Challenge
Managing a Distributed Network of Professional Writers.
With a growing global network of more than 150 freelancers — including contract writers called 'scribes' and other creatives such as cover and graphic designers — Scribe Media struggled to keep track of every individual and their current and upcoming projects.
Prior to deploying Worksuite, Scribe Media used a myriad of fragmented systems, including Trello (jerry-rigged to keep track of personal information, performance, and project assignments), Wufoo and Google forms for onboarding, Dropbox for storage, and Slack for project assignments — where information was not organized or kept for future reference.
"There was a lot of room for error there, to say the least." — Justine Schofield, Operations, Scribe Media
Because the process was distributed across a number of different systems, the process of onboarding freelancers and assigning them to projects was taking a lot of time and manual effort. Ongoing management and operations, such as tracking and processing payments, also became challenging as the pool of freelancers grew.
"All of that was just taking an incredible amount of time, and it basically required me going in and out of multiple different systems in order to create a cohesive whole. It was very, very inefficient, and that's the point where I was like, 'There has to be a better way to do this.'" — Justine Schofield, Operations, Scribe Media
Solution
Worksuite Streamlines Freelancer and Contractor Onboarding and Management.
Scribe Media conducted thorough research into available platforms, and Worksuite had all the key factors they were looking for — managing onboarding, getting freelancers to sign all necessary documentation, storing information, and more.
Worksuite's workflow also aligned seamlessly with the 'bidding' process that Scribe Media used to assign projects to its available freelancers. When a new writing assignment is received, Scribe Media opens it up to its pool of qualified scribes to bid on, from which one expert scribe is chosen based on a combination of their credentials, closeness to the topic, and personality match.
"We need freelancers who are going to complement our authors and engage with them in the creative process to get the best possible results. No freelancer management system offers this particular type of assignment process, and Worksuite does. So that was a really big value add for us." — Justine Schofield, Operations, Scribe Media
"The whole Worksuite team was really great, and definitely met all the needs and addressed all the gaps in our system, and most importantly, centralized everything into one location. Worksuite was the one that I felt fits to our needs the best." — Justine Schofield, Operations, Scribe Media
Result
It's given us our time back.
Since Scribe Media deployed Worksuite in August 2017, the company has been able to dramatically reduce the time and resources needed to manage its growing pool of freelancers, resulting in a much smoother book creation process for Scribe Media and its network of freelancers.
Instead of using a mix of systems, Scribe Media now enters a new freelancer's email address into Worksuite, which sends them an email that automatically guides them through a custom self-service onboarding workflow. This process enables Scribe Media to monitor freelancer progress through onboarding and offers ways for freelancers to communicate directly with Scribe Media if they get stuck along the way.
Scribe Media was also looking for a solution that was easy to deploy internally and seamless for freelancers to use. The rollout was very seamless — they sent the Worksuite team their database of freelancers and they uploaded into the system so it was ready to use immediately.
Founded in 2014 in Austin, Texas, Scribe Media radically simplifies book creation by using a process of author interviews to structure and organize the author's ideas into high-value content. The company utilizes a world-class team of publishing professionals who guide authors through every step of the journey, from content creation to publishing to selling on Amazon. To date, Scribe Media has worked with hundreds of authors to create more than 600 non-fiction books.
