Worldsensing
at a glance
Founded in Barcelona in 2008, Worldsensing is a leading infrastructure monitoring solution that uses data from remote sensors to ensure the safety and structural integrity of dams, bridges, tunnels, and mines in 70+ countries.
Worldsensing teamed up with Oyster to scale their technical sales team across eight countries on five continents to support their expansion into new global markets. With Oyster’s support, Worldsensing strengthened its presence in key geotech markets and achieved 20-25% year-on-year growth.
- Worldsensing expanded their sales team into key global markets
- Worldsensing achieved 20-25% business growth year-on-year
- Worldsensing is saving $11,000 per year with Oyster Scale
The challenge
As a global leader in remote geotechnical monitoring, Worldsensing’s technology ensures the structural health of assets across mining, construction, rail, and civil infrastructure. Whether it’s a freeway in Taiwan, a dam in the Czech Republic, a diamond mine in Angola, or a metro tunnel in Melbourne, Worldsensing helps to prevent damage or accidents that could put lives at risk.
With demand for their products soaring, Worldsensing decided to expand their technical sales team worldwide to achieve their ambitious growth targets. Specifically, they needed to hire in key geotech markets to grow their commercial presence in those regions.
According to Giuseppe Marrone, People Operations Lead at Worldsensing, access to global talent was crucial to unlocking the company’s business growth and success. “We needed the ability to hire people outside of our headquarters to start selling our products in other countries, so we could scale our business globally,” he says. Opening their own entities abroad to hire directly was a possibility, but entities are costly to establish. “Opening multiple entities was not the solution for us. It would be too expensive in terms of taxes, lawyers, government fees, and other costs,” he explains.
Worldsensing started working with contractors overseas, but having long-term contractors was not ideal, especially as they started to expand into more countries. “Before Oyster, we were hiring mostly contractors or freelancers, basically in the U.S., which was our main focus for sales expansion at the time. But then we also needed to hire people in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and Singapore.” As their team grew, Worldsensing needed a centralized way to hire people full-time.
These are some of the challenges Worldsensing had to overcome to establish themselves as a global leader in infrastructure monitoring.
The solution
Worldsensing eventually selected Oyster as their global employment partner in July 2021 because they were impressed by the user-friendly platform and the excellent customer support from the Oyster team.
“We chose Oyster because of how easy it was to implement and the excellent support we received in hiring across several countries. Oyster has allowed us to expand our workforce into the critical locations we needed to drive business growth.”
In addition to the platform’s ease of use, Giuseppe particularly appreciates the self-serve global employment tools. For instance, he often uses the employment cost calculator to get an estimate of what it would cost to hire someone in a particular country.
“The Oyster platform is really user-friendly. Anything you need, you’ll find it in there. For instance, if you want to hire someone in a specific country and need an estimated budget, you can use the cost calculator to find the exact cost of hiring a team member in any location in the world.”
The global employment tools also allow Giuseppe’s team to gain local knowledge and insights so they can make informed choices and confidently extend offers that are locally competitive.
“Before sending an offer letter to a candidate, you need to investigate the statutory requirements and best practices in that country in terms of salary, PTO, benefits, and other employment terms. So, to be compliant and competitive, we use Oyster’s global employment tools to prepare our offers.”
Working with the Oyster team has also been a positive experience for Giuseppe. Compliance issues can be tricky to navigate, but anytime there’s a question or problem, he’s able to get fast and reliable customer support.
“Oyster is super fast when you need any help from them. You can send an email and get an answer in a couple of minutes. If they can’t provide the answer immediately, they take the time to investigate and come back to you with the right solution based on the situation. When we’ve had critical problems, they were there to solve them and provide good solutions.”
The Oyster team also helps Worldsensing navigate complex employment regulations in various countries and stay compliant with local laws. Some countries, like France, have particularly stringent labor laws, but Giuseppe’s team can count on Oyster to be a trustworthy guide.
“There are some countries where the regulations are very strict and complex. For example, without Oyster’s help, we wouldn’t be able to comply with the regulations in France. The Oyster team helps us understand the complexities and gives us recommendations on how to stay compliant.”
Businesses often need to move quickly, so Giuseppe appreciates the speed of hiring with Oyster. “The onboarding process is really fast,” he says. He recalls a particular case where the Oyster team managed to make a critical hire in record time. Worldsensing had just acquired a product from a partner and needed to urgently hire someone from that company. “We needed a team member to be onboarded in Oyster within two days—and they did it,” he says. “The support team successfully helped us hire someone in the U.S. in two days, and we’re super thankful for that.”
With Oyster as their global employment partner, Worldsensing forged ahead with their ambitious growth strategy and augmented their technical sales team in key markets that were crucial to expanding their business. This included converting their contractors into full-time employees to better reward and retain their valued team members. Giuseppe recalls that by early 2023, Worldsensing had 12 Oyster team members working from eight countries on five continents.
“The impact of Oyster is that they’ve enabled us to hire people around the world. This was one of our main issues when we needed to implement a new sales strategy. Oyster has helped us reach our business goals by enabling us to hire and expand our sales workforce internationally, which was one of our urgent needs to scale up the business.”
Worldsensing’s products are highly technical, requiring expertise in areas like geosciences, materials engineering, hydrology, and mining. The ability to source talent from anywhere in the world means Worldsensing was able to onboard highly specialized talent with deep insider knowledge of the infrastructure monitoring needs of the regions where they’re based.
The results? By strategically hiring technical sales talent to commercialize their products globally, Giuseppe estimates that Worldsensing achieved 20-25% business growth year over year.
“In terms of ROI, thanks to Oyster we have people selling our products around the world. As a result, our company grew 20-25% percent from 2022 to 2023. So that’s been amazing.”
What’s more, Worldsensing has been able to reap the benefits of accessing top global talent while also saving significantly on costs. By avoiding the high cost of opening their own entities, Worldsensing can reinvest the cost savings into strategic priorities to continue growing their business.
“Hiring globally with Oyster allows us to expand our workforce without the expense of opening subsidiaries in every single location. Working with Oyster is a cost saver. Instead of spending money on entities, we can use those cost savings to hire people to help us grow our business.”
Worldsensing also saves on costs by using Oyster Scale, an annual subscription model that offers deep discounts for hiring five or more team members. By switching their team members from a monthly subscription to a yearly one, Worldsensing is saving $11,000 per year while also ensuring more efficient workforce management.
“Oyster Scale is really a cost saver for us. Since you pay one flat fee for the whole year for a certain number of team members, it allows you to reduce costs and manage your team in a smoother way.”
Giuseppe looks forward to a continued relationship with Oyster as a trusted partner supporting Worldsensing’s business development and growth. “We are super happy with Oyster,” he says. “We want to grow and expand our markets, and are identifying new locations—and obviously, Oyster will be there to support us in hiring in those places.”
For Giuseppe, Oyster isn’t just a global employment solution, but a key to enabling Worldsensing’s success:
“Oyster is a partner that has allowed us to grow. Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to grow as fast as we have. We have an amazing relationship with Oyster. We don’t see them as a supplier, but as our main partner in growth.”
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"Prior to using Oyster, employing anyone outside the U.K. was a nightmare for us... now it's super fast and painless."
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