Excellent product with a fatal flaw-its management.
August 21, 2017
Excellent product with a fatal flaw-its management.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Work Market
I utilize both sides of the platform--
- As a client, I am able to supplement my labor force and service clients who are outside my normal territory.
- As a resource, I am able to offer my companies technical ability in a transparent manner to others to facilitate their services to their clients. (Transparent in the context that I am no longer representing my company but rather branding as an actual member of the client's organization)
- Offers technicians from a large geographical area (most major cities, many smaller cities, a limited international selection).
- Creating competition - Mixed bag with this one depends on your outlook. Are you in favor of finding the person who will work for bottom dollar? I'll leave that aspect for your personal view.
- Project Tracking: While I should likely have listed this first and I will say they do a better job than most at this it could use some key upgrades.
- 1099 filings and fiscal tracking -- They got this much down pat gotta admit.
- A major concern to many is as a Sass they have a Forum that is conveniently crippled, 2 months prior to a major purchase of a competitor all comments in the forums became unavailable and new comments don't track or operate fully. This has been attributed to several issues but now 4 months later with zero fix and no apparent efforts to improve or acknowledge the problem exists. This would only be seen as benificial if the tone of most users comments were negative in my view otherwise I would think it would have been regarded as an invaluable feature.
- Mixed Bag- As a Client you are afforded every luxury. You have full privacy protection from those you hire to perform work. You can cancel work after its been completed and not have to pay the technicians with little or no consequence as ADR is mandated and is often out of the affordability range of most technicians, the platform holds a stead fast rule not to interfere or to penalize clients for misbehavior. If you do run afoul of their TOS you are given wide birth to fall back in line and only required to meet the absolute minimal efforts to do so, such as settling for pennies on the dollar with any account owed. The CON is being a Resource all of the above are true statements only in reverse.
- See my second Con and you can imagine that retention of qualified individuals on the resource side would probably be troublesome. Yet in truth they do tend to attract allot of new blood to the worker pool, the CON is its new blood- Not seasoned professionals with lots of experience as would be so very handy when things go sideways on a job.
- Due to reason #2 and #3 well as you can imagine it can be difficult to maintain a professional edge or appearance. In a short time it becomes clear to the end user and the corporate entity in whole that the work has been subbed to contract labor via a impersonal internet dispatch. You can mediate this issue with contacting the technician via skype or other videochat to review the project and get a better feel for their expertise level and confidence. However don't expect to pull off any large project or service contract without the use of Workmarket becoming apparent to all fairly quickly. Those who are successful have by majority been upfront with their clienty in the first place about the use of the platform.
- Initially this service was a life saver, and five years ago its mission statement and outlook stood to take it through the stratosphere. Unfortunately the losses incurred as of late due to their revised TOS and mission statements have resulted in losses that we can no longer weather and with no stated intention of righting the issues as they have been presented repeatedly by many large clients to the support staff of WM, we are looking for alternative options and use the service only when it is absolutely unavoidable. Data loss from a issue they refused to acknowledge initially nearly cost us the ability to collect from a client at all and 5 months later is still an issue we are dealling with yet the level of interaction and concern by the platform has been nearly void as it relates to the lost data.
- The platform is subject to human interference/interaction--meaning the end purpose is to either complete work for a client as a resouce or issue work to be completed by resources and you will inevitably find that there are some humans that are simply of poor values. Thus scams and thefts are a real issue that plagues all freelance platforms however the response made must not be automated but requires human intervention on a pro-active scale with real world sensibility. This is completely non-existent on WM. the sad truth is that in fact the platform all but encourages it by shielding those who are guilty of such behavior. This is an extreme claim I do not make lightly, as I said I was a big fan of the software and still am, however those who run it are running it right into a wall.
- ROI is important but nearly an impossible trait to asses in light of the larger aspects which should be considered- loss of perceived brand value, loss of customer confidence in expertise, cost or doing something twice or three times.
- Field Nation and OnForce
Unfortunately, there's been consolidation as of late with WM consuming OnForce which had a superior reputation. One can only hope that Onforces vision is triumphant over WM's as one digests the other.
Field Nation's GUI was difficult and cumbersome but has gone through some improvements honestly they may be a better choice but it was simply a gut choice that we steered away from them back in the day, however, we may be giving them a second look here shortly. They are plagued by some of the same uneven treatment of their customer base as WM is. However, it is not as drastic a case is our understanding but definitely has room for improvement.
Field Nation's GUI was difficult and cumbersome but has gone through some improvements honestly they may be a better choice but it was simply a gut choice that we steered away from them back in the day, however, we may be giving them a second look here shortly. They are plagued by some of the same uneven treatment of their customer base as WM is. However, it is not as drastic a case is our understanding but definitely has room for improvement.
Work Market Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Knowledgeable team Kept well informed Quick Initial Response | Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Support doesn't seem to care |
Yes - Still waiting >3mo
Mixed bag- the support was spot on, it involved being able to view content sorted in a specific fashion so that it was clear what had and what had not been paid through a certain site function. the rep was able to guide us perfectly and do so on our first call. However the guide made it clear that the view was only available if done in a very unnatural fashion showing that the sorting was a bug. This issue persists 6mo later and has actually become unreliable in its ability to properly sort the view, resulting in ambiguity as to what funds have and have not been paid.
to assist WM tech if reading this- Its in regards to FastFunds payments in the accounting section.via desktop interface any browser they all have same issue.
to assist WM tech if reading this- Its in regards to FastFunds payments in the accounting section.via desktop interface any browser they all have same issue.