Okay, cool. And then, um, I'll go ahead and start the webinar. Turn my camera off. We can see. Can you see the screen. Yeah, we can see. Can you hear. Okay. Silence. Hello and welcome to today's webinar. Our speaker today is Jessica Stimmel from Keiko ISOM. Before I turn it over to Jessica, I'd like to let those of you who are live with us know that you may submit questions during the webinar via the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. This webinar will also be recorded so that you may watch or re-watch on demand at your convenience. With that, I will turn it over to Jessica. Lexi, appreciate it. Thank you to you and to Liz and AED for inviting us to be able to present this morning. We're really excited to be able to join you. As Lexi said, my name is Jessica Stimmel. I work for Keiko ISOM. We are a business advisory and accounting firm. We've been around since 1936 and we work heavily in the production, ag, manufacturing, and distribution spaces. You've probably seen some familiar faces from Keiko hanging around AED for a good long period of time with Clinton Baker and Mark Johnson who are partners within the firm. They help a lot of AED members to be able to work through mergers and acquisitions and weigh in on tax solutions. The area that I get a chance to be able to deal with and deal in for the firm is human resources. I'm a human resource consultant. I have been working with employers to be able to solve for some of the toughest business struggles and challenges that they have going on within their organization, specifically within Keiko. I had a chance to dig into those on the HR front in terms of what are we facing when it comes to those challenges, everything from 15 employer companies to employers with several thousands of employees. So excited to share with you today some of the magic behind that and as we look at taking the mystery out of human resource efficiency. So our agenda for today, we're going to dig into, my goal is to be able to have you walk away with a couple of new tools in your tool belt. First and foremost, I'm going to have an HR discovery that I'm going to be sharing with you. That'll come out from Lexi and you'll see it come from AED when we wrap up today. So watch for that via email. So I'll give you a little snippets of it here and there, but that's really a tool for you to be able to apply within your own organization. What I wanted to share my role as HR consulting, this is really the favorite part of my job is to be able to dig in, to work with employers, understand what's the one challenge and then dig into sometimes that becomes the tip of the iceberg of what are the things feeding into that struggle or that challenge. So we'll dig into that a little bit today. With that assessment, it's always what's that specific question and then it's how does data and metrics tie into that. So we'll talk a little bit about the data and the numbers to go along with it. We'll break into tools, what are some of those tools and resources that are out there from an HR perspective. A lot of them you're going to already know about, but I think it's really putting it through the lens of what's the fit for your organization and what to say no to, what to say yes to and what's the right fit at the right time. And the last piece we'll be covering is what are those top five. We'll talk about the top five must-haves when we think about looking at either outsource solutions, new tools, new resources, even the tools and resources that we look at internally. Those lists can get really long sometimes of the want-to-haves and trying to get that broken down to just those top five must-haves when we're out looking for solutions. From the HR discovery tool standpoint, I did make some tweaks and changes to this because I'm really trying to make it internal facing. This is fully the document that I use when I sit down with HR professionals. A lot of times those conversations are whoever our relationship managers, result strategists bring to the table. We serve so many clients in a tax or audit standpoint. Maybe we are helping them out from a payroll perspective, doing some after the fact or some year-end support for them. This really gives us a chance to not only understand maybe the one issue that they're bringing to the table, but to really dig in to that with the specific key stakeholders that are going to show up and be present for that. So HR discovery tool, I'm going to say Shana and I both geek out on this. I'll be introducing you to Shana here in just a second. We love to dig on in and understand what's working, what's not working, what those challenges are with the purpose of discovering and understanding kind of that mystery behind the challenge or the problem. At this point in my career, I've had the chance to be able to conduct these conversations with hundreds-ish, maybe a thousand different professionals that have shown up and come to the table to be able to share their experience, their perspectives, their views. I could cover this same document with five people in the same organization and end up with five very different answers because it's through that specific individual's lens. So getting the right people to the table as we're diving into these conversations and conducting these interviews tends to be really, really important. What I find are some of the very best HR professionals I work with, they are the internal service providers of the organizations that they serve within and it's really fun to be able to partner with them to ask the hard questions or sometimes get to know within their own internal functions to be able to move forward or put the stop in it in terms of the go-forward basis. So HR discovery tool will be coming to you via email when we wrap up here. It is a three-page document. Use it in an electronic format so they can type in responses there or make it bigger so you have a chance to be able to capture those if you're asking people to hand write things in. When we talk about key stakeholders, of course those of you in attendance today would definitely be key stakeholders that are at the table when we think about this HR discovery. You're the slam dunk, the shoe in, the people that are showing up. And then who are those other folks within your organization that are going to have a chance to be able to chime in and have a perspective on that. Shama, I'd love to be able to bring you into the loop here as we look at what are our top two HR challenges that you face in your role today. So inviting you to be able to chime in in the chat here if that makes sense for you to be able to share those. We're going to throw up a handful that are the ones that Shama and I see on a pretty consistent basis from recruiting, retention, compliance needs, change management, creating culture in the midst of mergers and acquisitions. So how does that get done and accomplished? New hire onboarding, benefits management training needs, the consistent HR rabbit hole. You have your full day planned out and somebody comes in and, hey, do you have just a minute? And that just a minute question or issue ends up taking the bulk of our day to be able to resolve and then resistance to change. So those were a few that we had just kind of thrown out there to make it easy. And if you haven't had as many cups of coffee as I have yet this morning, then you have an opportunity to have a little bit of a multiple choice. So I'll pause there. Joining me today is my co-conspirator on the HR consulting arm for KCO's opinion advisory HR consulting services, none other than Shana Jones. Shana tends to dig into our training, culture, engagement, performance management, things like coaching, where I live more kind of in our human resource administration area. So we kind of tend to be a blend of that world. But love to hear from you, Shana, on what are some of the, as we look at this list or others that you have, HR professionals that you're hearing from within KCO, clients of KCO with the clients that we serve. Love to hear what some of the different feedback that you're getting lately is. Well, thank you, Jessica. I appreciate that. Hi, everyone. Yes, I am Shana Jones, the one and only, did you say, Jess? Those are the never before experienced or I don't know, some fabulous way that you just introduced me. And thank you for that. I misheard you as you were reading from this fabulous list and thought that you had said creating culture in the midst of murder and acquisitions, which, you know, it might feel that way sometimes. But no, in fact, mergers and acquisitions, this is a very comprehensive list and very indicative of what's going on right now. I think with our clients, I would say the things that really jump off the page for me and what I've been hearing about most recently is around this change management piece. This last year, year plus of going through what so many employers have had to go through and all of us have gone through with COVID has been a very clear indicator of how a corporation or an organization really functions either successfully or not as successfully within a change environment. So we're hearing a lot about that, you know, how we're hearing the stories of how they were able to adapt of how they weren't able to adapt. And many folks are reaching out for some help and kind of creating some some strategic direction. So this HR tool that you just shared is a great jumping off point to ask the hard questions and get the information that you need to understand kind of what's next. It feels like it's a reset somehow in the HR world. And with employees coming back to the workplace for many and for those even who have been essential through this pandemic, there's still this sense of transition and restart that has gotten people looking at the big picture again and how they can look for these efficiencies now that everything sort of seems different somehow. So a lot around change management, which then of course takes us to that final bullet that you shared here, which is resistance to change that kind of goes hand in hand and looking for methods and ideas around how to sort of break through to that next level of performance and efficiency. So I would say those are the things I'm hearing about the most. And just as also, as you said, with that HR tool and how it unearths very different perspectives, not even just across organizations, but within the same organization that has been this customization has been a really big part of meeting change head-on is how does it fit for me as an organization? Thanks, Sean. I appreciate that. Absolutely. I think when it comes to that resistance to change or change management, as you mentioned, we've all had a year of really being able to experience that in a totally different way. I think of the thousands of clients that we have, some of those are still, for payroll, issuing live checks to employees up until COVID, they were kind of white knuckling it, like this is how we have to do business. And it's the way we've done business all along. And within a week of all of these offices shuddering across the country, all of a sudden, digital forms of payment became like the immediate went from, yo, that's a nice to have, we could offer it to how do we get that done between direct deposits and pay cards and make it happen really, really quickly. So change management, resistance to change. And then I think the urgency of timing and what that looks like has been really perspective building. I think for all of us, as we think about this last year, that we've all survived and lived through it as employers and employees get ready to come back to the workplace. Some of those haven't left at all. And others have are trickling back in. When I think about the contributions that I hear back and kind of that whole list, this tends to be the image that comes to mind when I get to the end of that HR discovery tool. So I'm going to have Shauna go ahead and play the clip of A Day in the Life of the HR Professional. Well, I think we get the idea of I've heard whack-a-mole like use as an analogy sometimes. I think of plate spinning, where that's Benny Schuman, I'm sure everybody knows from Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1968 with some fancy, fabulous music. I love the first couple of clips there where he's just got the one plate and he's doing really cool things with the one plate. If that were it for our jobs and we just needed to do really, really great work on that one thing and keep it spinning and moving back and forth, I think we could do that. We could do it really, really well and feel like at the end of the day, we had done a solid job. When he starts stacking all of the chairs on top of each other and balancing those, that makes me think of the role of a lot of our HR professionals. So you might be an HR department of one, maybe you're an HR department, a director or head of 10. In either one of those cases, it's the being able to balance the constant either tossing of chairs or plates your direction and the ability to not only grab that one as it's in the air, catching it, getting it spinning, but it's the continuous maintenance to keep those spinning. So I think of 2015 and Affordable Care Act reporting coming our direction. I got to figure out how to spin that plate and then I have to keep that one spinning in spite of all of the change that happens. And then we'll throw COVID in and that's a whole bunch more plates. And now we're still spinning all of those. I think of the times during COVID that was some of our highest volume of calls, of course, from an HR perspective and clients, employers, specifically HR departments going, this is the first time I've been through this, first time any of us have been through this. How do we navigate and how do we do that well? So I love the plate spinner analogy because it's consistently throwing on another plate and another plate. And how do we effectively spend our time in the places that get us the most return on investment in terms of the time we're investing in the organization, the people that we're investing that with or the systems and processes and what makes sense there. We're going to talk about more of that in a minute. I'm excited to be able to share with you a story of a client that I've had an opportunity to work with within our firm. I won't name names, but this was a specific conversation I had with the CFO of an organization. Frequently, I think we see this in the ag production, manufacturing and distribution spaces where small employers maybe started with 10 or 15 or 20 employees, family owned businesses. And then over the course of decades or sometimes a full century, those businesses have grown and they're big business now. So in this example, this CFO even shared, and I feel like we're the employer with, we happen to have 150 to 200 employees, but a lot of times we run and our systems and our efficiencies or lack thereof are built like a company with 15 employees. We're still running like that family owned and operated organization. How do we still keep that same feel of what we love about the company that we've built and yet create efficiencies and bottom line metrics and numbers that are going to support and carry the business forward as we continue to experience growth and how do we position ourselves for that? So in the course of this conversation, we were digging into things around payroll, things around timekeeping, functions of human resources. What we started to learn, this employer had a great payroll solution for a company with less than 50 employees. They had outgrown that system several years ago, maybe a decade ago, in terms of not meeting the compliance needs that they had of an employer that has more than a hundred employees. So lots of compliance needs that they hit the 50 mark, the hundred mark, even more, and then throw on top of that they're in California. So you can have all kinds of additional compliance needs from that standpoint. So had outgrown that system. That was a foregone conclusion. Where we ended up digging in that started creating the most of this kind of data-driven ROI story around metrics was really digging into their timekeeping platform. And if I had gone in and asked right off my discovery assessment, you know, what timekeeping platform do you use? They would have shared, you know, and I won't say the name of it, but you know, XYZ timekeeping system and it's online and it's cloud-based and it's, you know, great. We love it. It works well. Ask some more questions. How are employees time, you know, how do you collect those time punches from employees in the field? Come to find out, employees are taking time cards, paper time cards, manually entering in the information, charting which jobs they were working or what equipment they were working on within those jobs. And then at the end of the day, managers and supervisors are taking those time cards, data, entering those into the timekeeping system, assigning the specific labor levels that go along with it to get it into their timekeeping platform. And then someone in payroll is taking that same information data, entering it into their payroll system to be able to get those employees paid. And after each one of those answers, my question to the CFO is how long does that take? Okay, so employees are, you know, manually gathering information off their time cards. That's, you know, 10-15 minutes per employee, okay, times your workforce that works hourly. Then how long are supervisors and managers spending, you know, at the end of day keying in that data, that 45 minutes and how many of those do you have? Okay, let's do that math. And then how long is that payroll professional spending data entering that information into the current software that they're using from a payroll perspective and gathering some time there? We built this time study to be able to track not the first time that an employee touches time because somewhere somebody's got to touch time. We know that, right? We've got to capture it. The more often we can get it from the employee, the better. So we're not counting that first one, but in terms of redundancies and touching the same data over and over again, we added up a total of 600 hours that this organization with just 150 employees was spending retouching the same data over and over again. Reking and retouching data can lead to one, people feeling like their ROI is not put in the best place, right? They're out there to work. They're either in the fields or in their offices with a lot of other jobs to do other than data entry. So number one, in terms of where do we want that employee's time spent? And then number two, as perfect as we are all keying things, that fat fingered mis-entry of data and information is going to cause potential inaccuracies and calculations. And when those calculations are inaccurate, end up in payroll, post payroll processing. We all know those are really not fun to fix, to be able to go back and have to make those corrections and those changes. That ended up being kind of the business case with those metrics of ROI. So we took the 600 hours and multiplied that, of course, by what the average employees' earnings on an hourly basis were. It's a really significant time savings to be able to capture those employees' time punches in the field, have them code the time to the specific type of work that they're doing, and have that automatically be able to flow into payroll. So for them, that was the business case. So often, with the HR luncheons that I've had a chance to see and sit at the tables of and be involved with, there's always fun, exciting, new. What's the latest today in HR? And what's the latest tool or resource when it comes to efficiency? We get excited about a lot of those. And then it's putting it through the lens of what is our business vision, right? And that's a lot of times carried down from our C-levels, our ownership. But then how does it carry forward to the front line? And what makes it appetizing for us to be able to include that in our offering for our employees as we look to go forward? Just because something's fun and new doesn't make it a good fit for each and every organization. So I think this is a good study to be able to look at that and be able to share, then drive the ROI. So with those HR professionals sitting around having lunches within our SHRM organizations, it was always the ask of, we really want or we need this process. We need this system. We need this efficiency. And it was connecting that to the bottom line ROI to make that business case justification for the C-levels, the finance, the ownership to be able to justify that business case to go forward. So my hope is to be able to give you some of those tools and resources today and through that discovery tool as we go through our discussion. So when I think of those metrics, right, it's a little bit of the what's question one and what's the two or three questions that kind of tag along and go along with that. So not just how do you handle this process, but how long does that process take? And I think asking that question to different individuals in your organization, they're all going to have different answers, right? So if it was this timekeeping study, how long did it take the employee? It took the employee 10 to 15 minutes. Well, how long did it take the manager supervisor? 45 minutes. And then how long did it take the payroll admin hours to be able to enter all of that information? So it's putting a number to the process or the system. Calculate those efficiencies and cost efficiencies across the organization. And then the last one there is the cost or risk of exposure to the organization. So it's like, what's the time lost? And then what's the risk of exposure? So when I think back to that example of 2015, I remember a lot of employers going out and creating a whole bunch of Fed IDs thinking they were going to like skirt or somehow work around this whole new Affordable Care Act and health plan reform. That didn't work, right? They're all part of the same control group. That was kind of a no-go, really understanding the risk that was out there. That took change. And then I think what we've all experienced this last year around COVID, what are the risks and what policies and plans do we need to have in place to ensure our security as an organization? But we can't do everything. And then understanding the risks that there are so that we know what that exposure looks like. All right. Back to Benny here and some of his amazing plate spinning. I felt like when he did the splits there at the end, that was like everybody going into COVID of like, hey, we thought we could do this all and we had all the plates in the air and now we're going to do the splits while we're in it. So his, excuse me, flying leap spread eagle here. When I think of all of those plates spinning, I think of, unless I'm Benny, it's probably physically impossible for me to do all things, right? And to be all things to all of those people within my organization that need something from human resources. Of those plates that are spinning, where do I most need to invest my time to be able to have that time be efficient? Right now hiring tends to be one of those. There are awesome recruiting resources. We have some of those awesome recruiting resources, but at the end of the day, they're able to serve up great qualified candidates and do some of that pre-screen, but in terms of the sale, right? The ability to get that new candidate to say yes to your organization. It takes somebody on the inside, connecting those dots and becoming that, you know, that face of the business to be able to really move that forward, to be able to have the talent that's needed and required. That's one of those things that comes to my mind of something I can't completely hand off to somebody else, but what can be right of those plates that are spinning in the air? What are the things that have to be me spinning them or my team? Okay. I'm going to like segment those. What are the things that would be nice to have that aren't going to be on my plate? What can I outsource? What makes sense to outsource when I look at that? So I put up the question, what is the problem you're trying to solve? There's so many ways to be able to automate right now. If you can have a system create some of that internal efficiency, like I mentioned, the data entry piece, or if it's handling your, you know, deductions and reporting and remittance for payroll and taxes, you know, kind of a slam dunk in terms of that. I'm sure a lot of you have already looked at that and are utilizing resources there. So just narrowing that down after all of this discovery and that assessment is complete, what stands out as the consistent problem that you're trying to solve? And then being able to ask, is it a problem that we don't have that solution, that process or that efficiency, or is the problem that we're not utilizing what we have and being able to make that discernment and only you within that organization are able to make that discernment. So those are part of the conversations. Those are the invitation to come in and be able to kind of get under the hood of, of what's working and what's not working. When we think about what's the problem that you're trying to solve, I'm just going to share some of the tools that are out there. So I'm, you know, here's a dozen ish, you can probably think of dozens more in terms of that wish list of technology or outsource options when it comes to outsourcing and resources that are out there. What are the items that are going to most move your departments forward, your businesses forward in the course of this next three to six months? We can't give everybody their wish list in terms of inside that organization, the right, that suggestion box that we keep getting new suggestions over and over again. We're never going to satisfy all of those. Sometimes it's knowing what to say no to and what's going to move the business forward with that, yes. And bottom line, understanding what that ROI is for those organizations that we're, that we're putting in the time for and being able to make those recommendations to our C-level so that they can understand the efficiency behind it as we dig in here. So many choices. So I did a really quick search on the SHRM website, just looking at payroll companies. So identified within SHRM, it's 215 payroll companies that I found that are payroll providers and vendors that are out there. With those, I think sometimes it's trying to find right fit, right fit for your organization. It doesn't make any of those companies necessarily good or bad. It's nice to have some star ratings to go along with them, right? To be able to vet some of that out. But it's ultimately at the end of the day, finding what the right fit for your organization is. I've had clients that I've had a chance to work with that had great systems. That had great systems. I remember one that we're going through implementation with right now. Fantastic HR platform and software that they're using. They really like it. At least the HR professional really likes it, but nobody else in the organization is using it. It doesn't talk to their payroll system. It doesn't talk to their training system. It's really a standalone function for HR. When they went out looking at resources and options, they vetted software functions within human resources and came upon this as a solution. While that's a great solution, if it's not able to talk to and connect to the other systems that they have, it becomes just a tool internally for that HR person. If the idea is taking some of the things off of that HR person's plate, allowing managers and supervisors to be involved in the process of human resources and managing their own employees from either performance management or documentation perspective or having access to employee files, we're missing the mark in terms of being able to accomplish that. I think that's taking the choices that are out there and then how do those apply internally to your own organization. That leads me to some of the top five must-haves that I want to be able to share with you. Going through this stakeholder assessment with the HR discovery tool, like I said, you're going to get a whole host of different perspectives from different individuals inside your organization. It could look like these don't even exist inside of the same company, but they do. Everybody is going to have their idea of what good looks like. If we're looking at new systems, new software, new options, what meets the needs of their specific role? I think it's good to collect that data and information. It's really hard to go grocery shopping with 150 items on the list. What are, and my invitation is boil it down, what are the top five must-haves that you need if you were looking at any of those options in terms of functions and bullet points on that prior screen? What are the have-to-haves that you are looking at to be able to meet the needs within your organization? Know those top five so that they are the knockout factors. The list I'm sharing with you here, and I say it's not one size fits all, even within one industry. I can go ask one of my business associates that is in the same industry, similar type of business. The system and program they use might be a great fit for them, and it might not be a good fit for my organization. Knowing that, but not to say it's not a good place to start, but having this top five list, I think just based directly out of the feedback from within your own organization makes a lot of sense before you start talking to other people. I had the opportunity to do this for Keiko two, three years ago as we were looking at some new payroll software. We have lots of systems and functions that we work with in different programs and software, but we were out looking for some specifics in terms of being able to meet some of our larger market client needs. Like you, I went out into the market with, here's what I think we're looking for. I interviewed stakeholders. I interviewed stakeholders within Keiko, so within our organization that work with and serve clients across the spectrum from small to large, so our internal tax, accounting, audit, CPA front. Then I asked them for recommendations, which clients can I talk to that are across all of these different industries to find out what's important to them? What works well? What do they like about the current software they're using? Give them the magic wand. What would they change about those systems? I brought in all of that data to be able to understand what's important to different individuals, to different stakeholders, and then what's the vision for Keiko, for our organization of our leadership and our mission vision values that's going to help us move forward, so it's really aligning those. This is a sample of what I'm sharing because these were my, as I was looking at that and going through that, this became my punch list. If a software solution didn't meet these five criteria, it was ousted. It saves me a lot of time because this could be figured out through sometimes visiting the website and sometimes it was picking up the phone and having a five or 10-minute phone call, and I can't tell you how much I appreciated the vendor that would say, no, we can't do that. Sorry. Click. Thank you, but not wasting my time or their time on a solution that wasn't going to be a good fit, and even if it met all of the other criteria, it didn't meet one of these, it wasn't going to be a fit for our clients. For us, that was, I put it on there three times, integration, integration, integration. We do a lot around innovation and just because here's what we're doing today, we're going to have growth and development and further opportunities to be able to grow and develop that going forward, so the ability to, and you'll see it as my fourth bullet point, have open API, so the ability to have a software system that we could write code to, to talk to different platforms and systems, different ERP systems, different accounting and GL functions was really important. Different timekeeping solutions that different clients are going to have. Those were kind of like one and two, our first couple of boxes there. When I think about it, single employee record, so when we talked about data entry and multiple areas of being able to do data entry, the ability to share one single employee record across several different functions was a must have for us. If we can start that process at the candidate level, right, the candidates filling out some of their information, whether we're bringing that in from a LinkedIn or an Indeed or they're going to our website and apply here, capturing that data from the actual source, they have a lot more awareness about what their address is or their bank account information and how many times they're checking it than somebody who's keying it off of a piece of paper and no discrepancies there. Those are things I'm going to check as the employee and know and make sure are right as I'm submitting that information, so that single employee record where I can share it from that candidate to doing my new hire onboarding. Now I'm living in payroll. I'm living in timekeeping. I have an HR profile. All of those places, anywhere, it doesn't always happen. It can't always happen. You're going to have disconnects based on the systems and softwares that you have to have or sometimes based on antiquated software that you're still attached to that's server based or desktop based, but as you look to grow and move forward, looking at solutions and options that open themselves up to integration, either now or down the road are going to be time savings. And the last one there was cloud-based, just as we kind of lean into integration and API functionality, systems that can be accessed from anywhere, right? I don't have to physically show up to the office, whether it's COVID or I'm on the beach on vacation. I can access employee data and information. I could process my payroll. We have a storm in Kansas. I could be in California and still be processing things like that that aren't dependent on my organization specifically or any one specific piece of technology and software to have that option. Come up with that list of five. So when I went out and did this, right, internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, clients to be able to bring in that entire list and all of those discovery questions, lots of data and information, some of it great, some of it, you know, okay. Um, I came up with that list of five half to halves, and then I started interviewing our internal payroll team. And we have teams members that have anywhere from, I'm going to say five years experience is the least up to 35 years of experience, um, sitting in that payroll processing seat. And when I talked to them, my list went from five to 45, uh, because these are the people that are in the software, multiple softwares living it every single day. This is their primary job. Um, so it didn't become 45 half to halves, but significantly more areas of consideration in terms of what's going to make sense and how do we kind of vet that list? Um, so they did have a couple because we're in that ag space that, that, that made it into that top five, half to halves, um, that became quick disqualification. Um, and then being able to look at the different options and choices that we had across the board, top five, nice to haves, and then top five, half to halves. And then what are my nice to have that go along with that? Um, so once I know that I'm looking for new tool, new solution, new, you know, relationship, where do I look to in terms of being able to put together resources on the right tools? Am I going out and doing a Google search? Am I, you know, on the SHRM website? What makes sense? What's kind of in my wheelhouse, where have I built some of those trusted relationships already to me? Once you have that top five must have list and you've done those interviews is to be able to look at what current software do you have that you really like enjoy is working for you, or you enjoy pieces and parts functions of it. Sometimes we can't let those go, right? It's our ERP system. It's our accounting software. Um, it might be our timekeeping system that does all of our job costing and labor distribution. Um, so we'll find those right through that discovery assessment tool. That's part of unlocking some of that mystery, starting with what providers I currently have and reaching out to them. We might have version 2.0 and they're on to version 5.0. Um, are there upgrades that are available, right? Where I can go from maybe server-based to cloud-based, and I can go through that conversion process. And in that, are there new modules, different modules that have the functionality without me completely switching systems or bringing on something brand new that I can tap into and continue to integrate my data? Um, so that's kind of the first place I would look when I have these conversations with clients. A lot of times they're bringing me in just as a resource. Um, so one client, Hey, we need to add a new timekeeping system. Here's our current payroll software. Here's our HR software. Where do we go? You start with those couple of providers you're currently using, and do they have the functionality that's going to meet the needs that you have so that you're not bringing on a new relationship where you don't need to, or where you're able to consolidate some of those? So that's kind of the first place I would look to. Of course, we're an accounting firm. That tends to be the question we get a lot of into our relationship managers that work face-to-face with our clients from an accounting standpoint. What systems do you use? What service do you recommend? I love that because I think that's a unique area that we offer, is that we're able to be, um, not only the solution when it comes to technology or when it comes to, um, some of the functions on our, um, you know, HR consulting arm, but to be able to have that communication with our accounting team. So when I think of, you know, PPP that came across this last year, or does your company qualify for employee retention tax credits? Having that accounting relationship and that payroll relationship that are, you know, hand in hand, um, allowed us to be able to create a lot of efficiencies for clients and find opportunities, um, for refunds or credits that they necessarily didn't know that they had coming otherwise. Another one I think of is brokers. Um, so you have a health insurance broker you really like, you have a carrier you really like, um, reaching out to them, they have relationships a lot of time with software providers, or they have partnerships, um, where they might have technology integrations or areas that are able to kind of lead you to best next steps. And the last one I have is just fellow industry, um, members. When you're, um, at those AED conferences or, you know, we're getting to network after hours, you know, who do, who do other companies use and what's successful in working for them, um, can all be good places to, to start and to begin to gain those tools. So from that standpoint, um, the last kind of in closing, um, hoping that you're getting what you were looking for when it comes to human resource and human resources and solving the mysteries, um, sharing with you that tool, um, is really kind of my behind the scenes. How do I dig into that and start those conversations? How do I interview stakeholders to be able to derive that specific information? Um, so that'll be coming to you, um, via email, um, and through AED for attending today. So thank you for that. If you have questions, challenges, things you want to process through or sort through at the conclusion of that, um, feel free to call or email me, um, that's my direct contact information there, um, to be able to share with you and just really appreciate you joining today and, uh, look forward to connecting with you in the future. Thanks everyone for your time and we hope to see you at an AED event soon.

Jessica Stimmel

human resource efficiency

data and metrics

tools and resources

integration

organization's needs

software providers

HR tools