Case Study: How a one-man company grew to a virtual team of seven with Hubstaff

Guntis Endzelis, the owner of Partneris, LTD, is one of Hubstaff’s valued customers from Latvia. Guntis was kind enough to share his 100% virtual company’s experience with Hubstaff and how they’ve benefited from our software. A must read if you manage virtual teams.

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About the Company

Partneris is an Opencart official partner that takes on complex tasks related to Opencart. They are a team of programmers and developers who are able to build custom websites or sites based on templates. Guntis, Partneris founder, is also creating in-house built software for which he uses Hubstaff.

The Problem

I was working at home alone, but I knew that if I was going to hire virtual teams I’d need a time logging solution. I searched extensively for affordable and fully-featured services before I even hired anybody. It was hard to find good software services. My criteria were that I needed to be able to log time comfortably for myself and get reports. Some services were bad, and some grew from free to very expensive.

What I was looking for:

• A cross-platform solution (I worked with Ubuntu)
• Non-obtrusive
• Bug free
• Cheap
• Flexible reporting
• Clients should be able to access reports

The Solution

I was doing heavy research. I searched everywhere and tried about 10 different solutions. Once I found Hubstaff I stayed with it. I loved their timely support system and the responsiveness of the support team. It really encouraged me communicate whenever I had trouble.

Big Wins

Partneris LTD’s virtual teams now consist of three permanent employees, one part time assistant, two programmers and one part-time contractor from India who log time in Hubstaff. Everyone works from home for a completely virtual company.

I personally manage two to three remote employees. If I were to use Upwork I’d be paying them approximately 3000€ every year. Using Hubstaff, I save 90% on that.

Also, if I were to use an office instead of having a distributed team, I’d be renting a space for just four people and have to commute back and forth. We don’t have to do any of that.

What Features Do You Love about Hubstaff? Why?

• Activity indicator – it builds trust that my staff isn’t just reading articles on the Internet but doing actual coding. If I’m in doubt, I can always check screenshots.
• Customizable reports – that allows me to retrieve the data I need quickly.
• User roles – I have a customer that’s outsourcing my employees for his projects. On my advice he created an organization and now I don’t even have to create reports for him. He can see what we are doing. I can add my team members as needed to each project. I can add projects to his Organization.
• Ease-of-use – there’s almost no education required to start using Hubstaff. You just pick it up and go.
• The referral program – it somehow works so well for me that I’ve been using the service for free for quite a while.

My Recommendation

Hubstaff allows me and my team to have this excellent way of working – at home. I have met my employees only once when we signed the work agreements. Thanks to Hubstaff and other modern communication tools I don’t need to meet them face to face, aside from perhaps a fun day together as a recognition.

My employees say that Hubstaff works more precisely than oDesk (now Upwork) tools, as it tracks your work down to the second.

If you liked Partneris, LTD’s success story, share the love on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or email a friend about it.