New CFO sees 'huge untapped market' for Field Nation

Jason Woods is working to identify and execute growth strategies as the newly hired chief financial officer at Field Nation, the Minneapolis-based company that connects businesses with gig economy workers around the country.

Woods, who joined Field Nation last month, arrived as the company pursues what he said are aggressive growth goals.

"We have to shift from a manual mode to a scalable or automated mode," Woods said. "So we're going to change a lot of our business processes to create scalability so that we can handle a much larger volume of clients and transactions."

The company, which has 200 employees, plans to expand its sales team in 2020, Woods said.

Some 43,000 technicians are active on Field Nation's platform, seeking work from more than 1,000 buyers posting work orders on the marketplace, according to Woods. The company charges technicians a fee of 10% of the work order total.

CEO Mynul Khan founded the privately held Field Nation in 2008 as companies shifted from hiring permanent employees to using contractors to perform on-site labor and as employees increasingly sought flexible work schedules.

Woods has more than two decades of finance and leadership experience, the last seven at SAP Concur, a travel and expense software company.

"Jason's experience will help us tremendously as we navigate this fast-paced and ever-changing environment that Field Nation excels in," Khan said in a release.

Woods, a University of Illinois graduate, earned an MBA in finance from the University of St. Thomas.

Q: Why should companies use Field Nation's technicians?

A: We invest a lot of time and effort to ensure that we have high-quality [technicians] on our platform. We have programs to help identify and weed out poor performance, no shows or late shows. If [the work] is not done correctly we have mediation processes. Contractors know they're interviewing for their work every time they go out in the field.

Q: What's the appeal for workers?

A: The platform effectively serves as sales, marketing and back office for our contractors. As soon as both sides agree on the platform that the work has been successfully completed, Field Nation will immediately pay the provider, usually within a couple of days. They don't have to wait and they don't have to chase people down to get paid, which is a real problem throughout the gig economy.

Q: Do you see the gig economy slowing?

A: Despite the very low employment macro trend in the U.S., the number of gig workers in general and the number of gig workers on the Field Nation platform is growing tremendously. It represents more of the macro shift in the workforce. More and more people prefer to do independent contracting jobs whether or not they have a full-time job. All the macro trends indicate that independent contractor work is going to continue to grow pretty dramatically. We think we're poised to help enable that.

Q: What is Field Nation's growth potential?

A: I'm hesitant to put a number on it. Part of our secret sauce is going to be to figure that out over the next year or two. A number that is already public is that only about 8% of companies are using independent contractors in the field. That means there is huge growth potential. There's a huge untapped market for this business.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Lake Elmo. His e-mail is todd_nelson@mac.com.