Lilia Stoyanov: “Embracing Change Is Our Strength, As Our Team Can Quickly Adapt to New Markets and Customer Demands”

The CEO of Transformify in an interview with CoinsPaid Media shared the results of the year and plans for 2024. She also talked about the productive cooperation with the CoinsPaid ecosystem, how the project supports candidates from difficult regions, and what the future of Web3 looks like.

— Can you tell us about the products you offer to companies? What are your flagship solutions? 

— Transformify (TFY) offers a range of products and solutions designed to streamline workforce management, particularly for companies working with freelancers, independent contractors, and vendors. Our flagship solution is the Vendor Management System (VMS), a comprehensive tool for automating the onboarding, billing, and payment of a diverse external workforce, including independent contractors, contingent workers, temporary workers, freelancers, and service providers.

Our other popular solutions include the following:

1. Applicant Tracking System (ATS): An AI-driven applicant tracking system that provides end-to-end hiring solutions. It helps optimize the recruitment process, enables data-driven hiring decisions, and offers seamless integration with various HR software, HRMS, and ERP systems. Moreover, the ATS streamlines the communication with the candidates, allows the hiring team to add comments, flags candidates who have applied for multiple roles, etc.
2. Freelancer Management System (FMS): Small and medium-sized businesses can compliantly hire and pay freelancers and contractors across 184 countries. It includes features like e-document signing, self-billing, invoice and payment automation, team onboarding, and integrations with various HR, payroll, and project management software.
3. Vendor Management System (VMS): Aimed at medium-sized companies and enterprises, the VMS provides an open API to completely automate the onboarding, payment, and billing processes. Through the open API, Transformify customers can integrate their existing systems, create and process thousands of payments in any currency, including 20+ cryptocurrencies, and fully automate billing and reconciliation. It’s ideal for big translation and marketing agencies, food delivery, event management, and gaming companies, and any firm that manages a large number of freelancers, independent contractors, and temporary workers. Transformify (TFY) acts as the Agent of Record (AOR), mitigating any compliance risks for its business clients. Instead of dealing with thousands of freelancers and independent contractors, TFY’s business customers have only one vendor — Transformify (TFY), a UK-based workforce management system.
4. Employer of Record (EOR): Businesses can hire employees globally, with TFY acting as the employer of record, taking responsibility for payroll, workforce management, compliance, and more. This solution is particularly valuable for managing international employees and ensuring they receive comparable employment benefits. The extensive network of trusted local EOR partners ensures high quality service and global coverage.
5. Diversity-Equity-Inclusions (DEI) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programs: These programs are designed to help businesses tap into diverse talent pools and address their diversity hiring needs.
6. Human Resources Management System (HRMS): It manages onboarding, organizational charts, performance reviews, document collection, and more, offering a comprehensive solution for HR management needs.

— How does the company work with artificial intelligence? What products use AI? 

— Transformify leverages AI in its Applicant Tracking System and Vendor Management System to provide advanced analytics, streamline recruiting processes, optimize vendor management, and automate compliance and billing, thereby improving overall efficiency and effectiveness in workforce management.

Transformify’s ATS uses AI to enhance the recruiting process. It provides reports and analytics, including global median pay rates for specific skill sets, predicted success rates of candidates based on analysis of hundreds of thousands of data points, and detailed information about candidate preferences and locations. The ATS also features AI-driven candidate screening, analyzing resumes and cover letters for relevant keywords and calculating a predicted success rate of candidates. 

The ATS includes options such as one-click job posting, which automatically posts jobs to over 100 free job boards, saving you time on job distribution. The system manages candidate profiles, shortlisting, and interview scheduling, streamlining the hiring process. Additionally, it ensures GDPR compliance, protecting candidate data and adhering to regulatory requirements.

Our VMS solution uses AI insights to drive efficiency. It provides a cloud-based platform for managing a diverse contingent workforce effectively, offers a unified dashboard with an integrated AI-powered ATS, and generates custom reports for financial transparency. 

Transformify also automates compliance, billing, and cross-border payment processes, which are essential for managing international labor laws and tax compliance. 

— What are the most valuable partnerships you have in 2023? What have these partnerships brought to your business, and what results have they delivered? 

— 2023 was a year of constant change and unexpected opportunities. We had the privilege to partner with multinational companies that manage thousands of independent contractors and remote workers. Partnerships with companies operating in the food delivery, translation services, financial services, marketing services, outsourcing, and event management industries fueled our tremendous revenue and profit growth.

— What would you call a business failure? And what would you consider a success? 

— Losing customers due to lack of dedicated support or constant technical product issues is definitely a business failure, as it’s completely in the hands of the business to prevent these issues. Failing to properly onboard customers and creating expectations that can’t be met in a timely manner also leads to failure. It’s common for salespeople to promise features that don’t exist yet or customizations that are risky and time consuming. However, there’s no excuse for the management to turn a blind eye to such incidents, or worse, to encourage salespeople to close deals now without considering the negative consequences they’ll have in the future.

— What are your plans for the new year 2024? What challenges and goals does the Transformify team want to achieve? 

— 2023 was a challenging and very successful year. We doubled our revenues and increased both our gross profit and profit before tax (PBT) margins despite inflation, wars, and overall negative market conditions. As the company is in an exponential growth phase, we have very challenging revenue and profit targets for 2024. The market is unstable and any strategy is likely to change numerous times as it did in 2023. Embracing change is our strength as our flexible remote team can quickly adapt to new markets and customer demands.

— Can you tell us about the Transformify team? What departments are there, what are they working on, and are there any interesting solutions within the team? 

— An all-remote company since its inception in 2015, Transformify relies on a flexible team of independent contractors and freelancers across four continents. We have a core team and a large pool of external workforce on-demand that allows us to scale up or down literally overnight. Moreover, we’re proud of 1000 Interns, TFY’s internship program that attracts bright young people from across the globe. 1000 Interns is designed to support students during their studies while giving them an opportunity to gain real-world experience. Many interns stay with us after graduation and then join our team.

Our team structure currently rests on three primary pillars: tech, sales, and marketing teams.

The tech team: The wizards behind TFY’s workforce management system and open APIs. Their knowledge, dedication, and creativity are pivotal to our success.

The sales team: This isn’t an average sales team relying on traditional lead generation and email automation methods. We hire and train people who are skilled communicators, understand buyer needs, and act as trusted advisors.

The marketing team: Our marketing team focuses on promoting our brand and products to a wider audience online. This includes running PR, marketing, and SEO initiatives.

— Your company is engaged in corporate social responsibility activities that help find jobs for people from hard-to-employ regions. Can you share the results of your activities in 2023? 

— Many of TFY’s business clients embrace our brand mission and willingly provide remote jobs and gigs to people living in high unemployment areas. Both brand names have a deep meaning. Transformify stands for “transforming people’s lives for good,” while TFY stands for “think for yourself,” and both resonate well with the values of our customers.

In 2016, Transformify launched Rebuild Lives, a program specifically designed to provide refugees and people living in war and post-war zones with access to remote jobs and secure payments. As the military conflict in Ukraine continues, we see lots of customers using the services of contractors and freelancers based in Ukraine, and so does TFY, as part of our team is based in the war zone and we’ve never considered shifting our operations elsewhere. Unfortunately, the situation in Ukraine isn’t the only one, and we’re doing our best to support companies in Israel that desperately need remote teams of contractors to run their daily operations. We sincerely hope that both conflicts will end soon, as there are innocent people on both sides who are suffering the consequences and need support.

— Tell us about your plans for socially important projects in 2024. 

— 1000 Interns is of interest to many business customers who see its positive impact on TFY’s growth. Many young people across the globe face the same challenge — to be considered for a job, they’re expected to have some practical experience. And to get practical experience, they need to be given a chance to join a team. To break this vicious cycle and financially support young people during their studies, TFY’s 1000 Interns program requires young people to work 2-3 hours a day with the rest of the team. Usually, our interns are in their second or third year of college and stay with TFY after graduation.

Rebuild Lives will continue to be of great importance due to the wars and the need to provide opportunities for people living in war and post-war zones.

— Can you give us an insight into your partnership with CoinsPaid? How did you learn about the product and decide to cooperate? What is your feedback? 

— Back in 2020, some of TFY’s customers expressed interest in paying their contractors and freelancers in crypto. COVID-19 and the instability that followed forced lots of people to rethink their financial situation. Suddenly, crypto was seen as a viable alternative to keeping savings in fiat. You’d be surprised at the number of freelancers and contractors who are constantly learning and willing to hold part of their earnings in crypto, seeing crypto as an investment. 

To address the demand for crypto payments, we conducted comprehensive market research followed by a rigorous RFP process. CoinsPaid was selected as our partner for crypto payment processing due to their seamless API integration and wide range of supported cryptocurrencies. We’ve enjoyed excellent merchant support ever since the API integration was launched and would strongly recommend CoinsPaid to any merchant looking to process large volumes of crypto payments in various cryptocurrencies. 

— Speaking of the Web3 services market, how do you see it developing in 2024? In your opinion, what will be the new period for projects actively working in this area?

— The Web3 services market is expected to experience significant growth and evolution in 2024. There are several key trends that will contribute to this.

Various sectors, such as gaming, real estate, and music, are anticipated to integrate Web3 technologies. The Web3 market is expected to see a large influx in its user base, highlighting the need for user-friendly and accessible marketing strategies. Marketing in Web3 is likely to shift towards making blockchain concepts more understandable to a wider audience, moving beyond technical documents to more engaging content.

Moreover, AI will play a critical role in targeting markets, and NFTs will continue to be used by brands for engagement and presence. We also expect to see a greater emphasis on community building through reward and loyalty programs in blockchain projects.

Inclusive governance is another key trend. DAOs are expected to become more transparent and understandable to a broader audience. 

A focus on core development and differentiation is also anticipated. Projects will need to balance building their core technology with distinguishing themselves in a competitive market.

These developments suggest a dynamic and evolving Web3 landscape, where user engagement, community building, and adaptability to regulatory changes will be key. The growth of the Web3 services market will boost the need for skilled independent contractors and freelancers and we foresee more of our business customers demanding such expertise on their teams. 

Interviewed by Ekaterina Palianova 

Photo from personal archives