How Fragment Media Group saves hours of admin time each week with Worksuite

Fragment works with a large network of freelance writers, editors, researchers, and consultants across multiple publications. They had tried other freelance management solutions in the past, but weren’t able to find a system that matched their exact needs.

“We had some luck with a couple of other vendors in the past, but ultimately we would have challenges with their customer service, or they would dramatically raise our prices, and so forth.”

They were looking for a centralized system that gave them a more streamlined way to onboard freelancers, and have them complete the necessary agreements and tax documents across multiple publications.

“We wanted something that was freelancer friendly, manager friendly, and that provided me and my accounting manager with an overview of all the invoices and payments out there that we needed to process”

As their contractor network grew, Fragment’s teams were spending significant amounts of time each week dealing with admin tasks that could easily be automated with the right tools—such as onboarding, document signing, and payment processing.

“Over the years we’ve been sending electronic documents to sign, and manually paying contractors through various types of payroll vendors, which is a very tedious process. We were looking for something a little more comprehensive.”

They began searching online for freelancer management systems, and came across Worksuite. After a personalized walkthrough of the product, they knew it could meet their needs as an all-in-one platform for onboarding freelancers, managing payments, and gaining increased visibility into projects.

“Ultimately the goal was to take the most of the administrative burden off my team, as well as our editorial staff.”

Once Fragment had migrated their existing information from prior systems, everything was easily set up with the help of the Worksuite team.

They used most of the Worksuite tools off the shelf, but added some customizations to the onboarding workflows to support the way they worked across multiple publications.

Fragment were able to send specific onboarding requests to the freelancers they had manually migrated to Worksuite, which meant they didn’t have to start the onboarding process from scratch—saving their managers and freelancers valuable time during the transition process.

“Worksuite is pretty intuitive. If we have any new people, or new freelancers, or so forth, once we get them onboarded everything works pretty seamlessly. And considering the amount of payments we have going out, we rarely have an issue that needs to be resolved”

Fragment began seeing time saving results with Worksuite immediately after implementation. These results were particularly noticeable for their editorial teams. 

As well as not being constantly distracted by admin tasks that were now automated by Worksuite, Fragment’s editorial team gained increased visibility into different projects, and found it much easier to pull the information they needed for payments and tasks.

“Before Worksuite I would guess we’d probably spend a solid five hours a week with constant onboarding, chasing down payments, sending an agreement, and so forth. Now we have more time to look at other processes and spend our time on the big picture stuff.”

Worksuite Pay helped Fragment to automate a lot of their payment processing requirements, including handling the 1099 requirements for their growing talent pool.

“The fact that Worksuite can manage our 1099s is a huge benefit. Having someone address what is probably over a hundred 1099s is huge for us, so I’m especially thankful for that.”

Fragment uses the end-to-end Worksuite tool for their global freelancer network, including onboarding, task management, and payment processing. 

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