your stories and insights.

Bennett Gold LLP invites your questions, comments and feedback: E-Mail: action@BennettGold.ca Telephone: 416-449-2249. Read Bennett Gold LLP's Privacy Policies and Practices.

WEBTRUST is a trade mark of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. All other cited trade names and marks are property of their respective owners.

BennettGold.ca is a P3P compliant and W3C validated web site, coded and developed by Planetcast.