Outsource To Individuals, Collaborate On Content With Pepperconn Groupware

Ex-Mediacorp-Samsung Asia-Nokia-Singtel guy, Adrian Teo, left MNCs to start his own company in the form of pepperconn. Branding itself as providing “Social Media Solutions”, there are various parts to pepperconn’s multiple offerings; the key is a platform that allows enterprises to outsource the various parts of their business to individual talents like writers, photographers and video producers, so that content collaboration & publication can take place. Content produced can also be tracked using an analytics engine tied in with the groupware and enterprises can also manage their talents and the latter’s KPIs.

Why It Is Unique

It is usually a pain to try to source for different companies or freelancers who will be able to help you put together that corporate video you’ve been meaning to produce, or perhaps you are looking for copywriters, models and photographers to help you get your fashion design business up and running. Pepperconn allows you to search for these “Talents” in their database (freelancers who self-register), book them and get them working.

Furthermore, you can manage the work done by these individuals and track their progress and results.

Process in pepperconn’s groupware.

The company has filed for a patent for the groupware with the Intellectual Property of Singapore (IPOS).

Ironically, limited scalability?

While tech platforms that allow companies to automate certain processes or at least simplify some bits of their lives are usually pretty scalable, one drawback I see in the growth of pepperconn groupware is in the talent database.

For example, photographers and models probably have to be located in the same geographical region for them to do their job for the enterprise. So even if say the product takes off in Singapore and a model in Indonesia hears about it and signs up, (s)he wouldn’t be able to book any jobs because no photographers are located near him/her. So this means that for the pepperconn groupware to take off in a country, there must be a good ecosystem of talents that can serve an enterprise there.

The plus side for the example I took is that an industry such as fashion, word will probably spread from model to photographer, or vice versa, so that the talent database can be built up organically.

The Company

pepperconn was founded in May 2009 and also offers social media consultancy services. The groupware is currently only for Singapore-based businesses.