Many e-commerce companies work with freelancers to implement projects faster and more successfully during their collaboration. What is often not known is that technology can help to improve collaboration with freelancers, and make it more efficient.
Flexible workforces – new opportunities for collaboration
Collaborative work is a trend that has been growing for years. The change in social values and digitization are driving forces for more flexibility and New Work – and will turn the labor market upside down. To maintain their future viability, it is worthwhile for companies to familiarize themselves with new employment models now.
The ecommerce industry is way ahead of many other industries when it comes to collaboration with freelancers. Especially for online shops and landing pages, regular, but nevertheless, temporary cooperation with freelancers can offer great user-added value.
Because ecommerce is fast-moving. A changing range of products, specific subject areas, and up-to-date content: To be able to react immediately to constantly changing requirements, it is important to remain flexible. Freelancers can be used on a project-related basis – so having access to the relevant experts creates a lot of room for maneuvering here. Companies can thus react directly to trends and demands for collaboration.
To increase their flexibility, many have already integrated future-oriented employment models into their work structures. But working with freelancers takes time. The time that can be saved during collaboration with freelancers. For example through the use of technology.
Freelancer: flexible experts for high-quality content
Using the example of content creation, problems and opportunities in working with flexible workers can be broken down well. In the digital world, attention is a currency – and independent, well-made content is essential. Product descriptions, landing page texts, SEO texts, category descriptions, blog articles, advice texts, and news articles: the success of a company website depends on high-quality content. Relevant, well-researched, written, and above all search engine-optimized texts are crucial for a successful Google ranking. And that in turn promotes visibility on the web and helps with customer loyalty or acquisition.
Now you might think that the intern with a German advanced course could also write such texts, but functional content is a matter for specialists: only the content-related interlinking of product and category pages, content, and SEO texts leads to success. And it’s not enough to create all the content once and then hopes that the job is done with it. Especially for e-commerce shops, new content has to be created regularly.
The demands on e-commerce websites are higher than ever: the intensified competitive situation of online retailers due to interchangeable products and themes poses great challenges for many companies. Because social change is driving the speed of demand further: In many areas of social life, consumer behavior is moving in the direction of the “on-demand economy”. The present is characterized by the desire for availability, flexibility, and networking. A constantly changing product range, constant demand, and increasing competitive pressure result in a constantly growing need for new, high-quality content. In other words, content that sets the company apart from the crowd generates reach and does the best possible thing in the search engine ranking.
The language-talented intern is overwhelmed with these tasks. Nevertheless, small and medium-sized companies in particular do not want to or cannot afford to hire a professional copywriter. That is why many use freelancers. Due to the increased flexibility, even large content projects can be implemented quickly and efficiently without having the high costs of a permanent employee on the clock.
Small adjustment – a big effect: how technology improves collaboration with freelancers
The good: The market is full of qualified freelancers. The job market is undergoing a massive transformation. The influence of the coronavirus pandemic is also currently calling for restructuring and is accelerating digital change even in traditionally rather sluggish companies. After all, change brings with it challenges, but also offers opportunities. For companies – but also talent. The figures show that freelancing is also becoming increasingly important in Germany: in 2019, 1.4 million people were already working as freelancers in Germany.
But the more freelancers offer their services, the more complex it becomes to find really good experts. The research alone becomes a time waster. The recruiting, administration, and processing of external employees result in a significant additional expenditure of time. But this effort can be minimized if the processes are automated. And that’s easier than it first seems.
Competence meets technology: The ideal collaboration with freelancers
1. Reduced budget design
In many cases, freelancers result in a reduction in personnel costs. Mapping the constantly changing requirements in a team of permanent employees is almost impossible these days – and always expensive and inefficient.
Knowledge must be acquired more flexibly and purposefully in the future. The half-life of learned skills has fallen rapidly in recent years. It is currently only five years. This means that technical skills have to be regularly adapted or even re-learned. In addition, required skills are becoming more and more niche. A few years ago, for example, the position of marketeer in marketing covered many areas of work. Today, these areas are broken down into specialties or even different disciplines – SEO, technical SEO, SEA, social and digital marketing. To react to changing requirements, it can therefore be worthwhile temporarily expanding a team to include one or more qualified freelancers – for example to create individually adapted content.
2. More flexibility
Using freelancers with their specific skills as resources increase a company’s scope for action. Employing the right talents immediately and only for the required duration makes it possible to react flexibly to peaks.
3. New, improved technologies open up new possibilities for better collaboration with freelancers
For example, the use of technology makes it possible to work with freelancers outside of your own country without additional effort. The search for talent and the check for compatibility with the company and the defined quality standards is automated and independent of location.
Why does collaboration with freelancers take so much time
When it comes to SEO copywriting, every word counts. The client is looking for a copywriter for a project. Now it is a matter of finding the right one from the large pool of freelancers on the free market. A copywriter who works tailored to the individual needs of the respective online marketing; who understands the vision and fits the project and the company from the wording to the concept to the target group.
And that’s where the work begins: finding candidates, checking CVs and references, conducting interviews, and starting test runs. Not all freelancers are really qualified. If the cooperation with the hand-picked freelancer does not work well, you start the selection process from scratch.
No wonder, then, that a company invests an average of five working hours just in the search and selection of the right copywriter.
If a flexible worker is required for a project for 40 hours of work, there is an overhead of eleven hours on average. This is working time that does not flow into the product or the creation of content, but exclusively into the search, administration, and processing of the freelancer’s service. For a medium-sized company, this effort is often disproportionate to the work required.
So what can a company do specifically to avoid this additional effort – and continue to meet the quality standards? The implementation of technology is a valuable tool here. Job matching platforms or online marketplaces are an interface between the client and the freelance worker. They make it easier for companies to find and network with many potential freelancers. With the help of such digital tools, the client can get an overview and saves many operational steps. The company can save a lot of time with technical applications, especially if workers are only to be used temporarily and on a project-related basis.
Time savings in the operational area
Easy talent finding – no recruiting processes: By automating administrative processes, companies become more agile in recruiting and administration, and processing. With the help of technology, the use of freelancers can also be made scalable. This means that the process and mechanisms are always the same. Regardless of the workload of the content to be created and the number of freelancers required.
So it doesn’t matter whether the company employs a freelancer or works with a 40-strong team. Standardized processes save time and money, from placing the order to invoicing.
How intelligent technology takes workforce management to a new level
AI as Matchmaker
Artificial intelligence for collaboration with freelancers: The term was coined as early as 1950, but has gained increasing importance since the beginning of the digital age.
Breakthroughs in deep learning are currently driving the AI boom at a rapid pace. Whether face recognition, self-learning chess computers, navigation systems, or personalized advertising tailored to consumers and their interests – artificial intelligence is being used in more and more areas of life, such as collaboration. Also in the working world. AI applications learn to understand needs based on data and information. Dealing with the connections between people, processes, and technology can therefore be a benefit for collaboration with freelancers.
Companies that work with freelancers, for example, are often dependent on finding the right specialist under time pressure. AI-based applications such as intelligent matching can support companies in making project work with freelancers more efficient and uncomplicated and smooth for both sides of their collaboration.
Smart technology
Thanks to neural networks, AI systems today achieve good results with great accuracy. This can be helpful in the talent selection process. An automated matching process relieves the client of the selection and evaluation process of the freelancers. The more information an AI application has at its disposal, the faster it can compare and create structures. In recruiting, an order is first analyzed with the help of intelligent technology about its requirements. Based on this, the algorithm combs through the pool of all available freelancers.
The evaluation of the data enables an AI-driven technology to select the right freelancer from the qualified candidates – or to put together a team to process an order. This selection can be based, for example, on skill tests, results of completed jobs, or customer reviews.
Objective evaluation criteria
When selecting talent, recruiters can be guided by first impressions or personal preferences. Especially when a project has to be filled under time pressure. AI supports the process here as an incorruptible help and avoids subjective evaluations. In this way, freelancers can be automatically and objectively checked for compatibility with the respective company and the defined quality standards, for example solely based on the desired professional criteria. The selection takes place independently of demographic values or values such as appearance, age, and gender. The only thing that counts is the professional skills of the freelancers.
Automated processes for better collaboration with freelancers
Automated matching without human contact is challenging. In the search for suitable freelancers, intelligent technology operates, for example, based on behavioral analysis tests – or it can include data such as the individual wealth of experience of the respective freelancer.
Result-oriented work also guarantees quality assurance. Technology can also be used to optimize processes in the administration and management of the workforce: All relevant information such as orders, commissioned freelancers, or budgets can be found on job-matching platforms. The provision of quality-tested project results and IP transfers is also taken care of by the client – for an efficient overview of order histories and current cooperation.
Job matching platforms also help to keep track of the contract rules, compliance, invoices, and guidelines when working across borders: companies have the opportunity to compare their internal regulations and requirements with the availability of the respective freelancer. The use of technology and digitization makes it possible to work with freelancers outside of your own national borders without any additional effort and makes collaboration with freelancers much easier.