Online work is becoming a preferred hiring strategy. Today, a professional can work from the comfort of home, from a coffee bar, or even sitting on a park bench. All that’s needed is a computer and a wireless connection. With this development, more companies are hiring freelance employees through Internet. The system supports improvements in the quality of work, guaranteeing access to the best talent at the lowest cost, no matter where it is located.
But how can a company know what its remote employees are really doing? How it can be sure they are putting in the agreed hours? Whether professionals are working at the other end of the world or in the same office with their supervisor, the truth is that when the time comes for personnel evaluations, companies run into trouble.
Remote project management
The solution lies in the application of web tools that were unknown until very recently. Whether to coordinate tasks efficiently for personnel located at the same site or to supervise a professional team dispersed among several countries, the Internet offers platforms that help increase productivity and assure the profitability of every project.
“The effective management of working teams is a very important concern for companies that aim at guaranteeing their projects’ profitability,” explains Alex Konanykhin, online entrepreneur and CEO of multimedia development company KMGi. According to Konanykhin, personnel expenses are one of the most important items in any organization’s cost structure and, if these expenses are not adequately controlled, a potentially profitable business can quickly become a money-loser.
Konanykhin explains that the global world in which we live demands new and more dynamic operations that yield a higher degree of productivity with comprehensive cost controls. His company, KMGi, deploys professionals internationally. “We can have the best web programmer in the world, located in the Ukraine, and the best graphic designer in the world, located in Barcelona, working efficiently in coordination on the same product.”
A screen shot every three minutes
To be able to make distributed task organization effective, KMGi developed a tool called Transparent Billing (TB). Through this application, the company assigns each employee a username and password to connect to an online system where TB captures a screenshot of the user’s computer every three minutes. The TB web platform lets the employer view the screenshots to monitor the employee’s work performance, progress, and product. The company can control task development by providing timely feedback. This kind of supervision optimizes both project time and costs.
“We all know that when we hire freelancers or outsource services, we sometimes lose control of the work process and cannot guarantee that professional contractors or employees really worked the hours we’re paying them for,” explains Konanykhin. One of the objectives of Transparent Billing is to address this concern.
First created for KMGi’s internal use, TB is now being marketed so that other companies can enjoy its benefits and optimize their own remote workers’ performance. “Our clients could see the advantages of working with Transparent Billing when we managed their projects. It was they who asked us to commercialize the platform,” says Konanykhin.
Online work team management supports a radical change in the way our professional relationships are organized. Workers have more access to more jobs and more flexible working methods, allowing them to schedule their own time and even choose where to do their work. Transparent Billing answers challenges to companies that must guarantee profitability and assure sustainability. Whether for close supervision of far-flung virtual teams or coordination of personnel in traditional offices, new market realities demand new web-based management tools.
