How One Outsourcing Agency Saves $170,000 Every Year

David Judge is the co-founder of Online Specialists and Affordable Staff. He is also one of the many satisfied Hubstaff clients who use our time tracking tools to reduce administrative costs, attract more customers, and increase productivity. Keep reading to find out how David uses Hubstaff to save $170,000 every single year.

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How Affordable Staff got started

David was hesitant to start his own business because of his stable day job in IT. Once so many people were calling him for help, he almost had no choice. Online Specialists was started as a full-service digital agency to help businesses grow online, and was headquartered in Queensland, Australia with a remote team in India.

Over the past few years, the direction of the business started to change as more and more people were looking for help outsourcing administrative tasks, and thus Affordable Staff, an outsourcing agency, was born.

David recognized the rapidly improving infrastructure in the Philippines as well as the high-quality contractors available there and decided it would be an ideal location to build his remote team.

At first, all team members worked from home, but to make sure he could offer the quality his clients expected, Affordable Staff opened a physical office in the Philippines, complete with high-speed internet, constant power with backup generators, and supervisors to help manage the team.

Here’s a little more about David’s team

Overcoming the rising costs of outsourcing

David originally was using freelance marketplaces to find and manage his contractors, but saw that it was eating into their profit margins as his company grew.

It would cost them AND their contractors a set percentage of every hour billed, so in order to compensate for this, they had to pay their contractors more money. With how fast Online Specialists and Affordable Staff were growing, this extra cost started adding up and it became financially irresponsible to keep running that way.

David knew they had to find a way to cut costs. They found Hubstaff.

How David and his team saved $22,000 when they signed up for Hubstaff

The need to make outsourcing more reliable and data-driven

As David shifted his focus to Affordable Staff because of the increased demand in outsourcing, he was running into a lot of resistance from potential clients.

Many businesses were interested in outsourcing but felt that there was a veil of secrecy over the whole process. They thought it would be difficult to know exactly what their contractors were working on during the hours they billed, and the process simply wasn’t transparent enough to get many businesses to take the leap.

Hubstaff remote team management to the rescue

Switching to Hubstaff meant that David no longer needed to rely on freelance marketplaces to manage and pay his contractors. This change alone saved his companies $22,000 a year. And that was just the first year. Based on how much the company has grown, David said the company saves $170,000/year by using Hubstaff.

Not only that, but as Affordable Staff works with clients to build outsourcing teams, Hubstaff has really helped them to build the level of trust required to have a remote team, especially in another country.

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Using Hubstaff integrations and payments with clients

For David, Hubstaff’s productivity monitoring features are a major selling point because they can offer their clients a higher level of transparency than they even have with employees in their own office. For companies that are new to outsourcing, Hubstaff immediately makes them comfortable.

Higher transparency for remote teams

Building a culture of continuous improvement

Before striking out on his own, David managed a team of 400 people in the manufacturing industry, and started to apply some of the same methods he learned there to Affordable Staff.

In most agencies, there are a number of repetitive tasks that a team member will perform each week. At Affordable Staff, tasks are assigned to a team member using Trello, and then using the integration with Hubstaff, the team members are able to track exactly how much time it takes them to complete the task.

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How Affordable Staff uses Hubstaff internally

David is then able to look at a team member’s performance week after week, and determine how much time a specific task should take based on actual numbers.

He can also compare the performance of one team member to the others to see who is doing the best and get advice from them to help the others, as well as who he needs to reach out to and help them improve. This is a cycle of continuous improvement that is built into the culture at Affordable Staff and helps support what is truly a well-oiled machine.

As a result of this culture, Affordable Staff has ended up with an office of empowered team members that all want to be successful in their roles.

At the management level, Affordable Staff encourages this by offering feedback whenever needed and providing financial incentives for these gains in productivity. Not only has this empowered the company internally, but it instills confidence in the clients which is crucial because outsourcing for many businesses can still be a scary thing.

How Hubstaff changed our business

Growth goals for the future

As a result of Hubstaff and the other tools that have become available, the general trust businesses have in outsourcing is constantly growing, allowing David to say with confidence that they will continue to grow at an impressive it. And with a culture in place that promotes productivity and efficiency, he knows he can do it profitably.

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In David’s own words:

“I used to see Hubstaff as a way to build transparency and trust between employees and their teams, but over time I’ve really come to see it as more. On top of that, we use Hubstaff to measure results so we can continuously improve as individuals and as an organization. Without tools like Hubstaff and Trello, we would have to build something ourselves which would distract us from our main business. I cannot speak highly enough of our Hubstaff experience and suggest you also give it a go!”

Are fees eating into your profitability?

If you are using a marketplace to manage your team, Try Hubstaff for free for 14-days and see just how easy it can be to leave the freelancing sites behind and put more money into your pockets.

This post was originally published September 1, 2015, and updated March 2019.