Clowd Technologies – How We Saved Money on Payroll for Our Remote Team

As a business or startup owner, knowing how to reduce costs is essential for survival.

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One of our secrets to minimizing the costs of running ClowdWork is working remotely. The cost savings of remote work arrangements are significant, and it comes with several advantages.
Working remotely means you don’t have to pay rent because you don’t have a physical office. You only have to pay for what your team has accomplished. The salary costs of remote employees are generally lower than office employees as well, as professionals are willing to take a pay cut for complete working freedom and we use to hire team members where salaries are lower.
It greatly benefits your team as well: they can work wherever they want, whenever they feel most productive, and they can focus their energy on getting things done.

As a business or startup owner, knowing how to reduce costs is essential for survival.

A real-life example: How we utilized remote workforce to improve our cost effectiveness and survive during tough times

At ClowdWork, we have a team of remote workers spread all over the world. Unnecessary fees can accumulate and form major expenses, which would be much better spent on growing your business.

Our payment philosophy

We follow a few principles when hiring and arranging payments:
• Pay by the hour
• Avoid retainers

Why we pay by the hour
• Almost all of our contractors are on hourly contracts and I believe that the days of fixed cost relationships are slowly coming to an end.
The main reason we pay by the hour is because we don’t want to pay for time that contractors aren’t adding value to our business. This is the fairest arrangement for both parties that we have found.

We build relationships with our contractors so they can work when (and where) they want to work. We pay them for their valuable time when they work for us. This provides them a lot of freedom.

That being said, when we find an outstanding team member, we tell them that we’d love for them to transition 100% of their time to ClowdWork. Generally, we do this by simply scaling up their work.

Since we pay most of our people by the hour and only pay for the amount of time that is worked, Clowdwork automatically performs all the computations for us.

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In the past, we lost a considerable amount of money because we paid retainers, only to never hear back from the contractors. This is why we generally avoid retainers as much as possible.

CONNECT – INSURANCE – BPO

How CONNECT saved 30% on contractor fees

German García is the CEO of Connect, a BPO agency for the insurance sector with offices in Latam.  German was kind enough to share his experience implementing ClowdWork in his business, resulting in savings of up to 30% in contractor payroll as well as greater insight into their profitability. If you are frustrated with not knowing exactly how much time each project takes or with how expensive it is to pay your contractors, then this is a must read.

German had a large co-located team and used to pay a considerable amount of money on office rent.


Thousands of dollars in savings each month

Right away, the switch to ClowdWork saved CONNECT thousands of dollars every month. Instead of paying rent, he made remote work arrangements.

In addition to the rent savings, ClowdWork´s activity tracking saves them money by no longer having to pay for unproductive, idle time which translated into massive savings. Overall, German estimates that Connect is saving up to 30% on payroll annually.


Use ClowdWork to manage your contractors, freelancers or remote employees

With ClowdWork, German was able to easily calculate what their costs have been at a project or process level, allowing them to quickly identify which projects — and processes — weren’t being profitable. Focusing their efforts exclusively on profitable clients, processed or projects has been a crucial step for moving Connect forward.

German also added, “To top it all off, ClowdWork’s support has been great. Whenever we need support or have any question, we can speak to someone (and continue to speak to the same person) to get things sorted.  At ClowdWork, we understand that this is a business we are talking about so it is critical that things are sorted swiftly.


How Connect uses ClowdWork

Moving a large team to any new system is a tough task, and it inevitably leads to some hassle. Surprisingly, there was only one day of getting the team up to speed on ClowdWork and it has been smooth sailing since then.

ClowdWork helps minimize the overhead associated with managing a remote team by making it quick and easy to access all of the data you need.


In his own words

“ClowdWork offers outstanding support and it feels like a partner for my remote team management.  I recommend ClowdWork to anybody else building a remote team”

NUMBERS, CASE STUDY, REMOTE WORK

Providing Remote Teams More Time to Grow: NUMBERS Case Study. NUMBERS Provides Accounting & Tax Services to Small Businesses.Power up your workday.


Going remote for greater productivity and growth

To do this, the company needs a focused, productive team. “I wanted to hire the best professionals, based on their skills, not their location,” said Yesi Herrera, CEO of NUMBERS. “I just thought that was so limiting to say if I move to this city, I can only work with people within an hour’s distance to where I am, or where the office is.”

As a remote company, NUMBERS team is able to work seamlessly together and deliver on their purpose of providing the most efficient accounting and tax advisory to SMB.

“One of the things I love the most about working for NUMBERS is the flexibility it affords me. If an emergency crops up and I need to work from home, no problem! I can set up my laptop and continue to compile quality consumer information, even if I have a little helper by my side,” said Julieth, one of the accountants.


Remote work challenges

This style of work isn’t without its hurdles. Like many remote workplaces, NUMBERS faced the following challenges:

Knowing who is working on what
Scaling a remote team to support a growing business
Tracking budgets and projects for profitability
Allocating the right amount of talent and resources to customers.
By having one remote work monitoring system to track progress, productivity, and hours, it’s easy to check in on teams without being disruptive. It also allows team members to show progress without having to email or send message updates.


Finding tools to streamline remote work

The company decided to review several time tracking options as a team, giving everyone a chance to weigh the pros and cons.

For each software, they considered:

Is it easy to use?
Does it offer fully automatic time tracking?
Would this slow down your computer or affect computer´s performance?
Against the other options, ClowdWork quickly rose to the top. It satisfied their core needs while delivering an outstanding experience. “The user interface is really good, the support team is really good,” Yesi said instead of having to interrupt a team member’s day to see what they’re working on, you can just check ClowdWork to successfully manage your remote team.


Reducing wasted time and money

“Having a tool like ClowdWork, cuts costs way faster.” Everything is connected, so you can see exactly how your business operates. “It’s such a good feeling, going to bed and knowing that you’re investing money in the business and it’s going toward great things,” Yesi said.


More time for growing your business

The team has seen impressive success so far, and has plans to grow even more in the future. In large part due to its productivity-focused mindset and ability to use data to improve.

It’s a great way of making sure that everything you’re doing is efficient. That everyone’s reason for being with the company is getting fulfilled, so everyone’s feeling fulfilled, and the company’s doing well.”

“I think that’s a big benefit that I didn’t realize before using ClowdWork,” Yesi explained.