Krishna Surendra: 16:37
Yeah. One thing which we learned again, there are lessons to be learned here too, because sometimes during the sales process, we promise something because we offer customizability and customers think that we can do everything like Salesforce. Obviously what we, any company, they cannot satisfy every need of a customer. So there are certain limitations. But you know, we’ll have to wait.
And if it makes sense, then we’ll definitely add it to the roadmap and we can even expedite things. But if it is something specific for a client, then we have to take a call. Either let them know we’re sorry, we’ll give you the money back for this module because we can’t do it, or we will work out a solution as a workaround.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:17
How do you decide okay, so you’ve you get all this feedback internally externally from potential clients, competitors, whoever. How do you decide, okay this is the next module. We’re going to dedicate the resources and all the time to, I don’t know if you want to tell a specific example when you went from the new onboarding to the next one, what was the decision like?
How do you make that decision? Because you, like you said, you just double down on what you have a lot of stuff here already. Then you’re probably, you know, improving that in addition to relaunching this new thing. So I don’t know if you want to talk on the launch of a new module specifically and how you actually decided to launch it.
Krishna Surendra: 18:02
Yeah, definitely. It’s more than gut feeling. It’s based on the customer feedback and also the sales prospects. If people are asking for a specific module or functionality, then we’ll keep a log of it. So we lost so many deals because obviously let’s just say we didn’t have an applicant tracking hiring module, right.
We lost X amount of deals. So we lost like ten deals because we didn’t have it. Okay. Then we’ll check with existing customers. Do they have the same feeling?
Because if there is an opportunity for us to build this module, can we sell it to them? Yeah. Then we get the customer feedback, we get the sales feedback. And then we’ll obviously look at competitors in the space. So to understand you know how it works etc.
Then it’s a decision. Okay. Do we have the bandwidth to take another module or before we can, you know, work on a new module, we have to see if there are any customer commitments that we have to meet and deliver. Once everything is checked, then it’s natural that, sure, we should definitely work on a new module.
But it has its own disadvantages. You know, advantages are sure you can close more deals. You can upsell the new product to your existing customer base, but then you have to maintain it, right? It’s not one set and done. So once you develop it you have to go back and then keep improving, keep maintaining. If you’re willing to take that risk then yeah, we can go ahead with that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:36
Yeah. I mean, do you sometimes, do you pre-sell the module sometimes to existing customers or no? Like or do you wait till it comes out? You had mentioned something before, like we say, hey, we’re going to build this. I don’t know if you offer. Oh, you get this beta pricing or something. How does that work?
Krishna Surendra: 19:55
We yeah. If I understood correctly. So if we don’t have a specific functionality I mean most likely it’s not a new module, but rather let’s say we’re missing AI integration as an example. Are you missing a resume parsing? I will promise we will make sure that we work on a statement of work, and then make sure both parties sign off on that.
Okay. This is the scope of the project. It’s going to take so much time and it will be delivered in two months, three months. And then whatever the cost may be, if both parties agree to it, then we’ll put it in a sprint. That’s how I mean, if without that it’s going to be like he said something. She said something.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:34
It’s kind of like you’re creating a customized proposal for someone. But that ends up basically funding it for other people that may want it. But that specific person is maybe more urgent for that, for their needs to put it to the top of the line.
Krishna Surendra: 20:50
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:51
Yeah.
Krishna Surendra: 20:52
We’re moving it to the top of the backlog.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:54
Yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, listen, if they wanted that bad and or pay for it, then you’ll prioritize it for sure. Yeah. And then other people benefit from it as well.
Krishna Surendra: 21:04
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:04
Yeah I love it. That’s great. You know what’s interesting about this. And at what point it seems like Workmates is kind of like a whole other side of the company. When did that come into play?
Krishna Surendra: 21:21
In fact, this idea came, its inception was in back in 2015 when we were working for the previous organization. My founder. He was the then CEO. He had this idea where we want to build this application because the thought process is, you know, you can always sell HR solutions, but the audience is all all about HR people, right? So administrators, HR users, etc. they can always switch providers easily.
You know, if you get a new HR then yeah, he will bring his own product suite from the previous company because he has expertise over there. Whereas if you try to build a product for employees, so employees are the ones who is going to use it, the majority of the people in the company are employees, the bottom level people. So if you can build a product for employees to use at a day to day basis, then it’s going to be much sticky and difficult to replace. And obviously, if you have the buy-in for employees, then you can obviously sell in more products. That was the idea. That’s how it started.
But then it’s hard, right? So we build something, then there’s no adoption and the market isn’t ready because back then, like ten years ago, everybody’s working from office. Offices. And then you don’t have to have a communication tool because they meet them in person.
As a remote workforce, employees started to work remotely in different countries, then it’s hard for them to communicate. You need more than a chat application to connect people up. They have to align with the company culture, company values, and make sure they’re more engaged and retained so that you can improve employee retention. That’s how this product is going to help you as an organization. Keep your employees motivated, keep them engaged, recognize their work, and then make sure you know you retain them for longer periods.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:11
Krishna, I want to talk about clients, right. So these things were going through. I mean, there’s a lot of work. Each one of these modules is there’s a lot that goes into these. But I want to talk about a client piece.
Early on, how did you decide? And when I’m looking at the web page here we see solutions. You serve healthcare. And let me go back to healthcare and education and manufacturing and food and beverage and construction and retail, where there are certain industries like on the get go that you focus on before expanding, or how did you kind of focus in on getting more clients, customers onto the platform?
Krishna Surendra: 23:49
No, there was not a specific focus. The initial focus was to get customers right. So private, primarily in the private sector, in the commercial space. So we got customers initially from the technology space. There were like Zendesk was one of them.
So initially Zendesk was one of our first customers. And after that, you know, when we’re trying to expand. So we had this opportunity to work with ADP as a payroll partner, and ADP referred as one of their biggest customers back then who was looking for the first on board product, which works with ADP and ADP is on board. Back then in 2016, 2017 was not up to par compared to what we have, and we built this integration with ADP. We are one of the marketplace vendors, and we were the first ones in the onboard space to integrate with ADP in the ADP marketplace, and we pretty much have to build integration from the ground up with ADP and then make sure that the customer’s needs are met.
And that particular customer, they’re in the, I believe, utility manufacturing space where they onboard people, seasonal workers at scale, like thousands of people, they just onboard every month.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:06
And then there’s not a good solution for that. That would be literally impossible.
Krishna Surendra: 25:11
Offboard them. Yeah. And they have to onboard them once the work is done. So it’s seasonal and then next year or next season you rehire them again. So that kind of a bulk onboarding, offboarding and rehiring.
There’s no solution in the marketplace back then. And we are one of them. On top of it, this particular company operates in multiple states in the US. I believe they work closely in 48 states in the US. If I’m not wrong and every state has their own onboarding compliance forms on top of I-9 from W-4, you have to have the state specific forms that you need to maintain, and there is no other solution. So we are one of the vendors who have this capability to create custom forms.
So basically you don’t need a DocuSign for that. We can just do it within our onboard suite.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:56
Why didn’t other companies like ADP integrate that? I won’t name the company, but we used someone. It wasn’t ADP and that’s the reason we left is because it was so clunky to onboard a new person. And I was like, this is insane. It’s like 72 steps, right?
And so we left. So were other companies. Or maybe there was an exclusive, I don’t know, but why aren’t all the other companies using it?
Krishna Surendra: 26:29
Yeah, I think if you consider payroll. Companies, right, the payroll companies are the biggest strength is payroll, HR is HR modules, and they have a lot of customers using the payroll. They’re not going to lead to another vendor because of payroll because they have. Check check check check. Right. So you have recruitment performance on board.
Everything is there. But they don’t do a good job in all of them. They only do a good job in certain modules, not everything. And as a company, we started with onboarding first as a module. First product that we built is onboarding.
And we have had experience working on this particular module from the previous company as well. So with that expertise we build this. It’s a highly customizable product offering. And you can basically remove DocuSign, HelloSign. You don’t have to have them.
And we have it. And we have a way to create these custom fillable PDFs. And then we can have workflows, any number of workflows. Right. For 50 states you can have 50 different workflows to curate for your needs.
On top of it, if you have international employees. So you can have a workflow specific for US employees versus European employees versus Asian employees. You can do it that way. And multilingual support too, right? So if somebody from China were to be onboarded, you want to make sure you welcome them in Cantonese or Mandarin as an example. We can do that through our system.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:49
I’m curious. You know a lot. That’s someone’s experience there. Their experience initially, even with the onboarding. Do you see there are certain mistakes that companies make in this onboarding?
I mean, you’re handling some of the technical details, but I’m just in general, it could be technical or could be just stuff that you see companies doing in the onboarding of team members over the years, because you’ve probably seen a lot of things go wrong. So what are some of the mistakes people make when companies make when they’re onboarding staff?
Krishna Surendra: 28:25
Usually the biggest mistake would be if the company does not have a process currently that they have in place for onboarding the new users, and no software can solve that, right? You have to have something in your mind. The map out okay. First step is to add them to the system, send them a welcome email, add them to your G suite or office suite and then have lunch with them. Sign these forms, etc. if you don’t have this process documented in your mind or on a word document, then no system in the world can help you.
That’s the first mistake. And the second mistake would be to look at the task completion rate. Everything that gets sent out to the user, we create a task internally, and the HR administrators should make sure all the tasks are completed on time. I mean, there’s no pending tasks. If something is pending, then obviously you’re not doing a good job efficiently onboarding a user. So they don’t look at the analytics to back them back. Their process to make sure everybody is finishing their tasks on time, then it is bound to fail.
And the third thing which happens rarely would be the case where we have a new customer, new client, and they start using our product in the middle of onboarding their solution with our customer support team. And for any reason, the HR quits and you have a new HR person who doesn’t know what’s going on. So he wants to implement his own process within our system. Then we have to delay it even further. That’s a weird case where that does happen quite often at times.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:59
I want to point out, no thanks for sharing that. That is really valuable. Point out a couple of resources based on that. One of my favorites, Joey Coleman, who I featured on the podcast before, wrote two books, Never Lose a Customer Again and Never Lose an Employee Again. And he does talk about that kind of onboarding journey.
And so and the other one is in the process piece. So I love it and we I’ve had the founder of SweetProcess on it. So they basically are a documentation SOP software and we use them. I know a lot of other people use them. So like having that process.
Krishna Surendra: 30:39
Yeah, to document it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:40
Even if it’s the SOP to go into HR Cloud, enter them in like, I mean that stuff still has to happen, right? So yeah. So I want to give a shout out to both of those people because that’s kind of those pieces, some of the pieces in the puzzle like you mentioned.
Krishna Surendra: 30:55
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a precursor to everything. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:59
You know, I do want to talk about a couple examples, just to give people an idea more in depth in what you do. And because you have so many different, you know, industries that you help with. So maybe we’ll take a couple different ones. There’s an education one. There’s also a big retailer one. There’s a utility one. Which one should we start with?
Krishna Surendra: 31:25
Let’s start with the utility one. The company that we were talking about is called Osmose Utilities. As I mentioned, this is one of the customers that we closed back in 2018. They have interesting use cases they got from ADP, but they’re from UKG ultimate software company. Now it’s part of the UKG group.
So there were a couple of issues. I mean similar use cases, classic examples of a company who is using a payroll, which is not satisfying the company’s needs requirements, and they’re looking for a vendor who can do that. And we definitely could address these issues. But the problem is we did not have an integration with UKG. I mean, ultimate software, the issue being that they don’t have a marketplace like ADP, and there’s no way for a developer like a company like us to build an integration.
And Osmose is kind enough to let us use their test account. Production test account to add employees and try to build an integration with the limited capability that they had. So yeah. Osmose. Yeah.
So we built an integration with Osmose. And then they were happy with how the data flows from us to Ukg. The other thing is, which is unique for Osmose is they hire these utility workers. They don’t have a I mean, they’re deskless workers. They’re always working on the field. And the way they onboard users is not using a computer, but rather using a tablet, something like a Panasonic Toughbook or Surface tablet, where they go on the field and then they hire these employees at scale with just the tablet.
And back then we didn’t have a solution that would work where we offer a kiosk mode, they call it kiosk mode. So we had to develop this functionality called kiosk mode, where me as a hiring manager, can pass on the tablet to the new hire and then he can onboard right there. So basically if I’m a worker who’s getting hired so I can fill in my information using the tablet, I can sign all the forms and then I can upload my driver’s license as part of the E-Verify process.
I can upload that documentation, visa, whatever it needs to be collected, I can finish it. Once I’m done with my onboarding tasks, I can hand over the tablet to the manager and he can move on to the next heir. They really like the solution and they’re still using our solution. They are one of our best customers till date, and every time we have to get a reference that they’re always there for us to give a positive word for us. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:00
There’s a lot that went into that. There was some, like I’m curious from like the you said the kiosk mode, couldn’t they just pull up your website, on the computer, on the tablet and just go navigate. You’re saying if there wasn’t, if there was an internet or something, is that.
Krishna Surendra: 34:18
Yeah, exactly. There’s two things. So they can open up the website. But then they don’t. Obviously it’s a tablet. They don’t have the keyboard and mouse unless you have a laptop that you can carry. It’s too hard to carry. Instead they just have a tablet. They can use the touchpad to do it. And then obviously internet connectivity as you mentioned. Yes.
Since they work outside the desk outside the offices, they have to make sure if for any reason, if there is no internet connectivity, you can capture the data and then make sure you process them offline. And the third thing, the kiosk mode is special because you want to log in as a user as an employee. In this case you’re hiring. And make sure he doesn’t gain access to that as an administrator.
So you have to be really careful there because I can run away with the laptop. Then you’re essentially done with. So this mode will allow you where you can log in as an employee. You only have access to you as an employee for any reason. Something bad were to happen. This laptop were to be gone. You rest assured that your data is still safe because he just accessed the system and he is uploading his information and does not have access to the entire system.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:31
First of all, I just want to also say I love navigating around your website just to see because you’ve obviously thought these pieces through. So I love when I went to Workmates. If you saw the video before, you know some of the things that are on there. For example, you can go to recognize, engage and the HR operations. Even going to the recognize, there’s the rewards, the company culture.
And I just learned a lot just from navigating around your website to see what things you have there for companies. So that was really interesting. Talk about the education company. How do they use it?
Krishna Surendra: 36:07
Yeah, sure. There’s this education company that we closed last year. I believe they use ADP currently and they have a similar need where they have to onboard these employees at scale and various states. So you have to make sure the product supports multi-state forms and customizable workflows for every specific state. And we have a solution to handle most of the requirements.
But there is one unique situation where they hire these workers who are younger, younger people, because they’re hiring somebody in their 20s and they don’t use email that much. They are into texting. And the best way to engage these workers, or make sure they get notified is not using email, but rather text messages. And we do not have a way to send text messages through the system. We have a way to notify them using the mobile app or emails.
Again, the classic example where, you know, we know we solve 80% of these use cases, 20% we cannot. And we have to agree with the customer and they have a strict deadline. So we close this I think in October. They have like a month, month and a half for us to go live, implement the solution on top of it. We have to implement this SMS notification functionality.
And you know, we had a candid word with the customer. So this is our roadmap. So if you want us to do it you have to sign it. Sure. And then we can build it, let’s say in four weeks.
Yeah. And then fast forward. So our development team in Croatia, my architect and product team, they really excel. So they work with the client to gather the requirements and then develop the product working overnight and weekends. And we deliver the solution.
And then we were able to provide the solution to the customer where they were able to onboard these new hires come January. And when they do the hiring in January for these staff members, for these colleges, that was a very good success story where both parties are happy. We didn’t burn ourselves developing the feature at the same time. Customers were able to use the product on time and were able to hire these staff members.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:18
Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty incredible because if you think of it, there’s some company that’s their sole company that they’ve worked on for a decade just to do SMS. And then for months you create this module that does that. Do you ever consider, is it always like we’re going to build this from scratch? Is there ever things like, well, you know what, maybe we’ll take a current existing platform and integrate it into? Or is that too risky if that breaks, you know?
Krishna Surendra: 38:46
In this case, yeah. In this case actually for weeks, not even for months, it’s even.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:50
Yeah. Four weeks. Jeez. Yeah. It’s crazy.
Krishna Surendra: 38:52
Yeah. I mean, it’s a build versus buy decision, right? So you sure we did have instances in the past where we had to build a product, let’s say a chat application. So can we build it or get an off the shelf solution which you can easily use. Obviously it didn’t go well initially because we went with an off the shelf solution, which worked initially.
But then as more users started using the chat application, the licensing and the cost did not make any sense. It’s going to be cheaper, much cheaper if we were to develop it in-house. I mean, that’s a lesson to be learned. And then, you know, and then we ended up building it in-house. Yeah, definitely.
Every decision, every product that we have to build or leverage and develop, we will make that build versus buy decision and do the pros and cons and evaluate multiple vendors and then pick the right one. One more example is we are developing AI adoption within the company and we use ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini and internally for development, you know, marketing, etc. And when it comes to using AI within the product, we can use one of these. But we have to ensure that what helps us in the long run costs. You have to consider the product capability costs and long run, you know, is the company going to be there for the next three years?
So once all these metrics are checked. Then we will make a decision to choose which one makes more sense for us.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:23
Yeah, I did see some charts, Krishna. Even with the different, you know, AI platforms and the cost for each of them varies with the computing technology. Right. And it’s always changing too.
Yeah. First of all, thank you. Thanks for sharing your journey. People can check out HRCloud.com to learn more and all the stuff that we’ve been looking at.
My last question is just mentors. Some of the mentors you’ve had professionally in business, they could also be, you know, not just personal mentors, but distant mentors. Like if there’s books or things like that that you’ve learned from, who are some of your mentors and your throughout your business journey?
Krishna Surendra: 41:07
Yeah, definitely. One of them would be my founder, Damir Davidovich. So he’s somebody I look up to. So I just tried to be like him, you know? He’s a product person. He made sure to identify the skill set in me that, you know. I was a developer from the beginning. But then I work as I worked closely with him ten years ago. So then I got the product skills, what it takes to develop the product.
And then another mentor would be my co-founder, Blaine. So he’s more about an operation. Everything is about operation numbers. So you can’t just build a product without thinking about the numbers operations. So you have to have a balance between the vision and the numbers, what it takes to build it, whether there is an ROI or not. So I look up to these two people within the company.
On top of that, I have few other friends from other companies. So one of them, his name is Siva. He works at ADP. You know, I look up to him as a mentor and my boss from Myspace, the previous company I worked for, his name is Manik, so he is really good, so he will just let you know what you get. If I mess up something, he will just tell you on your face. Come on, step up, man. Act like a CEO. You’re acting like a CTO or a developer. No. Step up. Ultimately, it’s your decision. You have to do whatever it takes to make the company profitable. So these individuals I definitely look up to.
And the books. There are a couple of books. Definitely. So one is 5AM Club, I believe. Robin Sharma’s 5AM Club.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:40
Oh 5AM Club. Yeah yeah.
Krishna Surendra: 42:42
Yeah yeah. Ever since I read this book, there’s a change in the way I operate essentially. So I get up at early in the morning, I try to be at five and, and when you start the day early, then you have enough time to take care of your personal stuff, be it, you know, reading or exercising or meditating, whatever, and then get to the work stuff as well. Yeah. 5AM Club.
And the second one. What would. Yeah, obviously Think and Grow Rich and Rich Dad Poor Dad. Those are some of them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:21
I love it. Thanks for sharing that. I just bought it. Just on your recommendation on my audible. So that’s awesome. I love that. Think and Grow Rich is also a classic one. I think Robin Sharma has. Yeah, he’s got a couple other ones out there. The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
Krishna Surendra: 43:38
I didn’t read it yet, but yeah, that’s on my wish list.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:41
I think I listened to it on audio cassette tape back in the day. that ages me a little bit. But first of all, thank you everyone. Check out HRCloud.com and more episodes of the podcast and we’ll see everyone next time. Krishna thanks so much.
Krishna Surendra: 43:53
All right. Thank you very much.
