Work  /  Freebird

Nine years of knowledge, trapped in four systems.

Freebird's value was never in its tools. It was in knowing every talent on the books personally. The tools were costing twelve hours a week.

Client Freebird, recruitment agency, Paris
Engagement Systems audit & digital transformation
Year 2026 · In delivery
Disciplines Audit · Custom platform · Data migration · GDPR
The Freebird platform's freelance roster: a filterable list of 687 freelancers with faceted search across role, software and location.
The freelance roster in the new platform, faceted by métier, software and location. Anonymised: every name and contact detail is invented.
01 / The situation

Four people, four systems, and a day and a half a week lost between them.

Four systems, none of them talking.

Freebird has placed creative freelancers in Paris since 2017. By 2026, four people were carrying a business that had outgrown its software. The engagement started with an audit to put numbers on the problem.

What it found:

  • Eight to twelve hours a week lost to double entry and manual tasks.
  • Every mission meant at least eight manual entries across four systems.
  • One person at a time could edit a mission file. MBLD locks records, and the team is four.
  • No automation anywhere. No reminders, no workflows, no alerts.
  • Agrolog ran on one local Windows machine. No mobile, no remote access.
  • Bank reconciliation took three manual steps: check CIC, write a note, key it into Agrolog.
  • 1,224 portfolio files sat in Google Drive, unlinked to any mission or talent record.
  • GDPR exposure. No consent mechanism, no retention policy.
8–12
hours per week lost to double entry
4
disconnected systems per mission
1,224
portfolio files orphaned in Drive
9 yrs
of relationship history to preserve
02 / The approach

Nine years of data is an asset. Treat it like one.

Build around what works. Replace only what doesn't.

The easy recommendation was a clean slate. It would have been wrong. Behind MBLD sat 649 freelancers, 710 companies and nine years of history, and Agrolog handled invoicing correctly.

So the brief: carry the data forward intact, keep what earns its place, and remove the manual work in between. Audit findings were ranked by time recovered against effort to fix, and the build followed that order.

Freebird's value isn't in its tools. It's in the intimate knowledge of every talent, in the responsiveness, in the human relationship cultivated since 2017. The point of this engagement is to give that time back. From the engagement proposal, April 2026
03 / What was built

One platform where four systems used to be.

A business platform shaped around the actual work.

  • A systems audit that put hard numbers on the old setup. The figures above are its findings.
  • One platform in place of four systems, with mission records the whole team can open at once.
  • Full data migration. 649 freelancers, 710 companies and nine years of history, carried across without loss.
  • Portfolio files reconnected to the mission and talent records they belong to.
  • Automation for reminders, workflows and alerts. That layer didn't exist before.
  • Invoicing integration, ending the manual re-entry behind every bill.
  • GDPR foundations: consent capture and a defined retention policy.
  • A feedback loop so the team raises issues from inside the app and watches them get fixed.
The Freebird missions grid: every confirmed mission in one table with freelance, role, client, agency contact and account.
Every live mission in one view. The same record used to take eight entries across four systems. Anonymised.
04 / The outcome

The audit's frictions, designed out.

Four systems down to one.

A mission is now one record in one platform. The full dataset made the trip: 649 freelancers, 710 companies, nine years of history, and 1,224 portfolio files finally attached to the records they belong to.

The frictions the audit measured are gone by design. No single-user lock on mission files. No triple-keyed bank entries. Reminders and alerts run themselves. The hours that went into retyping go back where Freebird's value has always been: the relationships.

Sound familiar?

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