How many techs does OnForce really have?

A couple of weeks ago I was directed to an article on The SmartVan, a web site aimed at field service technicians. The piece was called Service Outsourcer OnForce Touts ‘Efficient’ Job-Filling Model and was posted Julu 27, 2012 by Darren Weiss, a contributing writer for the site.

It is, of course, a marketing piece, but there’s nothing wrong with that. The article itself is a rather straightforward promotion of the OnForce platform. If more techs engaged in this kind of PR for their businesses, they would likely have more customers of their own and rely less on service platforms for work. Marketing is a good thing. I have no issue with that.

I do, however, have one issue with this article. It is a chronic issue that really needs to be addressed.

When marketing your business, it is important to lead without misleading. Truth in advertising, so to speak. Articles such as this are a powerful marketing tool because the average reader tends to take the author at his or her word and accept what he or she says based on the assumption that the facts have been researched and are, indeed, factual. This is especially important if the author is supposed to be a journalist.

The issue is with the number of techs OnForce purports to have.

The article states “OnForce has a database of over 100,000 technicians in all sorts of fields, which companies can contract out on a one-off or ongoing basis.”

OnForce has over one hundred thousand techs? Really? A hundred thousand? I don’t think so.

Okay, before I go any further, let me explain why this bothers me. I am not trying to pick at OnForce here. This is about the facts. It’s about telling the truth. Some OnForce techs have long chided the platform for “overstating the numbers” when it comes to how many “Pros” and “Buyers” are using it. Many providers are aware of who their competitors are and how many of them are around. Those who have used OnForce for a long period of time also know who most, if not all of the Buyers are, so they know a bogus figure when they see it. OnForce providers already know the facts.

No, what this is really about is honesty and journalism, or the lack thereof, and how it affects the marketplace.

It’s an accepted fact that bloggers are not held to the same standards as journalists, so source and fact-checking isn’t required. However, Mr. Weiss isn’t labeled a blogger. He’s billed as a journalist. They are, or were, held to a higher standard. Bloggers, for the most part, editorialize. Journalists are supposed to report and stick to the facts. Proper research and fact-checking is what they are supposed to do before they publish the numbers.

Now, he did state that OnForce has a database of over 100,000 techs. That officially translates to a roster, or list, if you will of all the techs who signed up for the platform. He didn’t say they were all active techs. But he never goes on to explain that. Instead, it is all left to the reader to make that connection. And he reinforces the number by restating it later in the article. No, the article doesn’t actually say OnForce currently has a full, active complement of 100,000 techs. But by both the omission of key details and repetitive use of that number, the notion is implied.

So, if OnForce doesn’t really have 100,000 techs, just how many are there? Why is it even important and why should you even care? Why does the actual number even matter?

To the general public, it doesn’t. If you’re a Buyer who routes work through the platform, it does matter somewhat, because the hype can make a difference as to how your work order is taken, who will take it or if anyone will take it at all.

To the technician, it makes all the difference in the OnForce “marketplace”. Without going into a long dissertation of the specifics, which are other topics entirely, The “true” versus “promoted” number affects the provider’s leverage when negotiating the work orders and their ability to accurately determine whether or not they have any leverage to negotiate at all. This isn’t based on the tech’s perception of the promoted vs. real number, it’s based on the Buyer’s perception of its own reach within the marketplace.

For instance, if the Buyer thinks there are 100 active techs in the area he needs to service, that buyer is inclined to lowball the work order and reject conditional offers. If the buyer knows there are only two or three active techs in that area, the techs have more room to negotiate a rate that is closer to what the actual rate should be and what the tech requires.

In short, overstating the numbers can unfairly influence the rates in the marketplace in favor of the Buyer, thus influencing the marketplace itself. To Mr. Weiss’ credit, his article does state the obvious. He added “…after all, with so many technicians in the database and so many work orders, OnForce can often be in a position to drive the service contractor market in an area”. This is no overstatement; on the contrary, it’s an understatement. It is a real, bona fide fact and has long been a point of contention within the OnForce Provider community.

How many techs or “Pros” does OnForce really have? I’m not talking about the total number of techs who have joined or even applied since the company was founded. I’m not talking about the number of techs listed on the roster period. They don’t count. How many current, active techs does OnForce have in the United States and Canada? What is the REAL figure? (Hint: we already know it isn’t the number listed in the article and it probably isn’t even close).

I posed this question to the OnForce Providers Group on LinkedIn. This is a group comprised of former and current Provider alumni who know the platform very well. Some of them have been a part of it since Day One, when OnForce was called ComputerRepair.com. Since they are the platform experts on the technician side, they know who their fellow technicians are, and who they are not. So I polled them.

Among the Providers (I don’t use the term “Pros”) polled, 13 percent said there were more techs than advertised and 6 percent said the number was accurate. Over 80 percent of the Provider alumni polled said there were fewer than 100,000 techs on the OnForce platform. Further comments from Providers indicated the number wasn’t just a little off, it was significantly lower than advertised.

In other words, according to the Provider alumni, the number of techs OnForce purports to have on its platform is completely bogus.

To be fair about this, I also posed the question directly to an OnForce representative in the group. While the group is intended for OnForce Provider alumni only, the OnForce rep was allow access to serve as a liaison between the group members and OnForce. I even delayed writing this for two weeks in order to give the company ample time to respond. As of the date of this article, he hasn’t.

Is confidentiality the reason? Before we start in with the “confidentiality” stuff, let’s set the record straight.

First, OnForce freely posted and promoted the number of both Providers and Buyers on its platform in the past in their press releases and on the home page of their web site. These were rounded figures for an obvious reason; since the platform was constantly evolving, these numbers fluctuated constantly. That was a given. Since OnForce has freely thrown around its Provider and Buyer numbers in most, if not all of its PR and marketing campaigns, the “confidentiality” argument doesn’t wash.

In addition, the other techs, potential techs and Buyers have a RIGHT to know, because the number DIRECTLY affects their ROI as “customers” and users of the company’s services, the same services that BOTH parties PAY for. If the number is confidential, it shouldn’t be.

A couple of members of the OnForce Providers Group on LinkedIn provided a compelling formula and metric to debunk the “100,000 techs” claim. I won’t go into it in this article as it is somewhat involved and requires a separate discussion of its own. For the scope of this article, I will do it the easy way and simply use the company’s own historical, publicly posted numbers to make the case.

Up until the end of 2010, OnForce claimed to have around 13,000 techs, or “Pros” as the company calls them. At the time, the legitimacy of this figure was seriously questioned by some of the Providers. One area of concern was whether some techs were counted multiple times or had duplicate accounts and the possibility that the company was not counting techs, but registered accounts. Even if only a small number of the accounts on the platform were duplicate registrations of techs for other cities, that could artificially inflate the roster significantly. The company assured the providers that was not the case and all Providers were only being counted once. The assurances and the company’s overall lack of transparency didn’t stop some Providers from wondering if they were being told the whole story.

Sometime around 2006 OnForce decided to “cull the herd” as the Providers put it and cleaned up their active Provider roster. This was done partly to update the system and partly in response to growing dissent in the Provider base and a number of complaints about the discrepancies. This pared the advertised number of Providers to around 10,000, and it didn’t stay there long. Soon after it was not uncommon to hear the number 12,000 bantied about.

The OnForce Services Market Index (OSMI) Report for Q3 2008 (pdf) gave the number of Providers on the platform as over 14,000 and the number of Buyers as 5,000. (The number of Buyers is also purported to be greatly inflated – by up to ten times! But that is another topic.)

As of the OSMI Report for Q2 2009 (pdf), the number of Providers was down a bit to over 13,000. The number fluctuated somewhat during the year; in some cases it was touted to be as high as 14,000. While not a significant change, it does indicate the roster had at least returned to its previous size before the purge.

In December 2010, OnForce again culled its Provider base in what became known in some circles as “The Great Purge”. Curiously, after this culling, the numbers swiftly increased again, this time surpassing the previous marks by a significant margin.

Sometime during 2011, the number of OnForce “Pros” was purported to be as high as 30,000. This figure appeared in one OnForce manager’s public LinkedIn profile. This number is more than double the figure last officially posted by OnForce at the end of 2010.

So within one year they now have over 100,000 techs? How is it possible? Given the history of growth at OnForce, it isn’t.

Keep in mind that it took from the end of 2003, when the company was originally founded, to 2006, to get past 13,000. From then until at least 2010, save for normal fluctuation, that figure never changed. Suddenly, within 18 months, they have increased their numbers nearly ten fold? No way.

Another clue the number is bogus: the competition. Their primary competitors are Field Nation and Work Market. Those and a couple of other platforms have grown considerably in the marketplace within the last few years and are giving OnForce a run for the money, and they don’t claim to have 100,000 techs combined.

The final clue lies with the Providers themselves, or more specifically, their “Pro IDs”. Each OnForce Provider is assigned an ID number, and this number has historically been assigned sequentially. If your “Pro ID” is 1150, you were the 1,150th tech to sign up and you’ve likely been with OnForce since it was founded as ComputerRepair.com in 2003. My Provider ID is 5259. I joined OnForce in May 2004. There were just over 5200 techs on the platform when I joined.

Today, the “Pro ID” is six digits. The highest number I recall seeing to date is around 140,000. Okay, 140K? That is considerably larger than 100K, so the number is actually greater! Hold on. Not so fast. Remember, I am number 5259. However, I am no longer listed on the OnForce platform as an available tech, and I have not been active since two years before I was booted from their forums. In other words, I am no longer an OnForce Provider. I don’t count. Yet, I am still counted.

And I am not alone, either, because there are tens of thousands of other former Providers just like me. Some have left on their own. Some have been suspended for a specified or unspecified period of time. Others have been banned or booted. They no longer show up in the system. Yet they are still in the database and are still officially counted!

In other words, OnForce may have culled their list of active Providers, but they are not removed from the database, effectively and artificially raising the official Provider count!

In addition, there are many Providers who are listed as active on the platform, yet have never accepted a single work order. I was still listed as active until The Great Purge of 2010 and I had not performed any work for them for nearly three years! I wasn’t active, yet according to OnForce, I was!

I just performed a search for Providers within an 80 mile radius of my area. Guess what I found? Out of 114 techs listed, nearly one-third have never accepted a work order. Not one. This was no surprise to me, as I have performed that search many times during the last eight years in many areas and the results are generally the same. On average, about one third of the techs listed have never run a single work order, meaning that those techs are usually not active.

There are reasons for this. The most common scenario is that a tech will sign up as a Provider and, for one reason or another, just move on. Whether they actually participate or not doesn’t really matter when it comes to the numbers. Each one is still added to the database and counted.

A few years ago I challenged their Provider count in the OnForce forums. At the time the count was somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 techs. Based on my own calculations and those of other forum members, I argued that the actual number of techs was considerably less. I do not recall the precise number but it was less than half the figure OnForce advertised. It was finally admitted by one of the OnForce reps that the advertised number was not accurate and my number was not far off the mark.

Let’s be real. OnForce does not have 100,000 active techs. Sure, over 100,000 techs may have signed up on their system during the past nine years, but some of them are no longer actually on the platform for one reason or another and among those who still are, at least a third probably aren’t even active. I should know, I was one of them.

So how many techs does OnForce really have? The truth is, no one outside of the company really knows the actual figure. OnForce, the service platform that purports to be “transparent”, is itself a private company and the actual figures are apparently now a big secret, since there was no response to my official inquiry.

One last item to note. The last time the number was officially recorded or released by the company in print was in the Year End and Q4 OSMI(pdf) released January 25, 2010, giving the official count as “more than 13,000 service technicians”. Since then OnForce has removed the figure from their web site, media kit and all of its press materials, stating only that the platform has “thousands of highly skilled service professionals to fulfill on-site work throughout the US and Canada.”

What do you think? Do you agree that the number of techs on the platform quoted in the article is correct? If so, why? If not, how many techs do you think OnForce really has? Of those, how many are active?