ENGINEER and digital transformation expert Melarka Williams has garnered over two decades’ experience in business transformation and engineering across three continents with some of the largest and most respected companies globally, such as Nestlé and Ericsson. Vastly passionate about the development of Caribbean people, he envisions a world where we will one day be creators of technology, instead of merely consumers or users of technology.

He is a massive advocate for the Caribbean to become the ultimate information technology outsourcing destination and has set out on a path to achieve this objective, starting right here in Jamaica. His latest project, TheHive, is helping to create connections otherwise unavailable to skilled people and entrepreneurs. In 2020, Williams founded TheHive to help connect Caribbean professionals with global businesses seeking tech and other talents through his company Ingenuity Technologies.

But what was the stimulus for starting TheHive? “There are many challenges that businesses face, including recurring human resource costs, unavailable human capacity, and employee turnover. These have been further complicated by the novel coronavirus pandemic. We wanted to create solutions for businesses that would allow them to engage talents when they need them and select the specific skill set they require, thereby reducing human capital expenditure. On the flip side, professionals were having a hard time finding jobs and projects that were suited to their talents and skills — that’s where TheHive bridges the gap, by making the necessary connection,” Williams added.

“Freelancers and consultants are compensated only when specific deliverables, which are previously signed off with the clients, are met. TheHive has a built in quality management (QM)/quality control (QC) system which ensures that the work done and deliverables produced are of a high quality. Companies have saved up to 60 per cent on hiring freelancers/consultants on our site versus hiring full-time employees. Companies have saved up to 60 per cent on recruitment costs of hiring permanent tech talent on our site. TheHive platform is working with the top five per cent of Caribbean talent,” Williams cited.

Williams’ background as a business transformation expert, who has worked with medium to large organisations to help them increase efficiency and productivity, reduce operational costs, and increase net profits through digitisation and automation, helped influence the creation of the platform.

TheHive platform has proprietary technology which assists with matching the right freelancers with the right employer. It has payment protection for the employers, where the money is stored in escrow and is not released to the freelancer until the employer is satisfied with the project.

TheHive is very secure and employs some of the most advanced security technologies. It was built on scalable infrastructure that gauges usage and has a rating system for freelancers and employers.

“Currently, we are in the early stages of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The first was about coal and steam, the second electricity and the third about computers. According to the World Economic Forum which coined the phrase, it is one of the ‘cyber-physical systems’, that is, the merging of the capabilities of both human and machine. This is the era of artificial intelligence, genome editing, biometrics, renewable energy, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things. TheHive is our small way of helping each other to better adapt to the rapidly evolving world,” Williams ended.