Ansel Parikh
Customer Story: Corporate Merch—streamlined swag from start to finish
Problem: Corporate Merch knew integrating with HR and payroll systems was mission-critical, but they needed to get to market quickly while also ensuring their customer base was fully covered. Before the company could commit to partnering with Finch, they needed us to add two key integrations to our 180+ list of supported systems—fast.
Solution: With a proven process in place to build integrations quickly, we successfully added both providers within weeks, and Corporate Merch was able to go live with automated integrations as large customers started onboarding.
Swag-as-a-service Platform
Corporate Merch is a new breed of swag company. Not only do they create quality branded gift items for their customers to send to employees, clients, and partners, Corporate Merch also provides state-of-the-art storage and packages and ships swag item-by-item to intended recipients. The linchpin of their operation is a proprietary software system that lets customers easily view, manage—and automate—their inventory, orders, and shipments.
Integrations as a path to differentiation
Early on, it became clear to Corporate Merch that the employee swag space, in particular, needed disrupting. The reason? People operations professionals typically have to use antiquated and ad hoc solutions like spreadsheets and Google Forms to collect and track employee data and manually distribute merchandise.
Corporate Merch knew that automating these tasks would be a gamechanger—and that the key to automation would be integrating with the HR and payroll systems customers use every day to house employee data. The problem was, building all of the integrations they required to cover their customer base would take two years and a lot of patience. For Corporate Merch, that was a non-starter.
A ready and responsive partner
Corporate Merch needed a partner that could help them get integrated quickly, so they could go live with automations just as fast. Finch emerged at the top of the pack for its employment system expertise, ease of use, overall support, and technical responsiveness.
Working with the Finch team has been a breeze, and they know this space through and through—that's why we chose them.
Daniel Spirgel, Corporate Merch's President
But the partnership came with a stipulation: Finch first had to integrate with two new SMB and enterprise systems essential to Corporate Merch’s customers that were missing from Finch’s coverage network.
With a proven, proprietary system for building integrations in place, our development team was able to successfully build and test the both complex integrations in a matter of weeks, enabling Corporate Merch to get unblocked with larger customer implementations.
Finch held our hand through the whole process. They showed us the endpoints that we would want to focus on and what to stay away from. They answered all of our questions. We wouldn't have gone live so quickly if it wasn't for their help and their concern about us building it the right way.
Daniel Spirgel, Corporate Merch's President
What’s more, the support didn’t stop at implementation. Spirgel says he values the guidance Finch continues to offer the Corporate Merch team as they plot out their product roadmap, including how responsive Finch is to their questions over Slack.
Automating celebration
The effect on Corporate Merch’s user experience has been remarkable. Now, customers have the option to securely connect their HR or payroll system at onboarding, all in a matter of moments:
- Customers select their HR or payroll platform from the options provided.
- They sync their account and permission the data transfer by passing their credentials through Finch's secure, compliant, and white-labeled Connect modal.
This connection allows customers to set up triggers that automate the swag process, like sending out gifts for employees’ birthdays or work anniversaries or distributing onboarding kits when new hires join the team. Most importantly, the connection is continuous, so that as employees come and go from customers’ organizations, Corporate Merch’s system is kept up to date.
As for coverage, Corporate Merch hasn’t run into a customer yet who hasn’t been able to integrate via Finch.
Now, we are confident that when we walk into a demo meeting, the integration that a prospective client needs is already built. I’d say 95% of our clients’ HR and payroll systems are covered through Finch.
Daniel Spirgel, Corporate Merch's President
At Finch, we're committed to enabling innovative platforms like Corporate Merch create the best experience for their customers. If you’re interested in getting hands-on with org-wide employment data, sign up for a free Finch developer account today!
Employee Spotlight: Eugenie Ma
Eugenie Ma always knew she wanted to pursue a career in recruiting. After working as a tech recruiter in a variety of sectors, from IoT to public safety, she found herself at Finch helping to build a world-class team. Read on to discover what Eugenie looks for in a job candidate, why she makes diversity, equity, and inclusion a top priority in her work, and where she prefers to spend her free time.
Can you tell us about your role at Finch?
I was hired as Finch’s first internal recruiter to build the foundational pieces of our talent function. Besides building processes, I review resumes, screen applicants, and provide candidate support. One important element of my work is ensuring that candidates fully understand our company goals and how they would fit into the puzzle as part of Finch’s team. I want them to be fully comfortable with their decision to build with us.
Like all my colleagues, I wear multiple hats. I’ve been fortunate enough to work both in people operations and on employer branding projects.
What does a great candidate fit look like at Finch?
It really depends on the role. They probably already embody our core values—execution, curiosity, humility, and empathy. Our organization is quite unique because we all come from different walks of life. Our range of experiences enables us to come up with creative solutions together.
However, at the end of the day, it’s all about being organized and being willing to navigate ambiguous situations, so I look for those qualities in an applicant as well.
Do you have any advice for applicants?
First impressions have a lasting impact. That means submitting an error-free and reader-friendly resume. Then, let your authentic self shine through during the interview process. We want to celebrate your track record and learn how you’ve conquered challenges. It’s also okay to ask clarifying questions after conducting your initial research.
Did you always know you wanted to work in tech?
Actually, if someone had told me I was going to work in tech, I wouldn’t have believed them. My undergraduate degree was in business administration. I was lucky enough to find a mentor who took a chance on me. She offered a recruiting internship at an internet of things (IoT) company, and the rest was history. After that, I moved into the machine learning and computer vision space, then into public safety.
How did you end up at Finch?
Jeremy, one of Finch’s co-founders, reached out when I was an executive recruiter at Amazon. I missed working with technical populations and building meaningful processes, so I tried my hand at consulting. I could tell Finch was going to be a great fit because of how friendly everyone was. They would go out of their way to check in with me, even though I wasn’t a full-time member of their team. That’s rare—especially in a remote work environment.
Initially, I did top-of-funnel projects like generating lists of prospects, but that quickly evolved into more strategic work like crafting messaging and fine-tuning interview structures.
What motivates you to show up to work each day?
I want to leave the world a better place, and the possibility that I’ll change even one life makes everything worth it. We spend a majority of our adult lives working, so we should operate in engaging spaces. As a career matchmaker, I help people navigate the job market and align them with roles that energize them.
Finch is the youngest startup I’ve been a part of, and I’m excited to apply the lessons I’ve learned in previous positions as we grow. Plus, working with brilliant people goes a long way. Everyone at Finch is driven and process-oriented, which is a welcome change from some larger companies.
Is there an aspect of talent acquisition that especially inspires you?
Diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity goes beyond meeting checkbox requirements; it’s the diversity of thought and expressions that unlocks success. Someone once told me that it’s pointless to extend party invitations if attendees aren’t given the opportunity to dance and mingle. When it comes to recruiting, we’re striving to cultivate spaces where team members can be bold and know that their thoughts are being heard.
I’m an introverted extrovert, so I appreciate having a high level of autonomy, ownership, and impact while bringing my authentic self to the table. It’s important to me that others feel that same sense of trust and worth.
What have you learned from your teammates?
When I first started, I was very impressed with our doc center and standard operating procedures. Things were very well organized for a team of our size and stage. I’ve learned how to fine-tune my project management skills and how to create detailed documents with clear goals. Diana Liu is especially talented when it comes to project management, and she has really shown me the ropes.
How do you get to know your colleagues?
We’re a remote-first team, so all communication is very intentional. Unlike collaborating in a physical office space, we can’t just hang out at the water cooler to have spontaneous conversations. But we’ve been using Gather Town as a virtual office space to build meaningful relationships, so the ability to verbally brainstorm, whiteboard, and play games with one another is only a click away.
We also have a strong one-to-one peer-manager culture; we’re constantly adjusting our communication methods as we continue to scale.
What advice would you give a new hire on their first day at Finch?
Don’t be afraid to ask questions and ask for help. Curiosity is one of our core values, and everybody at Finch is exceedingly gracious and thoughtful. Leverage the resources you have, and meet proactively with your manager as much as possible. Those early conversations are crucial for setting the expectations both for yourself and for your team.
What are you passionate about outside of work?
I’m a yogi in the making—but if I’m not at my local studio, I’m probably at the gym or reading in Central Park. I’ve also started bouldering.
If you had to describe Finch in one word, what would it be?
Exhilarating. Things change all the time! There’s always something going on, and there’s always something to do. There’s never a moment of boredom.
Interested in joining Eugenie at Finch? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions.
Craig Cohen thinks the HCM ecosystem has tremendous promise—and a data connectivity problem
How to build a best-in-class employee engagement platform with Finch
The employment landscape is undergoing dramatic changes, and data integrations are crucial to keeping pace. But maintaining them in-house is a drain on your resources and a distraction from your core competencies. Here’s what to do instead.
Not so long ago, it seemed like all it took to earn a reputation for a great work environment was a few ping pong tables, some quirky seating arrangements, and a gourmet cafeteria. Then COVID-19 happened and the story changed dramatically.
Now, old standards have given way to new expectations about what it means to provide an exceptional workplace. For employee engagement platforms, it has been a clarion call, prompting innovative players to build next-generation platforms that solve the challenges employers face today and are predicted to face going forward.
One aspect of great platform design is integrations. They are foundational to best-in-class functionality and user experience, but not all approaches to integrations are created equal. In this blog post, we’ll cover how to approach integrations more efficiently and effectively, so you have greater bandwidth to focus on your platform’s core technologies and deliver a superior experience to your customers and their employees alike.
But first, let’s talk landscape
To understand how and why integrations are so important, we have to consider the current state of affairs. It likely goes without saying that COVID-19 and the concurrent social and political movements of the past few years have seismically changed aspects of our collective work life in ways that fundamentally impact how employers approach people management and employee engagement. Some of the most important include:
A shift in the power balance
We would be remiss not to mention what you probably already know: workers are quitting and switching jobs at record rates, or leaving the workforce entirely, and there are now more available jobs than there is talent to fill them. Experts don’t expect the tide to change anytime soon. While many employers are responding to the pressures by offering higher salaries and wages to new hires, an effective, longer-term strategy may be investing in a “sticky” workplace culture—one marked by regular, effective communication—that promotes employee retention.
The rise of remote and hybrid work models
Office closure mandates at the onset of the pandemic forced many employers to allow employees to work from home, and it seems employees have come to favor the arrangement. According to recent polls, 45% of full-time U.S. employees continue to work remotely all or some of the time, including 67% of office workers. Of them, 91% would like to work at least some of the time from home even after the pandemic fully subsides, with 30% disclosing that they are extremely likely to seek a different job if they lose their option to work remotely.
Another factor to consider is that remote and hybrid work models can mean fewer friends in the workplace, which can lead to weaker emotional ties and less social pressure to stay with a company. Moreover, without any geographical constraints, remote workers have a wider pool of employers and job opportunities to choose from, making it easier to find alternative work. As a consequence, employers who don’t develop viable solutions to manage, engage, and build connections among remote talent not only risk operational inefficiencies, they also risk losing valuable employees.
Higher DEI standards
As activists continue to bring renewed and revolutionary attention to issues of racial and gender justice, employers are being called on to look critically at their own diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and execute proactive, ongoing plans to remedy their gaps and shortcomings. Many, it seems, are heeding the call. A recent analysis of S&P 500 earnings calls found that CEOs have discussed DEI 658% more frequently since 2018, and 40% of organizations report having hired a DEI specialist, the majority of which were added to their rosters in the past year and a half. As a result, DEI initiatives will naturally extend to employee engagement strategies, including measures like surveying employees on DEI issues, tracking and analyzing measures of workplace diversity, and instituting inclusive career growth paths and coaching opportunities to ensure everyone has the same access to success.
An emphasis on mental wellness
The collective and individual trauma and stress employees have experienced in recent years has had a toll on their mental health, making it more clear than ever that employers can no longer afford, from an ethical or financial standpoint, to ignore the overall wellbeing of their workforce. As talking about and seeking help for mental health challenges becomes increasingly normalized, especially among younger generations of workers, employers are increasingly expected to not only provide resources and benefits to support employees in crisis but also cultivate an environment that supports employee mental health. According to one study, employers (and the employee engagement platforms that serve them) would be wise to focus on reducing job boredom and monotony, supporting employees’ work-life balance, improving workplace communication practices, and fostering connections and networks of support among colleagues and managers.
These trends and others have led thought leaders to call for a large-scale humanization of the workplace. Now more than ever, employers should create opportunities and leverage technology to drive connections, inspire creativity, and help individual workers achieve their potential.
The role (and challenges) of integrations in employee engagement
Clearly, this new world order presents a litany of challenges for employers, and employee engagement platforms are working to deliver best-in-class solutions and experiences that address those pain points.
For many employee engagement platforms, this includes integrating with employers’ HR and payroll systems (e.g., Workday, ADP, etc.) to automate data connectivity and unify data across disparate sources as a means of reducing friction and optimizing the performance of their product.
But integrations are not without challenges, especially if you choose to build them in-house. For starters:
They’re expensive
It takes many engineering hours to build one integration, let alone the dozens or hundreds required to connect with systems in highly fragmented markets like HR and payroll software, where some 5,700+ systems have shares (check out our whitepaper on the landscape here). When you consider the average salary of an in-house developer, you’re looking at an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars, excluding the considerable and ongoing expense of maintaining integrations over time (a full-time job unto itself).
They’re a distraction
All that time spent on integrations is time your team isn’t spending on your core technology—a huge opportunity cost. How much more could you accomplish and how much faster could you get to market if your team’s attention wasn’t split between your product and the ancillary technologies that support it?
They’re hard to do really well
If integrations aren’t in your team’s wheelhouse, your integrations are likely not functioning as well as they could be. That’s because different data sources have different data models, and each source value has to be mapped to a target data field to make it operable for your system. The more source values you’re working with, the more complicated things get, and if mapping is not done correctly, it can end up requiring a lot of manual intervention to make right.
Then there’s the issue of data enrichment. It takes a specialist to add value to the data you retrieve and make it optimally usable and actionable for your particular use case. In other words, it’s likely that the data you’re accessing via in-house builds isn’t reaching its potential.
Outsourcing your platform’s integrations enables you to take advantage of all the benefits while avoiding these common challenges.
One API, dozens (and dozens) of integrations
Innovative employee engagement platforms looking to build best-in-class experiences and get to market faster turn to Finch—the only integration partner focused on HR and payroll systems via the employer access point.
Finch works via a single, universal API that offers 360° integrations with an ever-growing network of HR and payroll systems (125 at the time of publication), so you can cover more of your addressable market than ever before.
By building your platform on the Finch API, your customers can authorize you to retrieve data from their payroll and HR systems in just a few clicks. Here’s how it works:
- Finch Connect (our secure front-end module) prompts your customers to choose their payroll or HR system.
- Your customers authenticate their account and authorize a set of permissions by entering their admin credentials to that system.
- The connection is established, and you start retrieving data.
That’s it. With Finch, what was once a 30-day process of tedious CSV file uploads, phone calls, and back-and-forth between your support team and your customers is reduced to 30 seamless seconds.
From there, you have access to your customers’ entire employee roster and dozens of data attributes per worker (e.g., hire date, job title, work and home location), allowing your customers to start using your platform immediately.
Not only does that save you time and improve your lead conversion rates, it’s a selling point to customers, who can be easily deterred by a drawn-out onboarding process.
And because the data connection is continuous, your platform is automatically apprised of new hires and other changes in end-user work status. In turn, your platform also makes onboarding and offboarding your customers’ employees easier, faster, and more automated. That can pay dividends for your customers, as studies show that strong onboarding processes improve employee retention by 82 percent.
Additional benefits
The advantages of using Finch don’t stop there:
- We standardize data across our entire coverage network and output it in a unified format for optimal usability, saving you from the hassle of having to worry about the intricacies of your customers’ (many) HR and payroll systems.
- Our API is dynamic and built to scale, which means we can respond swiftly to new edge case systems and unlock support in as little as two weeks, ensuring you never lose a sale because of lack of coverage.
- Finch is designed for large-scale synchronization with tens of thousands of employers. We surface large quantities of sensitive information reliably and securely (check out our Security page for more information).
Last but not least, we handle all upkeep and maintenance of your integrations, so your team can focus on what you do best—helping employers cultivate engaging, connected, and productive workplaces, no matter what the world throws their way.
Want to know more about integrations for employee engagement platforms?
Click the black Request Access button in the upper-right of this webpage to submit a question or ask to see our API documentation.
How to build a best-in-class retirement benefits platform with Finch
By not dividing your team’s attention between your core product and the ancillary technologies that support it, you can build smarter, get to market faster, and create an exceptional experience for your customers.
As an innovative retirement benefits provider, you already know that the retirement benefits industry has room for improvement. Legacy business models and outdated management systems are prevalent and prohibitive–serving as barriers, in many cases, to employer and employee adoption.
Consider the numbers. Some 68% of private-sector workers have access to retirement benefits through their employer, and, of them, 51% elect to participate. At first blush, the data doesn’t seem half bad. However, it belies the fact that more than 38 million workers aren’t being offered retirement benefits at all, and 40 million more aren’t opting in for one reason or another. Meanwhile, among those who do participate in a retirement plan, more than half are behind on their retirement strategies, either because they aren’t contributing enough or they’re raiding their plans in times of emergency.
This statistic also obscures the reality that access to retirement benefits is far from inclusive. In service industries, for example, workers with employer-sponsored plans drops to 40%, and in some verticals, like restaurants, it’s as low as 18%.
Clearly, something’s not working as it should. When you couple that with employers’ struggle to attract and retain employees and the challenges of remote and hybrid work models, the need for viable HR technology solutions in the retirement benefits space is apparent.
A product-led approach
While there’s no one solution that will address every issue, focusing your efforts on building a best-in-class platform for your customers is a great place to start. The reason? HR professionals are overwhelmed by the tedious transactional tasks associated with retirement benefits management and consider it one of their most pressing challenges. That makes retirement benefits ripe for digital disruption. In fact, HR leaders are more likely to realize benefits from HR technology when it’s applied to benefits administration than any other HR function.
Staying ahead of the pack is another reason. Whether you choose to optimize your retirement benefits platform or not, your competitors certainly will. The HR tech market is booming, and that means next-generation benefits solutions–with best-in-class platforms–are regularly hitting the market.
Synced is superior
At its core, a best-in-class retirement benefits platform is a connected one, meaning it can exchange information with employers’ HR and payroll systems (e.g., Paychex, ADP RUN, Gusto), for a highly synced, coordinated, and automated benefits management experience.
From onboarding and enrollment to deduction management and compliance reporting, a well-connected platform–one with sophisticated software integrations–minimizes friction at every step of the benefits lifecycle, alleviating your customers of their benefits management burdens and making engagement with your platform an enjoyable and reliable experience. In turn, you realize higher employee participation and contributions.
In-house inefficiencies
Chances are, this is not new information to you. You’re probably building or already have built integrations with market-leading HR and payroll systems. At the same time, you’ve probably experienced one or more of these common headaches along the way:
- Maintenance difficulties
No matter how successful your initial build-out, integrations are bound to break at some point, whether due to a system change on your end or the data source’s. Staying on top of and solving for these changes is a full-time job that your team doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle in a reasonable timeframe – they’re too busy focusing on your core product. Ultimately, it’s your customers’ experience that suffers. - Ongoing costs
In addition to taxing your team’s time, integrations come with a heavy price tag when you consider the average salary of your employees and the hours they spend building and maintaining your connections. In some cases, an initial build-out can cost $300,000 or more, not including upkeep. There are also opportunity costs to consider; how much more could you accomplish and how much faster could you get to market if your team’s attention wasn’t split between your product and the ancillary technologies that support it? - Suboptimal performance
Then there’s functionality. The more integrations you build, the more difficult it becomes to get them to work optimally for your purposes. That’s because disparate data sources have different data models, and each source value has to be mapped to a target data field to make it operable for your system. The more source values you’re working with, the more complicated things get. If mapping is not done correctly, it can end up requiring a lot of manual interventions. What’s more, unless you have an integrations specialist on staff, it’s unlikely that your team has the niche expertise to optimally enrich the data you retrieve for your particular use case. In other words, the data you’re accessing isn’t reaching its potential.
Outsourced and optimized
So, how do you leverage the very best of system integrations and all the benefits they offer your customers while avoiding the pitfalls that come with in-house build outs and maintenance? The answer is outsourcing.
In a fragmented industry with 5,700+ employment systems, outsourcing your integrations saves time and money. Instead of building integrations with dozens of payroll systems yourself, an integration partner does the work for you, while also providing ongoing support and maintenance. This outsourced infrastructure lets your team focus on fine-tuning your product, executing your roadmap, and creating the best user experience possible.
That said, the right integration partner won’t just relieve you of headaches; they will add extraordinary value to your platform. For that, you need a use case specialist.
Benefits specialists > data generalists
Say hello to Finch, the only integration platform solely focused on connecting applications to their employer clients’ payroll and HR systems. This means all of our efforts are spent optimizing and scaling integrations to cover all the edge cases relevant to your business.
Finch offers a unified API with 360° integrations into an ever-growing list of HR and payroll systems (125 at the time of publication). In this context, 360° means read and write access, so you can pull census and pay statement information as well as push payroll deductions depending on employee contributions. Since Finch abstracts away inconsistencies across systems, all these actions can be accessed through a single set of endpoints.
Aside from streamlining technical workflows, Finch offers high-touch support, ensuring any issues are dealt with swiftly and, most importantly, without intervention from your team.
From 30 days to 30 seconds
Perhaps the most immediate benefit of Finch is the hyper-streamlined onboarding it enables. With Finch, it only takes a moment for customers to authorize you to retrieve and send data from and to their payroll and HR systems. Here’s how:
- Finch Connect (our secure front-end modal) prompts your customers to choose their payroll or HR system.
- Your customers authenticate their account and authorize a set of permissions by entering their admin or API credentials to that system.
- The connection is established, and you start reading and writing data.
That’s all it takes. In seconds, you have what you need to begin enrolling employees in retirement plans and managing their payroll deductions.
Automated onboarding and compliance
Once you’re connected, you can access live census data to streamline onboarding and offboarding of eligible employees. From day one (or the first day they can participate), you’ll have their key contact information, location, and worker status to ensure they can start contributing to their retirement as soon as possible. Similarly, when someone is no longer employed or eligible, you can offboard them from the system automatically and transition their account to a non-employee access so they can still manage the plans they do have.
For retirement benefits applications that also act as recordkeepers, you can access current and historical pay statement details down to the line item to ensure proper tracking of all contributions (pre and post-tax), enrollments, and TINs required to comply with IRS regulations.
End-to-end deductions management
Now that employees are onboarded, you’ll want to make sure they start contributing to their retirement goals with their first paycheck. You’ll need to create benefits, enroll participants, and make changes directly in payroll as their retirement savings plans shift.
Using Finch’s Benefits endpoint, you can create benefits (pre-tax, post-tax, recurring, one-time deductions), enroll individuals to one or many benefits, and select their $ or % contributions with employer matches where applicable. Throughout this whole process, the sponsor’s HR admin doesn’t have to lift a finger to upload deduction files or manually enter changes. That can amount to hours per month saved and dozens of potential human errors avoided.
Onward and upward
Best of all, Finch is dynamic, responsive, and built to scale.
For new edge case systems that come up in customer conversations, Finch can unlock support in as little as two weeks. That means, on the off chance you’re trying to land a customer that uses a system not yet covered by Finch, we have a gameplan to expand coverage so you don’t lose a sale.
Finch is also designed for large-scale synchronization with tens of thousands of employers, from small startups to massive public companies. Our team has accumulated expertise in constructing mission-critical infrastructure over many years, enabling us to surface large quantities of sensitive information reliably and securely.
Want to know more about integrations for retirement benefits?
Click the black Request Access button in the upper-right of this webpage to submit a question or ask to see our API documentation.
Customer Story: Lane Health — Helping More Employees Afford Medical Expenses
Customer Story: Pry — Finance for Founders
Problem — Pry needed to empower business decision-makers with detailed headcount cost data to supercharge their financial planning process.
Solution — With Finch, Pry is able to surface key insights into employee and contractor costs.
Finance for Founders
Pry is on a mission to empower founders to make better financial decisions.
Running out of cash is the second most common reason start-ups fail, surpassed by the lack of product-market fit. According to CB insights, 29% of start-ups surveyed pointed to cash burn as a key driver of business collapse. For founders busy building, it can be challenging to monitor all the moving pieces of their finances across systems to ensure they have enough runway.
With Pry, businesses can have their accounting, financial planning, and business intelligence all in one place. Features include but not limited to cash runway forecasting, budget vs. actuals, customizable models, hiring plans, scenario planning, and custom dashboards.
In a previous life, I cofounded a tech-enabled accounting company. We helped thousands of companies keep their books (accounting) up to date. While growing, I could feel Javascript improve year after year but the way our finances were done in Excel just got worse and worse. The product I wanted was simple: something to replace the Excel files that the finance gurus use. Pry is that solution that can handle everything from revenue modeling to headcount planning.
Andy Su, Co-founder & CEO
To accomplish this mission, Pry needed to incorporate data on one of the highest costs for most start-ups: their employees and contractors.
A Finch-Powered Solution for Headcount Planning
Using Finch, the Pry team is able to seamlessly pull in live department and compensation data for each individual at the company and automatically categorize them based on the P&L segments. It’s a nuanced automation but one that materially improves the accuracy of headcount planning.
Previously, admins would need to manually enter in layers of assumptions and categorizations to ensure their team was accurately represented in their financial model. Working with Finch to pull in the raw data from workforce systems, Pry can reduce that manual work into a 30-second sync and keep it updated as the company grows the team.
The Impact:
🔑 70% increase in headcount planning data after 3 days from sign-up.
With Finch, we are able to split employees by department and access data that no one else has (unique resource for financial planning). We care about this because we care about our conversion funnel. Anything that reduces friction and contributes to our conversion funnel is very important from a bottom-up approach.
Hayden Jensen, Co-Founder & CTO
Where Finch fits in
Pry unlocks headcount planning in <30 seconds:
- Pry’s dashboard requests employers to link their payroll system.
- Admin users sync their organization’s system by passing their credentials through Finch’s secure Connect Flow.
- In a matter of seconds, Pry’s clients can start building headcount planning scenarios to better understand their business’s trajectory.
The end result is a beautiful UX with actionable headcount insights for founders and decision-makers.
Extending Strategic Finance Across the Ecosystem
Over the long term, Pry’s goal is to unlock financial insights for start-ups, CPAs, and investors.
Headcount planning powered by Finch is just the first step in a long journey to improve the future of strategic finance.
Working with Finch has been great. They’re constantly working on adding new integrations to provide better coverage and support for our clients. For any company that has employees and/or is planning to hire, I can’t imagine not using Finch to help automate headcount planning.
Tiffany Wong, Co-Founder & Head of Ops
At Finch, we’re excited to support innovative platforms like Pry (sign up here!). If you’re interested in exploring workforce data for your application, please send us a message here and let’s unlock a completely new use case together!
Secureframe and Finch — Scaling Up Security Compliance
Secureframe is on a mission to make the most powerful security simple and accessible for every organization.
Secureframe allows companies to unlock enterprise opportunities by becoming SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliant within weeks, rather than months. The platform automatically monitors 25+ services to assess security practices and ensure compliance standards are met. Secureframe continuously collects audit evidence, runs security awareness training, monitors infrastructure, and more, all automatically.
Highlights:
🔗 30+ integrations — Secureframe uses 30+ of Finch’s integrations to address their growing range of customers that utilize different providers.
👩🏽💼 10,000+ individuals connected — Every customer’s employees and contractors need to be accounted for to ensure they undergo multiple compliance requirements like background checks and cybersecurity training.
⏳ <30 seconds to sync — Finch’s streamlined Connect Flow allows Secureframe customers to sync their workforce data in <30 seconds so business leaders can focus on higher priority compliance measures.
Without Finch — Disjointed User Experience
Before implementing Finch, Secureframe had to build integrations one at a time with each offering a disjointed user experience. Customers often had to leave the interface altogether to navigate through their payroll system, completely breaking the user flow. The support team had to walk customers through the process manually to troubleshoot issues, navigate the nuances of each system, and confirm that the right permissions were set. The rapid expansion of the platform’s customer base compounded the UX friction with every new client.
Accessing live employee information is essential for Secureframe’s customers to maintain SOC 2 compliance since every employee needs to undergo background checks, review company policies, and complete security training as soon as they join. Gathering this data is one of the first steps in the account creation process. Without a live view into the HR systems, Secureframe wouldn’t be able to offer customers powerful automation tools to make compliance easy at scale.
Compliance is not just a one-time activity. It’s an ongoing process that only gets more complex as organizations scale up. We need to have a live view into our customers’ headcount data no matter what systems they use so there’s no lapse in compliance. We chose Finch since their mission critical infrastructure is the most reliable and offers the best coverage for our growing customer base.
Shrav Mehta, Founder & CEO
With Finch — Unified User Flow & Continuous Compliance
Today, with Finch integrated, Secureframe can allow customers to seamlessly sync their HR system and move onto higher value compliance tasks. The entire process was reduced to <30 seconds vs. 10–15 minutes seen previously with a more fragmented user experience that often required live support.
- Customers select their HR provider within Secureframe’s dashboard.
- Customers authenticate their account using Finch Connect, Finch’s secure, standardized authorization experience that embeds explicit data permissions.
- Fin! In a few seconds, Secureframe can start automating security compliance as customers scale up their teams.
Now, with access to live census data via Finch, Secureframe can automatically add new employees and contractors to compliance checklists so there’s a minimal lapse in compliance for customers. As the platform’s customers grow their headcount Secureframe can work in the background to ensure best practices are reinforced across the organization in real-time.
Integrations are an important part of Secureframe’s platform since we have to monitor a wide range of vendors for our customers. Syncing with HR systems was a top priority as it allows us to automate individual employee compliance. Finch’s single integration unlocked support for many HR systems.
Natasja Nielsen, Founder & CTO
Post Integration
Secureframe and Finch are just starting to unlock compliance automation using workforce data. Live employee data can be used to identify key stakeholders responsible for different security processes, proactively reach out to individuals that need to re-take security training, and more.
At Finch, we’re excited to partner with game-changing platforms like Secureframe. If you’re interested in exploring workforce data, reach out to us here and start building on our API.
Mosaic and Finch — A strategic partnership powering modern business finance
Mosaic is building the future of strategic finance by empowering companies of all sizes to make better financial decisions.
In today’s SaaS-driven world, the data business leaders need to make effective decisions is siloed across many different systems. When critical financial information lives in disjointed tools like ERP, CRM, and HR platforms, it is almost impossible to get a real-time view of your business.
Mosaic has built a next-gen financial reporting and forecasting system that seamlessly integrates data from key business systems (Billing, ERP, CRM, HRIS) into a single source of truth that can act as a compass for business leaders. By tackling this complex data integration problem, Mosaic enables modern teams to spend time on strategic and forward-looking growth initiatives.
Highlights:
📈 70% of SaaS company spend is driven by employees. Understanding the cost of your people is vital for efficient growth. Finch enabled Mosaic to rapidly serve companies using a wide range of HR Systems.
📐 20+ key metrics — Integrating Payroll and HR data to Mosaic unlocked real-time insights into 20+ key metrics including employee churn, department costs, fully loaded cost per employee, sales efficiency metrics, and more.
⏩ 94% faster integration — Finch enabled Mosaic to build connections with HR providers 94% faster than building them all in-house.
Without Finch — Building Costly in-House Integrations
Before Finch, the Mosaic team was building integrations one by one with different providers. This process varied across systems and required lengthy business development and technical discussions that stretched months.
The engineering team had to build out a data mapping system to ensure compatibility across platforms. The slow rollout of new integrations and incremental engineering efforts required meant that not all customers could unlock live workforce insights needed to run their businesses effectively.
Mosaic’s wide range of customers and use cases meant they needed to support multiple systems quickly. HR and Payroll data is a critical component of Mosaic’s comprehensive strategic finance platform — without it, they wouldn’t be able to provide detailed insights into the largest expense for most businesses.
Employees are the largest expense for most businesses, meaning that decision-makers need a comprehensive view of their employee’s costs to build smart, sustainable headcount planning strategies. Finch helps us build that view for a broader range of customers.
Bijan Moallemi, Co-Founder & CEO
With Finch — Seamless Expansion of Coverage
Today, using Finch, Mosaic is able to service an ever-expanding range of customers with the platform’s growing list of supported providers while saving hundreds of engineering hours. Integrating with Finch took only 4 days instead of the grueling month-long project necessary for separate connections with each provider.
Customers can now authorize Mosaic to retrieve key data from their payroll and HR systems providing actionable metrics that directly improve the health of their businesses. On the back-end, the engineering team can rely on Finch’s standardized data schema to seamlessly pull information and make live calculations regardless of the underlying provider.
- Finch Connect, Finch’s secure, standardized authorization flow, prompts customers to select their payroll provider.
- Customers authenticate their payroll accounts and authorize the key set of permissions Mosaic requests by entering their admin credentials.
- Voila! In a matter of seconds, Mosaic can start surfacing payroll data insights to business leaders.
The power of our platform is the ability to synthesize disparate data patterns and distill them into actionable signals. Our engineering resources need to be focused on this core imperative. Finch’s quick integration process and scalable infrastructure allows us to dedicate more engineering hours to value-driving initiatives.
Luke Braud, CTO
Post Integration
Finch and Mosaic continue to work together to unlock new endpoints, coverage partners, and edge cases that better capture the differences in the organization structure. As Mosaic refines its powerful analytical engine, Finch can provide greater granularity into employee data to generate new metrics for tracking business health. This partnership is just the beginning.
The tools we’re building on top of Finch increase engagement across our platform. Now we can help a wider range of businesses across the country make smarter, data-driven strategic decisions. We’re excited for the future of this partnership.
Brian Campbell, Co-Founder & CPO
Finch is always looking to partner with innovative teams like Mosaic, so if you’re building a product that can leverage payroll and HR data sign up to test out our API here.
