Marketplace or orchestration platform: which does your field operation need?
Labour marketplaces help you find technicians. Orchestration platforms carry requirements, evidence, acceptance and payment through every job. How they differ, and how to choose.
Two different problems
Labour marketplaces for field service connect businesses with independent technicians. They are built to answer one question quickly: who can do this job, here, soon?
Orchestration platforms answer a different question: how do we deliver this work to our customer’s standard, through many businesses and engineers, and prove it so it can be accepted and paid? Field service orchestration covers the requirements, the people, the evidence, the acceptance and the commercial record of each job.
How they compare
| Labour marketplace | Orchestration platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Main question | Who can do this job? | How do we deliver and prove it through our whole chain? |
| Workforce | Mainly freelance technicians found on the marketplace | Your own teams, preferred partners and subcontractors, plus rated engineers |
| Requirements | Job description and instructions | Acceptance criteria and runbooks carried to whoever does the work |
| Evidence | Completion details and uploads | Evidence captured against each criterion, tamper-evident, shared with your customer |
| Acceptance | Job marked complete | Accepted against the criteria, or a specific exception raised |
| Commercial record | Payment for the booked work | Agreed rates, approved changes and accepted work flowing into the invoice |
| Best for | Filling gaps in coverage fast | Running and proving field delivery you are accountable for |
Choose a marketplace when
- you need extra hands for occasional jobs in areas you do not cover;
- the work is simple and the acceptance criteria are light;
- you have no established partners in the region.
Choose an orchestration platform when
- most of your work goes through partners and subcontractors you already use;
- your customers have strict acceptance criteria and query invoices;
- you need one record of delivery across many businesses;
- the time between work done and payment is hurting your cash flow or your partners’.
Where FortyFive fits
FortyFive is an orchestration platform. You start with your own teams and preferred partners, carry your customer’s requirements to every job, capture proof of delivery on site and invoice from the accepted record. When you need more coverage, you can find rated engineers by skill and area on the same platform. See how a job moves through FortyFive.