Technological advances are having a major impact on business operations in many ways, from facilitating logistics to simplifying employee management operations. Rippling has emerged as a leading startup in employee management with incredible tools that remove much of the busy work involved in onboarding new employees. The man behind Rippling is Parker Conrad, the former CEO of Zenefits. Before the launch of Rippling, Conrad spent years working with a team of 40 engineers to build integrations with virtually every popular business tool. The final product efficiently combines human resources (HR), information technology (IT), and single sign-on services. In the past few years, several new startups have begun offering specialty software that can drive productivity and collaboration in the office. While this has enhanced how we work, whenever someone new joins a company, it takes a lot of busy work and lost productivity to get them familiar and signed in to each of these tools. Rippling addresses this issue by providing single-click onboarding. Instead of adding the new hire to each tool one at a time, Rippling reduces the entire process to just 90 seconds. As soon as Rippling hit the market, it began growing revenue rapidly, attracting the attention of investors. The company raised $45 million in its Series A round, led by Kleiner Perkins and Mamoon Hamid with investments from Threshold Ventures, Y Combinator, and Initialized Capital. Creating Seamless, Easily Implemented Business SolutionsRippling’s Series A round closed last year with an overall valuation of $270 million. Conrad stated that the company will reinvest this money into research and development, as well as its engineering department, to continue innovating and meeting the needs of modern businesses. Enterprise software can be an incohesive mess, and apps often do not talk to each other. Therefore, adding a new team member means filling in information, setting permissions, and manually entering the person into each app. The same process happens when someone is promoted or leaves the company. Most modern companies maintain HR systems, IT software, and productivity apps like Slack, Dropbox, GitHub, and Salesforce, so manually updating all this software can account for the vast majority of administrative work. Often, startups get caught up in this administrative work without realizing how big of a burden it has become. While manual administration is manageable at 50 people, it becomes overwhelming once the company scales. At 500 employees, the time it takes to get each person oriented becomes nearly impossible to manage. Believing there was a better way, Conrad was committed to creating a product that is easy to use and can be seamlessly integrated. He maintains that any product requiring a call to Rippling for help could be designed better. For a period, he single-handedly dealt with user complaints at Rippling, which allowed him to refine the product quickly and address issues that might otherwise not have been easily identified. Thinking Beyond Engineering and Product IntegrationRippling operated in stealth for multiple years as its platform was developed. It only came out of stealth about two years ago, which is around the time the company began hiring employees outside of engineering. Rippling then established two new business models. One allows enterprise tool makers to make their software available through the Rippling gateway. When a purchase is made through the gateway, Rippling receives a small percentage. This gateway makes it easy and simple to add new functionality to a company using trusted brands like Mailchimp and Zoom. Conrad recognized that trying to outbuild these established brands would be pointless when Rippling could simply facilitate their adoption. The second model focuses on engineering and product development. No major brand has emerged as a favorite when it comes to some key parts of HR and IT stacks, such as commuter benefits and PTO management, so it is easy for Rippling to create products that meet these needs. Moreover, Rippling can charge prices similar to other solutions and beat competitors since the homegrown systems integrate easily into the existing Rippling platform. While other companies have emerged in the single sign-on space, they do not have the same robust features as Rippling. Many of these companies market themselves as identity layers, but they mostly function as password managers without the full integration available through Rippling. Partnering to Deliver the Best Products PossibleRippling continues to expand its product suite through strategic partnerships. In June 2020, the company joined forces with 1Password, a company that focuses on enterprise password management. 1Password has emerged as a favorite among startups due to its ability to facilitate unique, secure passwords that protect against attacks without the headache of keeping track of them. The partnership will bring the 1Password capabilities directly to Rippling customers and, in turn, reduce some of the demand made on IT departments while enhancing overall security.
1Password research has shown that more than 80 percent of employees are now working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, so security is more important than ever before. Moving forward, it will be exciting to see Rippling’s partnerships expand to continue addressing the needs of both small and large companies. Comments are closed.
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