How to Save Your Business 80 Hours Each Month: Emsisoft Case Study

Every company starts with a vision of what it wants to accomplish.

For Emsisoft, that vision is to create a malware-free world.

It’s one that’s important, challenging, and rewarding. It’s also a vision that requires a hardworking team of top talent from around the world.

That’s one reason why Emsisoft is a fully remote team of over 40 people spread across 17 countries.

From distributed locations, the team is protecting home and business devices, detecting threats, assisting customers, and building effective security software.

As you can see, it’s a lot to manage.

The need for a better system

When you have teams spread out all over the world, you need a way to keep everyone in the loop and working toward the same goal.

This became a high priority for Emsisoft as the company worked toward a malware-free future.

“The biggest challenge we face from an HR perspective is getting everyone on the same page and establishing a uniform system of tracking hours and paying team members,” said Christian Mairoll, founder and CEO at Emsisoft.

Streamlining the administrative tasks of timesheets and payroll would open the team’s workday up for bigger initiatives.

However, they first needed software that would allow them to do this.

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Starting the software search

At this point in its story, Emsisoft was using software for online timesheets, but it wasn’t adopted company-wide.

Which led to some confusion.

“We all had our own preferred time tracking methods, whether it was spreadsheets, Harvest, or plain lists,” Mairoll said.

Tracking hours this way not only makes the payment process more complicated, but it also opens an organization up to timesheet errors.

Even the software used lacked the full features Emsisoft needed.

“Personally, I used Harvest because it helped me track not my time as much as what I’m doing within my allotted work time,” Katherine Orihuela of Emsisoft, said. “The time tracking was more like a bonus.”

As the team grew, everyone using different systems just didn’t make sense. It was a time-killer that made for some headache-filled admin work.

“We knew we needed something more scalable than just spreadsheets,” Mairoll said.

Finally, an online search led the company to a new solution: Hubstaff.

Using Hubstaff for easier team management

Hubstaff offered the time tracking and full-featured management that the company needed.

It would allow everyone to clock in and track time to certain tasks, and then get paid for the exact hours worked.

Plus, its built-in monitoring features and timesheet approvals meant that confirming hours before sending payments was a breeze.

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Looking back, before and after Hubstaff was a stark contrast.

“I felt that Harvest was really pretty basic and was more for personal use than for company-wide purposes. I found that it’s more about productivity tracking and not much else.”

In addition to changing the way HR and leadership managed teams, Hubstaff also provided an added benefit: encouraging productivity across the team.

“It’s the monitoring that really stood out for me. It’s a feature that’s a step-up from a plain, regular time-tracker,” Mairoll said. “It helps with accountability and focus.”

Taking on a more productive mindset as a result of the time tracking software you’re using? Not a bad bonus for teams that use Hubstaff.

Key Hubstaff features Emsisoft uses

• Time tracking for its remote team’s online timesheets
• Monitoring to help track work hours and productivity trends
  • Random screen capture (can be customized or turned off completely)
  • App and URL tracking
  • Activity rates based on mouse and keyboard usage
• Timesheet approvals
  • Emsisoft’s CEO reviews timesheets to verify hours and process payments
• Easy exporting for payroll

The time and cost savings of Hubstaff

While getting a team to use the same time tracking system and streamlining hours was a big deal, it was ultimately the cost savings and reduced headaches that made Emsisoft confident in its decision to use Hubstaff.

Here’s how Emsisoft described the difference:

“Imagine at the end of every month, you have over 40 people sending in their timesheets with the total number of hours worked.

The person in charge of managing those invoices will have to download those email attachments, go through the documents, then take note individually of how many hours each person worked, etc.

It’s incredibly tedious and time-consuming. Not to mention there’s no way to verify the hours printed on those timesheets and invoices.

With Hubstaff, it’s all online and the hours worked are verifiable via the monitoring function.”

The time needed to review and process payments has been cut down. At the same time, the hours were recorded more accurately. It’s a win-win.

“Hubstaff simplified and streamlined our time tracking processes, and it’s especially beneficial for a fully distributed team like ours.”

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Overall, Emsisoft saw the following benefits:

• Saved 20% on billing-related expenses
• Saved 2-3 hours per month on manual tracking per person
• 60-80 hours per month saved across the whole team

The future of Emsisoft

Looking ahead, Emsisoft will continue its mission for a safer, more secure web.

“We’re rapidly expanding and releasing more cybersecurity tools to the market, such as our Emsisoft Browser Security and Emsisoft Cloud Console,” Mairoll explained. “As we grow, we need our tools and processes to be able to grow with us.”

Hubstaff is proud to be one of them.