ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)
ZBJ.com (ZBJ), an online platform that connects knowledge workers to small- and medium-sized enterprises, is China’s largest outsourcing platform. Founded by Mingyue Zhu in 2006, ZBJ had grown into a unicorn with 4,000 employees and a daily transaction volume of RMB15 million by 2017. During the company’s 11-year history, ZBJ had launched ten transformation campaigns to overcome various challenges by changing its products, operations, and business model. For example, it encountered a winner-takes-all competition, disintermediation (when service providers and clients took transactions off the platform to avoid the platform’s 20% commission fees), the rise of fake transactions, member management issues, and difficulties in delivering satisfactory services to large enterprises. Zhu must decide how to use the next campaign to address challenges that had emerged since the last campaign as well as how ZBJ should expand globally.
Keywords: outsourcing; disintermediation; Two-Sided Platforms; Information Technology; Problems and Challenges; Global Strategy; Information Technology Industry; China;
Citation:
Zhu, Feng, Weiru Chen, and Shirley Sun. "ZBJ: Building a Global Outsourcing Platform for Knowledge Workers (A)." Harvard Business School Case 618-044, January 2018. (Revised October 2019.) View Details