ZenPayroll Partners W/ SMB Tech Tools Providers
ZenParoll, a cloud-based payroll services provider focused on small businesses, has partnered with twelve other technology companies targeting SMB’s. This collaboration will see small businesses spend less time entering data on various back-office systems, especially those used in HR and Accounting departments.
Small businesses can hardly afford to purchase standalone systems for all their business processes. Moreover, the payment plans afforded to big businesses by technology companies are way beyond their operational budget. This leaves small businesses highly disadvantaged. On one hand, they cannot afford a comprehensive system for their daily business operations. On the other hand, they operate different systems for various business operations, which consume either their time or money to manage them. The collaboration of ZenPayroll with other SMB-focused technology tools providers will ease the flow of information between these separate systems.
During the announcement, Hemant Taneja, Managing Partner at General Catalyst and ZenPayroll board member, reiterated this point saying, “Large enterprises have traditionally had a competitive advantage over the small players because only they could afford to acquire and operate the best technology on the market. Today, modern tools in the cloud are not only easy to use and affordable, but more interoperable than ever, which lowers barriers to entry for entrepreneurs and offers small businesses the edge.”
Joshua Reeves, CEO and co-founder of ZenPayroll in part added, “We’re proud to join other leading small business technology companies in bringing together our best of breed tools so we can better serve small business owners.”
ZenPayroll already commands a sizeable market share in the small business back-office technology tools. They have thousands of clients, and more entrepreneurs are continually turning to their product. The current annual payroll passing through their system is $1.1 billion, an amount that has doubled within four months. These latest partnerships will definitely increase their clientele.
Last October, they introduced the ZenPayroll API to integrate ZenPayroll seamlessly with other SMB systems. Most of the target functions are in Finance, HR, and Administration departments. The first batch of companies they worked with includes Intuit, Xero, and Freshbook to integrate accounting systems with their payroll system.
The second round of partnerships expanded to HR, time tracking, benefits, and insurance. Small businesses will be able to synchronize information from their BambooHR, BayPoint Benefits, Employee Navigator, Expensify, Kin HR, hCentive, inDinero, Insynctive, Maxwell Health, Receipt Bank, SimplyInsured and Zenefits software with their ZenPayroll system.
ZenPayroll was founded less than two years ago, financed by investors in the technology industry among others. These investors include Box founder Aaron Levie, Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston, and CEOs of major technology companies like Yelp and Yammer. Other investors include Y Combinator, Google Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Salesforce, and Data Collective. So far, the company has raised $26 million to fund its projects. The most recent was $20 million raised in February this year.
These partnerships will give small businesses an equal chance to manage their daily operations easily using technology tools. ZenPayroll only provides payroll services, but small business obviously need (and use) other services to manage functions in HR, Finance, and Administration departments to run their business efficiently. The integration of these systems will allow entrepreneurs to enter data like benefits, hours worked, expenses, and paid time off just once, and ZenPayroll (as well as other cloud-based applications) automatically captures it. This will save entrepreneurs resources like time, as data entry process across multiple systems consumes time, as well as money, since they do not need an extra employee to do it; and it simplifies the process for entrepreneurs with no expertise since no one can be an expert in everything.
