CEO Forms New Partnership To Display The Power Of HR Software

 
Headquartered in New York, Justworks was founded in 2012 as a resource for small businesses to manage their offices more efficiently. The company's software allows employers to manage payroll, benefits and more from a single platform. Justworks recently formed a partnership with Jazz HR, another software firm whose products help businesses handle applicant tracking and recruitment. Justworks Founder and CEO Isaac Oates discusses the partnership and its benefits.
 

 
What drove the decision to partner with an HR software firm?

Justworks is a PEO, or professional employer organization, which allows small businesses to take care of their teams with great benefits, HR compliance and payroll in an all-in-one platform. JazzHR, on the other hand, is an applicant tracking system, which helps companies locate, screen and hire new employees. By partnering Justworks and JazzHR together, it enables small business owners to both find talent and take care of them post-hire, closing the loop on the employee life cycle.

 
How will this enable Justworks to provide better service to its clients?

Justworks' customers receive special pricing on JazzHR, putting an applicant tracking system within their reach. Many solutions aren't affordable for small companies, leaving them at a disadvantage in finding the best talent. Justworks' customers are now able to easily manage their pre and post-hire HR needs.

 
What motivated you to start the Justworks business?

I built Justworks after I discovered just how burdensome it was to pay employees correctly and on time, not to mention offering great benefits. I realized that most entrepreneurs struggle to navigate the same regulations, high-priced benefits, and piles of tax forms that I had. We're in the business of helping entrepreneurs succeed, and we can only do that by weaving transparency, integrity, and simplicity into everything we do. We built our platform from the ground up, enabling businesses to easily offer affordable benefits and seamless payroll while staying compliant.

 
What advice do you have for small business owners on using technology to help manage their operations?

Think about which parts of your business are taking up unnecessary time with repetitive-mundane tasks, and figure out if there is a technology solution that can streamline or automate those tasks, saving you time. For example, if you are making many outbound sales calls and tracking these communications in unwieldy spreadsheets, you may want to consider a customer relationship management system (CRM). Or, if you are spending many hours on government paperwork, when you could be building your product, you should consider outsourcing that hassle to a PEO.

 
What advice would you give to a business considering a partnership of its own? What have you learned from this experience?

Ask yourself five questions:

1. Does the partner have a customer base we want to reach?
2. Is the partner's product complimentary to ours?
3. Do we want to align our brand with theirs?
4. Will the partnership be relatively easy to operationalize?
5. Can we achieve the partner's primary goal and can the partner achieve ours?

If the answer to all of these is yes, then this sounds like a great potential partner. If any of them are no, for instance if the partner sells to enterprise and you sell directly to consumer, you may be misaligned. Choosing a partner is always a bit of an art, but by building trust and putting in mutual effort, a partnership can be a great way to acquire additional customers and improve your current customers' experience.

 
Through this partnership, Justworks and JazzHR offer tools that can help entrepreneurs manage some of the more taxing aspects of running a business. By analyzing its strengths and finding a partner to complement them, Justworks has been able to find a partnership that will be mutually beneficial.

 
This article was written by Alaina Brandenburger for CBS Small Business Pulse