PerkUp Powers Automated Swag Management with Finch

PerkUp is a global swag management platform that helps businesses build relationships with employees and clients. To be the best-in-class solution their customers want and expect, PerkUp needed seamless, reliable access to employee data that could power time-saving automation.

With Finch, PerkUp was able to get up and running with HRIS integrations in a sprint and offer their customers a seamless syncing experience. By using Finch, PerkUp saved 100+ hours in engineering time, lowered support costs, created stickier customer relationships, and expanded their TAM — all without having to dedicate resources to maintaining individual integrations.

Engaging employees and customers globally

PerkUp helps businesses drive employee, prospect, and customer engagement by making it easy for them to manage and scale their corporate swag programs as well as send gifts and rewards. The company provides automated workflows for users to order swag in bulk or on-demand from their global network of warehouses.

Whether preparing swag for events or sending onboarding and milestone gifts to employees,  PerkUp makes it easy for their customers to improve company culture and promote their brand worldwide.

The data conundrum

PerkUp’s primary users are busy HR and people operations professionals who are increasingly protective of their time. PerkUp knew that to be a vital solution, they would need to deliver on ease of use and reliability through automation.

But automating swag management and gift-giving requires employee data — fields like name, start date, birthday, location, and manager. That gave PerkUp a choice: build a sophisticated CSV uploader or find an integration solution that connects directly to customers’ HR information systems (HRIS).

PerkUp knew that a CSV uploader would not only be a heavy lift, it would also only transfer static data that would need to be regularly refreshed by the platform’s users — a friction PerkUp wanted to avoid.

Next, PerkUp considered an iPaaS provider, but ultimately didn’t want to take on the burden of managing the workflows in-house. They needed an integration solution that would enhance the performance of their product without taxing their internal resources.

That’s when PerkUp turned to Finch.

Streamlining the onboarding experience

In less than a single engineering sprint, PerkUp was up and running with Finch, creating a truly best-in-class data syncing experience.

“We’ve easily saved over 100 hours of engineering time by using Finch rather than building and maintaining each integration ourselves,” said Cameron Soregaroli, Co-founder and CPO at PerkUp.

"We’ve easily saved over 100 hours of engineering time by using Finch rather than building and maintaining each integration ourselves."

The mechanism by which Finch works is easy, secure, and intuitive. PerkUp customers simply connect their HRIS at onboarding in two steps:

1. They select their HRIS from the options provided.
2. They sync their account and permission the data transfer by passing their credentials through Finch’s white-labeled Connect modal.

Instantly, PerkUp has data access, and customers can create the rules they need to automate their workflows, including:

• Automatic work anniversary recognition: PerkUp pulls each employee’s start date to determine their anniversary and tenure. This lets customers automatically send gifts that vary based on the milestone, like a $50 customized water bottle for 1-year anniversaries and a $400 custom backpack for 5-year anniversaries.
• Set-and-forget birthday celebrations: Employees’ birth dates are used to automatically send emails, Slack messages, and/or gifts, freeing people operations professionals’ time while ensuring no one is accidentally left out. 
• Seamless employee onboarding: PerkUp identifies employees with future start dates as they’re added to the HRIS, allowing customers to automatically send them a new hire kit or other swag before they onboard, on their first day, or at the end of their probation period. 

What’s more, the data connection is continuous and refreshes every 24 hours, ensuring PerkUp is always working from the most up-to-date employee information. Compared to flat-file transfers and manual data syncs, the efficiencies are enormous.

“Finch saves our customers time and headaches, which means they require less customer support from us. We've had 400-person companies connect their system in minutes. When that happens, it's amazing,” said Thomas Mirmotahari, PerkUp's Co-Founder & CEO.

Built to set and forget

Finch is designed to create a seamless "set-it-and-forget-it" experience for both PerkUp's engineers and customers.

In the four years that PerkUp has been using Finch, the engineering team has been able to shift virtually all resources away from managing the Finch integration, only having to make updates for new data fields. Moreover, PerkUp's customers were able to establish long-lived connections to their HRIS without having to check if data was stale, creating a smooth, consistent experience.

“Finch is like the Plaid of HRIS. We love that they’re going deeper, both in terms of the providers they’re adding and the data they’re retrieving. That's the type of partner that we want,” Thomas said.

"Finch is like the Plaid of HRIS. We love that they’re going deeper, both in terms of the providers they’re adding and the data they’re retrieving."

Driving lasting business impact

Finch’s ever-growing coverage of the long-tail also expands PerkUp’s target addressable market and helps the sales team make inroads with innovative employers using next-generation HRIS.

When Finch released the HiBob integration, for instance, PerkUp was able to go back to leads who had been asking for it. PerkUp says that made their team look great to prospective customers — like they had done the work to cater to their request — when, really, it was their Finch partnership that made it possible.

Beyond sales, Finch also supports one of the platform’s primary revenue streams. For PerkUp, the business case is clear:

“Finch makes our product much stickier. As our customers grow, Finch reduces the admin burden for them, embeds us more deeply in their operations, and generates additional per-employee-per-month fees for us,” Thomas explained. “It supports our business on multiple levels.”

"Finch makes our product much stickier. ... It supports our business on multiple levels."