systematicHR

I’ve been quite up front in my admission that I don’t know much about the mid-market for HRMS. As part of my education, I had the opportunity to speak with one of the absolute leaders in the mid-market HRMS arena – Employease. I have no issue saying that they are a leader as Gartner seems to think so as well, and the market trends seem quite strong for Employease as a company. Jeff Beinke is the VP of Product Strategy and Development, so just the type of person I like to talk to. Jasen Williams, the Director of Integrated Communications was also there to weigh in on brand and market perspectives.

I should preface this article with the fact that this is really the first software application that I’m writing about that I have never touched, let alone seen. Therefore, this is totally based on what I heard from Emplyoease and what I’ve read on the web. I was initially struck by the breadth of services – I thought they were a benefit vendor. Indeed, they were until several years ago when they branched into HRMS, and will be further branching into payroll in the upcoming months. A well positioned partnership with ADP major accounts (50-999 employee sales) has allowed Employease to grow sales in the small employer market significantly by leveraging someone else’s salesforce – and possibly the best small market HR salesforces on the face of the earth! This growth in the small employer market has allowed them to focus on growing their business upstream and it’s paid off. Leveraging benefit sales up to 20K employees and higher, and shifting the focus of their own salesforce, Employease has started to penetrate the 1-10K employee sweet spot. In my opinion, this is where the money is.

Talking about money, they are using a finance model that traditional outsourcers like ADP and new vendors like SuccessFactors use – the per employee per month model (PEPM). Rather than charging fixed license fees, companies like Employease, ADP and SuccessFactors get to benefit when unemployment rates go down and employers grow in size. While not quite up to the string ADP had until a few years ago (160+ consecutive quarters of double digit growth), Employease has put together a string of 34 consecutive quarters of revenue growth.

As a Saas HRMS vendor, There are some striking similarities to SuccessFactors. Employease has incredible client loyalty and a stellar client retention rate. They have begun to transition to what they call SaaS 2.0: The ability to leverage their network to facilitate cellective intelligence and process enablement. While not losing sight of “SaaS 1.0” which was all about the technology and service delivery model, SaaS 2.0 brings the true meaning of “vendor partner” to the table.

I’m looking to seeing more about Employease and other mid-market vendors. As I hear more, see product, and learn about the data centers, I’ll fill you in.