The future of service work is here, and it includes the gig economy. Defined as a system in which companies work with freelancers as opposed to full-time workers, the US gig economy is made up of 57.3 million workers, and that number is growing rapidly. What’s more, 70% of freelancers find jobs on gig economy sites and online markets. More and more, service companies are looking to these workers and these online sources to meet their business needs.
Zuper’s direct integration with the Field Nation on-demand workforce marketplace fits along with this reality perfectly.
An Evolving Workforce
Though the service industry has grown significantly in recent years across multiple industries, the pool of qualified field service techs has shrunk, and field service leaders are getting creative about finding the right employees.
These days many workers are preferring the kind of flexibility and autonomy that comes with being a solopreneur. Traditional employers have begun to embrace hiring freelancers or contractors as one of the more expedient ways to handle their labor shortages. Also, it’s not always financially feasible to run a 100% W2 workforce for every project. Sometimes, in addition to full-time staff, businesses need a high quality, on-demand workforce to meet their immediate needs.
A number of field service leaders are hiring workers through online freelance marketplaces. It’s an easy way to build field-ready teams by location, project and skillset based on current need, without additional overhead and administration. Ultimately, these companies are finding that a flexible hybrid workforce made up of a combination of different types of workers can be an ideal way to increase operational efficiency and scale.
And businesses want ways to efficiently manage their hybrid field services workforce. They want to capitalize on this kind of business model to achieve better operational efficiency, improve employee productivity and retention, and deliver the best possible service to customers.
An ideal partnership
Zuper’s field service management platform allows you to seamlessly manage your entire hybrid workforce all in one app: W2 employees as well as 1099 and freelance workers. You efficiently oversee office staff activities and easily schedule and dispatch your field service techs. Those techs, in turn, are empowered by having the Zuper app’s comprehensive work order details and the readily available tools they need to bring the best service experience.
And now the platform is fully integrated with the Field Nation workforce marketplace.
Field Nation is a cloud-based workforce management solution that connects businesses with about 100,000 US-based field-ready freelancers offering over 20 different service types. The freelancers are listed with all the relevant work information such as skills, experience, licenses, and security clearances. Participating businesses post work orders and then choose the best candidates for the jobs from the techs who respond.
Using Field Nation is very cost effective. One IT security partner with Field Nation estimates that utilizing the Field Nation marketplace for field service techs reduces labor costs by about 40% percent compared with staffing agencies. With the Field Nation mobile workforce, your field service leader and CTO can enjoy superior service delivery and overall field operations efficiency.
The Zuper – Field Nation partnership simplifies your operations with automated scheduling and dispatching that allows your team to assign the right office or field tech employee to the right job based on skills, proximity, and availability from within the Zuper app. And those Field Nation techs can view all needed work order details through the Zuper app, just like any other employee.
Additionally, it doesn’t matter which Zuper level you choose – you have free access to the Field Nation integration. For full access to the Field Nation capabilities on their platform you will need to pay for integrations with Field Nation. You fold your Field Nation freelance employees into Zuper’s cohesive field services management experience and get:
- Real-time work order tracking
- Scheduling, dispatching and route optimization
- Automated accounting, invoicing and estimating
- Contracts and digital payments
- Assets and timesheet management
- Analytics and reporting
- Signature capture and document uploading
Some businesses are already working with Zuper but haven’t tapped this capability and others are new to the Zuper business management experience entirely. Either way, the comprehensive and seamless integration between Zuper and Field Nation means your business experiences greater efficiency, reduced costs and unwavering quality at scale.
In short, your business grows the right way: the right people at the right time with the right knowledge for every job.
