Lionbridge review by Inspector Jones

In a phrase, Lionbridge is a solid, enterprise-grade crowdsourcing solution. I recommend it for medium or large organisations looking for a low-risk entry to the crowdsourcing market.

Lionbridge provides crowdsourced labour from over 100,000 people across the world. It includes a fully managed service, with project management, security and quality assurance.

Before you choose Lionbridge, here are the key things you need to know.

First, Lionbridge is smaller than the mainstream crowdsourcing providers because they target the enterprise end of the market. While they don’t carry the same volume of people, they do have more enterprise-grade features to maintain a higher quality.

Second, you may find Lionbridge a lower risk option than most crowdsourcing providers. They have a 1-day termination clause (as opposed to other platforms, where no notice is required). Job postings can be private - visible only to prescreened candidates.

Third, the Lionbridge enterprise crowdsourcing service is fully managed. Lionbridge offer project management, quality control, audit, and service-levels to meet enterprise demands. They also perform more detailed screening of candidates than most crowd providers.

Finally, Lionbridge has got traction at the upper-end of the market - with customers like Google, Expedia, Nokia, Microsoft, and various US government departments. This is because it offers a great alternative to offshoring, Business Process Outsourcing and contingent labour - all at reduced costs, and increased flexibility.

If you would prefer to manage a team directly (rather than using an organisation like Lionbridge to manage the outsourcing work), there are many other options. However, be aware that they will require significant effort involved to maintain quality. This is one of the real strengths of fully-managed crowdsourcing.

I recommend Lionbridge for larger organisations wanting to use crowdsourcing. If you are considering Lionbridge, also have a look at oDesk Enterprise and Samasource for good enterprise options.

What should you use Lionbridge for?

I recommend Lionbridge as a solution for:

• Crowdsourcing tasks that require more skilled workers - particluarly those that require English language fluency (Lionbridge is a particularly strong option here, compared to other crowdsourced solutions)
• Low-skill tasks - like data entry, transcription, tagging/classification
• Specialised tasks that you can define very clearly - with prescribed steps and outputs

What shouldn't you use Lionbridge for?

I recommend you avoid using Lionbridge for:

• Traditional 9-5 jobs - Lionbridge is far better suited to clear tasks and deliverables, rather than an ongoing job appointment
• Tasks with special confidentiality or data security requirements - crowdsourcing is not a good option for this
• Tasks that need instant turnaround - Lionbridge operate on a longer-term partnership. Instead look at other crowd providers that let you post jobs instantly, and select candidates within an hour.