The way people do tasks or work is evolving every so often. With the changing work models, businesses have to face many difficulties to adapt their workforce so as to bring more operational fluidity and stay ahead of the competition. This is the reason why a company leverages workforce management systems.
To hire, pay, and manage gifted applicants, the company must have keen eyes and a thorough understanding of the needs of business clients. Every business has many different considerations regarding the way they work and the personnel they will need to carry out the daily operations.
Transformify assists organizations to hire whenever, wherever, without wasting valuable corporate resources to stay compliant with a set of global laws and regulations by simplifying the international hiring process and removing bottlenecks. They are growing swiftly and are dealing with a growing number of corporate clients on their needs, including some of the world’s most sophisticated international businesses.
Recently we had a conversation with the CEO and Angel Investor of Transformify, Lilia Stoyanov. In the interview, we gained valuable insights into her professional journey and the agency’s inner workings.
So, without further ado, let’s dive right into the interview and cherish the knowledge we are about to receive.
Please brief our audience about Transformify, its USPs, and how it is currently
positioned as a leading provider of billing and invoicing solutions.
Global payroll on-demand is a relatively new concept, although the COVID-19 pandemic forced many companies to work remotely. Soon, innovative businesses grasped the opportunity that comes with tapping into a global talent pool. If before, it was taking months to fill in a highly-skilled role, distributed work allowed them to hire the best candidate regardless of the location.
There was one catch, though – compliance with the labor legislation in a growing number of countries. How could the in-house HR team stay on top of all regulatory changes, make sure that all necessary documents are collected, the cross-border payments are processed, and so much more?
That’s where Transformify steps in to provide a seamless experience from talent acquisition to onboarding, to project management to self-billing, messaging, mass emails and payment automation, and all other functionalities that are necessary for the seamless management of in-house and remote teams.
Further, Transformify leverages HSBC, Payoneer, Stripe, Rapyd, and Revolut to securely transfer payouts to service providers across the globe. By integrating into the fintech infrastructure, Transformify is positioning itself to quickly develop new, highly sought-after features and make them available globally.
Thus, Transformify is tapping into APIs, foreign exchange services, and global payment capabilities to make paying—and getting paid—faster and cheaper for its clients. 20+ cryptocurrencies are available to those businesses, service providers, and freelancers willing to be paid in crypto.
“At Transformify, we innovate by anticipating how the world of work evolves and how dynamics—like the rise of the gig economy—impact the needs of our clients and the modern workforce. Transformify provides ready access to a growing contingent labor pool and the tools to manage and pay freelancers, service providers, and independent contractors in a secure, efficient, and compliant manner,” said Lilia Stoyanov, CEO of Transformify.
Tell us more about the products and services through which you have ascertained your stronghold within the employee benefits and insurance space.
Although employee benefits and insurance are not the primary focus of Transformify, strategic partnerships with insurance for digital nomads and dental care are available to users of Transformify. They can opt to purchase insurance packages based on their preferences. Usually, we manage to negotiate preferential pricing for Transformify’s users to enhance their satisfaction.
Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on why the adoption of technologies
such as AI and machine learning is necessary for the billing and invoicing solutions niche, and how have you leveraged these technologies to deliver your products and services?
Billing, invoicing, and reconciling payments is the nightmare of many accountants and finance executives. Imagine a retail chain that uses the services of promoters every weekend all across the UK. They are independent contractors. Their availability is fluid and needs to be confirmed. Most of them have no idea how to issue a tax-compliant invoice. The nightmare for the retail chain starts right here, right now.
How to ensure that all these people, sometimes more than 5000, working each weekend on a contract basis have issued and submitted their invoices? How to ensure that no duplicate payments will be transferred? What about updating invoice details and payment details in the vendor master data? How to facilitate the reconciliation of all financial data?
Transformify uses algorithms that match each payment to the payment approval to the payment details associated with the respective service provider to fully automate billing, invoicing, payment transfers, and reconciliation. The payments are also reconciled automatically, and there is no possibility to transfer duplicate payments as each payment has a unique payment ID.
Moreover, Transformify acts as CaaS (Company-as-a-service) so that its business clients have only one vendor to set up in their vendor master data and transfer payments to. All service providers, freelancers, and independent contractors enjoy the automated self-billing process.
A self-billing invoice is issued on their behalf each time a payment is approved.
They are not expected to keep track of the tax legislation and know-how to issue tax-compliant invoices, etc. The same is valid for payment confirmations – an automated email is sent out to the service providers to inform them that a payment has been approved and is on its way.
How do you envision scaling Transformify’s operations and offerings in 2022?
Transformify has launched Sustainable Remote Jobs Initiative to tackle unemployment amid the covid19 outbreak. Over the years, we’ve been giving back to society, and that’s what we are doing in times of uncertainty. As thousands of small businesses have struggled during the lockdown, people living in rural areas and small cities across the globe will need more access to temporary remote jobs in the coming months.
Further, back in 2016, Transformify launched Rebuild Lives to help displaced people earn income and get paid compliantly while seeking asylum overseas, which is even more relevant right now with the Ukraine crisis. Often refugees leave war zones and move overseas, having no safety net or source of income. It takes months, and sometimes even years, to receive asylum status.
Transformify HR Suite enables job search, provides information about the transferable skills of the job seekers as well as secures payment transfers to people in need worldwide.
We’ve never charged job seekers a fee for using our technology and made our services and HR software solutions accessible to businesses of all sizes. Further, we have expanded to 150+ countries in less than three years without any external funding. Asia and the Middle East are our focus as these are fast-growing developing markets with huge potential. We saw tremendous ten-fold growth in 2021 versus 2020 and worked relentlessly to achieve even better results in 2022.
Kindly highlight a few awards and accolades that accurately highlight Transformify’s position in the market.
Along with the numerous awards, including First Women Award (the UK, 2017), Female Enterprise Award (the UK, 2018), and Top 50 Most Innovative Brands (the UK, 2019), Transformify is among the very few companies that joined the Digital Skills & Jobs Coalition of the EU Commission back in 2016.
About the Leader
Lilia Stoyanov is a chief executive officer and angel investor at Transformify. She is a fintech and digital transformation expert and a professor at Zigurat Business School, an expert evaluator of Horizon 2020 at the European Commission, and contributing author in various magazines, including Entrepreneur.com.
Over the years, she has held numerous Chief Financial Officer roles, GM & CFO roles at Skrill/Paysafe, and a Director Procure to Pay at Coca-Cola Enterprises.
Having a background in fintech, management, and strategy, she sensed the rise of the gig economy early on. At about the same time, many enterprises restructured their businesses, and the automation of processes led to layoffs of highly skilled and highly paid experts.
Initially, Transformify was developed to provide work assignments to top experts and ensure that they don’t waste their time dealing with billing, chasing late payments, and compliance. Over the years, an ATS (applicant tracking system), FMS (freelancer management system), VMS (vendor management system), and diversity hiring programs were added to the product mix.
