Results
Six weeks
from time of hire to completion of an essential project
24-hour workflows
thanks to globally distributed talent
“Upwork evaluates the work description, the talent, and does the worker classification for us so we don’t have to worry about it—that was a really great feature in terms of getting legal buy-in.”
Deb Elias
Director of Product Strategy and Operations at Chargebee

At its core, Chargebee is a software as a service (SaaS) platform that makes it easy for companies to manage subscription billing, collect payments, and connect their critical financial systems.  

Chargebee takes the complex, often confusing, aspects of payment processing, subscription management, and tax compliance out of its users’ hands, all while providing an excellent experience for their customers’ end users. But, hypergrowth meant stretching company resources to the limit.

“One of the biggest problems with a rapidly scaling organization is balancing the need to grow your company, do your job, keep the lights on, and grow your product,” said Deb Elias, Director of Product Strategy and Operations at Chargebee. “It’s just a lot.”

At one point, nearly all of Chargebee’s departments needed more resources in order to keep up with the demand for an increasingly popular product. This need extended to HR and recruiting as well, creating a bottleneck that made it harder for Chargebee’s team leaders to engage talent. Without the ability to rapidly bring on new talent, the company couldn’t test and launch as many new features—putting their speedy growth at risk of stalling.

And then Elias discovered something that made all the difference.

Chargebee brings their own talent to Upwork—and opens the door to a new world of work

It all started when Elias needed immediate help on a project. She already had a former collaborator in mind who she knew would be a great fit for the work at hand—but internal HR teams were already so busy that Elias didn’t want to ask them to set up another new contractor.

“I told the person I knew to join the Upwork platform, and I’d hire her through there,” Elias said. “She worked for six weeks, hammered out everything that I needed her to do … and we were able to move forward with a number of different initiatives based on that work.”

Through this experiment, Elias realized that working with talent on Upwork made sense for the broader Chargebee organization.

“For example, let’s say we were doing a brand new initiative that required a lot of research. We needed project managers to support this—but we don’t always need an employee resource, particularly when we haven't made the business case that we’re going to proceed with that product line,” Elias said.

The ability to bring on independent project managers through Upwork allowed Chargebee to circumvent bottlenecks and keep testing possible initiatives for launch.

Initially, Elias’ colleagues followed in her footsteps and began using Upwork’s Any Hire feature to support their talent needs.

“We had a small engineering team that needed to grow very quickly,” Elias said. “Through Upwork, they were able to very quickly rehire former engineers who previously worked on the project and get help accelerating the roadmap.”

Soon, Chargebee was clearing many of the bottlenecks for their teams and were also getting support for several essential processes, including onboarding new contractors when needed. But, creating individual job posts and reviewing talent proposals on Upwork was still eating up valuable time for Elias and her colleagues.

Upwork Enterprise takes the burden off of Chargebee’s hiring managers

“Our challenge in hiring talent was the fact that everyone was stretched so thin—which was the whole reason we needed to hire. Our hiring managers didn’t have time to sift through hundreds of resumes or profiles,” Elias said. “So I worked with the Upwork sales team to really understand the Enterprise offering.”

Everyone at Chargebee—even the legal team—was quickly sold on the fact that Upwork Enterprise would help with reviewing and shortlisting top talent for their projects.

“Our legal team is wonderful; it’s their job to raise their hands. They said, ‘Well, we need to make sure we’re adhering to local laws,’” Elias said. “And I told them, ‘It’s all part of the package—Upwork will evaluate the work description, the talent, and do the worker classification for us so we don’t have to worry about it’ … that was a really great feature in terms of getting legal buy-in.”

With legal and HR on board, Elias began identifying projects that didn’t require institutional knowledge of the Chargebee platform that could be handled by independent talent with specific expertise—and in specific locations.

“Having a distributed team is really advantageous because we have so much more coverage in the day. We can start a project in the morning in one country and pass it off to talent in another time zone in the evening,” Elias said. “I hired one professional based in Africa, and one of the reasons I did that is because she’s closer in time zone to my colleagues in India—while still being close enough to the U.S. that I can interact with her.”

Having access to the perspectives of a globally distributed team is also proving beneficial to Chargebee’s work.

“Diverse teams, in general, have better outcomes,” Elias said. “I live in Washington D.C., and we have a specific way of working here. But when you have people from across the country, and the world, you get a number of different perspectives. It truly is a global world and a global economy—you need people on your team who represent different cultures and different ways of thinking.”

How Chargebee works now: From independent talent to full-time hires

Elias is continuing to explore ways that Chargebee can keep leveraging the world’s work marketplace with the help of Upwork Enterprise.

“Today, we’re using Upwork in two ways,” Elias said. “One is to bring our own talent to the platform. The second is to find new talent who can help us accomplish short-term goals, get over a hump, or establish processes and best practices for future work.”

As more Chargebee products move through the research and testing phases, though, Elias is continuing to explore how the company can leverage Upwork’s work marketplace—including exploring full-time hiring capabilities.

“We were able to hire a contractor through Upwork who did such a great job that if we needed to continue with their work as a full-time role, and they wanted to work with us full-time, we would convert them,” Elias said. “Whether we’re hiring for a single project or long-term, Upwork is always a great way to get the talent we need.”

Industry
Financial Services
Category
Project Management, Engineering
Employees
1,000+
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