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WorkMarket by ADP

Score8 out of 10

7 Reviews and Ratings

What is WorkMarket by ADP?

WorkMarket was founded in 2010 and in 2018, was acquired by ADP, a global provider of HR technology and services. With ADP resources, WorkMarket continues to be focused on providing enterprise technology to help companies unlock the power of their extended workforce. WorkMarket is freelance management system (FMS) for hiring, onboarding and managing the extended workforce, including freelancers, contractors and contingent workforces.

What do you think of WM? I like it!

Pros

  • Buyer covers the fees.
  • It was one of the first job platforms I used.
  • After a job is complete and paid, transfer of funds is usually next business day.

Cons

  • Their mobile platform is not that great. Truthfully, there are some jobs viewable on the mobile under WorkFeed that I cannot apply to because it requires viewing the job from the full website.
  • If a job has requirements such as uploading GL insurance, background check, or drug test in order to apply for the job, then it should not be viewable at all for the technician who doesn't qualify.
  • Recently it keeps providing available jobs that are hours away which makes it difficult because when I have to counter, I usually don't get the job because I have to cover the 2-4 hours of driving each way. In short, they need to only list jobs that you are truly qualified to do within the proper distance.

Return on Investment

  • Positive--easy payment process (direct deposit) so I can keep working.
  • Negative--need to make a mobile app to help reduce time I am waiting for web pages to load (sometimes I had to wait 30 minutes just to sign in).
  • Postive--the buyer pays the fees, which means what I negotiate I get which makes it better to know how much I will actually get in the end.

WM - the best of the best

Pros

  • Have a problem? Click "chat" from the website and support is seconds away from answering your question(s).
  • A intuitive website that is easy to find what you're looking for.
  • Founder and co-founder of Work Market are from another well known platform that went off to create something very professional.

Cons

  • Should be able to dispute inaccuracies on closed out work orders.
  • When a provider is slow to pay or does not pay within the agreed upon approval time, there should be an automatic approval or a dispute process in place.
  • Presently no formal online dispute process in place.

Return on Investment

  • No direct expenses involved in order to receive and perform work through Work Market. ROI is 100%.

OnForce will help in a pinch, but it has to be a pretty bad situation to use them

Pros

  • You get techs who are ready to work
  • You can increase the coverage of your service area, in some respects
  • You can use local techs as well if your team is busy

Cons

  • You don't really know who you are going to get
  • There's not a lot of followthrough. This tech will act as an adjunct to your company, and you are left holding the bag for their work
  • We had one bad experience, and decided to go a different route for growth

Return on Investment

  • Positively, we can respond to out of state client emergencies with this service.
  • We actually don't make that much money on a call, it's negligible, so the ability to call them is really the selling point. It can help get contracts and footholds elsewhere, but it won't by itself generate much income if any.

Other Software Used

Dentrix

Excellent product with a fatal flaw-its management.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.

Return on Investment

  • 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.

Alternatives Considered

Field Nation and OnForce

Other Software Used

OnForce, Field Nation