OnForce, the online marketplace for IT services, last month expanded into Canada and will soon expand into Germany and the United Kingdom.
The move to Canada followed customer requests for an expansion there, OnForce executives said. For example, a typical user of the service would be a U.S. solution provider with a U.S. client looking to expand into Canada, but without local IT talent there. The service would enable the company to do that expansion by outsourcing the work to local individuals.
OnForce has ramped up 150 fully profiled and active partners in Canada and has begun the profiling process with another 100, according to Paul Nadjarian, senior vice president of product and marketing.
But the move into Canada wasn’t an easy one, said CEO Peter Cannone. The tax jurisdictions and structures were complex. OnForce added these structures into its online marketplace platform, along with the functionality to make it easy for users to transfer funds among Canadian bank accounts. OnForce also made language changes to its platform to suit the needs of its Canadian service providers. It wasn’t a quick or easy process, said Nadjarian.
“There were a lot of lessons learned, and those will be useful as we expand to other countries,” Cannone said.
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OnForce selected the United Kingdom and Germany for its next expansions due to the high uptake of IT there, according to its venture capital partner Accel Partners, the same firm that funded Facebook.
In addition, OnForce also moved its headquarters this year from New York to Boston to accommodate the company’s planned expansion over the next 12 to 24 months, the executives said