A New Way To Get Found | Part One

It’s been a long path to reach the day of going live with the new platform and I’m not going to lie, it tested my resolve to the core along the way. The vision for a quality freelance network made up of great people doing great things that were not only good at their jobs but were nice people started over 15 years ago. 

It evolved over the years through various websites and huge investments in time and money to make sure we represented quality as the membership numbers grew, which resulted in a very clever platform  - the original SAB Network website. 

The old platform made it possible to do searches for roles and skill bases and check live availability instantly. It had cost a fortune to build and from the outside it was super impressive, looked professional and the slow growth of the vetted membership meant we had something truly unique in the industry. Productions were able to post a live job to the relevant people and within seconds were receiving live responses from interested and available crew. Rather than making 30 calls, they were presented with the 3 available freelancers with detailed profiles, CVs and contact information. Impressive, super slick, hugely time saving but flawed. 

The first challenge on the path to the new platform was to walk away from the expensive old platform. Although it was amazing and there was nothing in the industry like it, it was restrictive for the Producer and the Freelancer. The Network was taking more and more bookings for freelancers, but we noticed that we were being emailed at the office and asked to find the freelancers on behalf of the production rather than the quickest route for them to use the system and have control of the live booking board themselves as intended. 

For the Freelancer, their ability to showcase their experience was limited. There was an opportunity to improve their visibility and ability to be found by building custom profiles where they could create content around their credits, kit, services and more to grow their search presence. Our first challenge was to walk away and look at designing a completely new platform from the ground up, custom built for site speed, designed for visibility where everything added to every member profile matters and builds to form an incredibly powerful tool.