Contractors are a crucial element of team agility, but managing them isn’t easy. Enter AI.

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75% of companies plan to integrate AI into their processes in the coming years, and those that already have done so have seen their HR costs drop 20–40%.

Below, we’ll look at a few AI tools that can make life easier for distributed teams.

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How AI tools can help

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AI can simplify working with contractors in five main areas:

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1. Sourcing and hiring. Companies can expedite candidate selection without expanding their HR teams. AI matches candidates to positions based on skills, competencies, and alignment with the company's culture and values.

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86.1% of recruiters using AI reported that it speeds up the hiring process.

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2. Onboarding and feedback. AI tools can create guides and build bots that answer questions from newcomers. They’re also useful for analyzing completed tasks, finding weaknesses, and formulating feedback.
3. People and project management. AI can break tasks down into stages, describe requirements, calculate timelines and resources, create plans, and assign responsibilities.
4. Finance and documents. AI can help automate accounting, analyze budgets, and recognize and sort invoices. It can also collect the necessary data for payment forms, categorize documents, and generate reports.
   
5. Compliance and risk. AI can monitor compliance with laws, internal regulations, and company values. It can also analyze contractors’ reputations, identifying potential risks in collaborating with them.

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The AI tools below help with these five areas.

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Sourcing and hiring

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BrightHire

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What it is

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A platform for interview preparation and processing. Link.

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What it does

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• Creates job descriptions, interview plans, and questions for candidates.
• Helps describe your company in ways meant to appeal to particular candidates so you can attract the right people.
• Identifies key skills for each position so you can focus the hiring process on them. 
• Takes notes and records and transcribes interviews.

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BrightHire supports more than 30 languages and has plans for individual recruiters, teams, or entire companies.

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Textio

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What it is

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An AI platform that creates texts for HR (job descriptions, offers, rejection letters, and more). Link.

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What it does

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• Creates job texts that incorporate your ToV.
• Predicts responses, analyzing vacancies and telling you who’s most likely to respond: women or men, Gen Z or millennials…

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A free two-week trial is available.
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Feedback

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Happily

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What it is

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A service for monitoring engagement and mood. Link.

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What it does

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• Conducts pulse surveys to capture team members’ moods in real time. If engagement drops, the company sees it immediately.
• Gives opportunities to praise coworkers or reach out to those you haven't talked to in a while.
• Generates dashboards with trends for each department: level of engagement, sense of support, mood, stress.

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Expert advice can be added to your subscription to help monitor team progress and suggest customized action plans.

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Effy

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What it is

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AI-powered performance management software. Link.

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What it does

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• Simplifies performance reviews and regular feedback. Collects reviews from peers and managers and helps identify employees’ strengths and growth areas.
• Helps you understand which team members are most integrated into processes and contributing most. This is especially useful when companies are deciding whether to continue working with particular contractors.

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Effy integrates with platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. It’s designed to be convenient for distributed teams with time zone differences and multiple languages. There’s a free version and a trial period.

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People and project management‍

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Timely

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What it is

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A service for tracking time spent on tasks, meetings, etc. Link.

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What it does

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• Automatically tracks time spent on work so you can identify inefficiencies and focus team members on tasks that generate more revenue.
• Completes timesheets to simplify payroll.
• Produces detailed reports on time costs. Businesses can use this kind of data to make informed decisions.

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Timely synchronizes with calendar and project management tools, allowing you to populate timesheets automatically. A free trial version is available. 

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Motion

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What it is

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A team scheduling tool that incorporates priorities and time zone considerations. Link.

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What it does

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• Takes team members' schedules into account and suggests deadlines for tasks.
• Breaks projects into phases, creates subtasks, assigns performers, visualizes progress, and takes into account dependencies between tasks (what needs to be done first and what can come later).
• Collects disparate project notes in one place and converts them into clear tasks.

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Motion is designed to work for both individuals and large companies. There is a free trial version.

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Finance and documents

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Vic.ai

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What it is

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An automated accounting platform. Link.

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‍What it does

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• Automates invoice processing: reads and scans PDFs, identifies vendors, amounts, dates, and expense categories, and fills in the right fields in the system.
• Handles recurring payments automatically. Invoices only come up for review if there are anomalies.
• Provides real-time analytics: time and resource costs, where bottlenecks are, which invoices get rejected most often, and changes in team efficiency.

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Vic.ai integrates with popular ERP and accounting systems and is most effective for companies with a large document flow. Features can be tested for free.

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Truewind

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What it is

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Software for automating financial planning and expense analytics. Link.

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What it does

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• Creates financial reports, forecasts, and models without Excel. Dashboards show real-time P&L, balance, and cashflow for the month.
• Pulls data from banks, payroll, and accounting, synthesizing transactions, expenses, salaries, and contractor payments.
• Finds anomalies in expenses (duplicate transactions, missed payments, etc.).
• Creates reports tailored to different audiences, from high-level visualizations for pitches to detailed tables for CFOs.

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Truewind is SOC 2 certified and integrates with QuickBooks, Plaid, and other tools.

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Compliance and risk

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Alyne

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What it is

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A platform for enterprise risk management, including identity security. Link.

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What it does

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• Helps build and automate GRC processes like risk assessment, auditing, and compliance control. All information is collected in one window.
• Visualizes risks and compliance in real time. A dashboard shows which processes are in the “red zone” and who’s responsible for them.
• Automatically sends out risk, compliance, and cybersecurity surveys to employees and contractors, then analyzes the responses.

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Alyne customizes and integrates with internal systems. A free demo is available.

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Luminance

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What it is

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A service for analyzing contracts. Link.

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What it does

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• Highlights key provisions in documents and deviations from templates.
• Identifies potential risks (for example, lack of expiration date or jurisdiction).
• Builds dashboards showing how many documents are on review, what their statuses are, where deadlines have been violated, and which contracts need immediate review.

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Luminance integrates with DocuSign, Dropbox, Outlook, and other tools. A free demo is available.

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The human touch

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As smart as tools like these are, nothing beats a team of human experts. 

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If global contractors are an important part of your team, Mellow is exactly what you need. It’s a full-fledged platform for every aspect of contractor management, from sourcing to payments, compliance, and legal protection. 

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Mellow still believes in people. We never forget that AI is just a tool, and that our clients deserve a human-centered approach based on convenience, transparency, and trust.

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Try Mellow today →

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