resources
Digital Marketer Builds a Dynamic, Diverse Team to Maintain Rapid Growth
April 21, 2023
AUDIENCEX brings innovation to digital marketing. Ranked by Deloitte as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, AUDIENCEX creates omnichannel marketing campaigns that help clients to improve their brand visibility, capture market share, and increase revenue.
As a data-driven digital advertising partner, the company’s services cover campaign planning and creative work, search and social, and programmatic media planning and buying. With integrated teams of expert strategists, AUDIENCEX helps challenger brands and independent agencies create impactful ad content, leverage AI-enabled data science to model targeted audiences and deploy campaigns throughout the digital landscape to reach the right consumers and increase conversions.
Human expertise is supported by machine learning, analyzing historical and real-time data to achieve optimal results and the highest possible return on investment. With in-depth, actionable analytics and insights, AUDIENCEX provides transparency on performance and optimization throughout every campaign.
Such wide-ranging operations mean AUDIENCEX must attract a diverse array of specialists: client managers, designers, developers, data analysts, social media experts, and more. With skills shortages and strong competition for talent, the HR team has its hands full to recruit and retain the best people.
A key element of the company’s HR strategy is fostering a culture of creativity, dynamism, inclusivity, and equity. In other words, forming a workplace where employees feel a sense of belonging and can learn, grow, and make a real impact. But with existing systems and processes, it was time-consuming and difficult to manage talent and track organizational performance. To deliver stronger service to the business, the company decided to move to a best-in-class HR platform—and dialed up Paylocity.
“Where other HR tools excel in one or two areas, Paylocity covers everything. I choose to use Paylocity wherever I go, and I know that we can implement it quickly, too.”
Alejandro Phillips, VP of People Operations
The Challenge: Labor-intensive Processes Curb Agility
Working with spreadsheets, paper forms, and multiple systems meant HR had limited time to connect with employees and deliver value to the business.
Separate Solutions Increase Complexity and Costs
Previously, AUDIENCEX used separate tools for payroll, performance reviews, benefits administration, and compensation management. Inevitably, this approach led to high complexity and costs, with multiple contracts to manage, different support agreements to keep track of, and a lack of integration between systems. It also left some solutions underutilized, with the company paying for a host of untouched features on its payroll platform. In addition, multiple systems also caused confusion for employees and HR as it led to frustration and more calls for assistance.
Multiple Data Sources Hinder Analysis
Regular auditing plays a key role in ensuring AUDIENCEX achieves its diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) objectives and meets obligations to external investors. But with data spread out across multiple sources, getting an accurate view was challenging. “When we were asked for information and reports, we would log into five or six different platforms, and then try to make sense of what was often inconsistent or messy data,” explains Alejandro Phillips, VP, People Operations at AUDIENCEX. To deliver deeper insights and to support process optimization, the team needed a single source of truth.
Manual Work Wastes Valuable Resources
AUDIENCEX was also held back by slow, manual HR processes. For example, during onboarding, the HR team tracked the progress of new hires by keying data into lengthy spreadsheets. Similarly, running regular reviews of employee benefits involved painstaking checks for enrollment errors. And every year, the HR team spent hours preparing and mailing out paper W-2 forms. All of this took time and energy that could have been spent on strategic activities.
“A lot of HR professionals are intimidated by the thought of moving platforms. But the Paylocity team is so knowledgeable that I know the process will run seamlessly, without any risk of data loss or other issues.”
Alejandro Phillips, VP of People Operations
The Solution: Integrated HR Enables Efficient Operations
Using Paylocity empowers AUDIENCEX to develop more effective practices for onboarding, employee reviews, compensation, and data analysis.
Soon after arriving at AUDIENCEX, Alejandro made the call to move to Paylocity. “We wanted to move fast with our transition to Paylocity. I knew from experience that Paylocity would be ready on time. Their service is exceptional, especially the data extraction team, and we went live on the timeline we wanted, which was fantastic.”
Streamlined Workflows Remove HR Headaches
With Paylocity, AUDIENCEX has replaced manual work with smarter processes. Paylocity’s Onboarding tool eliminates spreadsheet-based tasks, provides guidance to new starts by sharing company culture and welcome messages from leaders, and keeps HR and managers updated on their progress. Paylocity’s Benefits Administration helps the company manage benefits enrollments and automatically notifies HR about eligibility errors. AUDIENCEX also offers employees quick, easy access to HR documents via Paylocity’s Employee Self-Service, removing the need for HR to print, pack, and mail paper forms.
Unified Data Helps Track Performance and Engagement
Paylocity also simplifies data analysis and reporting, giving AUDIENCEX one location for all HR information. “Paylocity is my source of truth. I feel that I can trust the information and the visualizations,” notes Alejandro. With Paylocity’s Insights & Recommendations, the company can take a deep dive into data such as headcount and retention levels, and monitor key culture and DEI&A metrics, including gender representation. To measure employee sentiment and satisfaction, AUDIENCEX uses Paylocity Surveys to run regular pulse surveys.
Proactive Feedback and Development Improve Retention
Paylocity’s Performance tool facilitates 360° feedback through employee reviews, enabling AUDIENCEX managers and employees to provide transparent feedback and to discuss accomplishments and future goals. HR leaders also use Paylocity’s Compensation solution to analyze pay for each employee to ensure fairness. “Reviews help us identify high performers and those that might consider leaving for roles elsewhere. We can then rethink how we compensate them to ensure we retain our best talent,” adds Alejandro.
The Results: Becoming an Employer of Choice for Marketers
Paylocity empowers AUDIENCEX to cut costs, optimize HR processes, and attract and retain world-class digital and creative talent.
A Consolidated Platform Unlocks Major Savings
With Paylocity, AUDIENCEX has successfully transitioned from disjointed point solutions to a single, integrated HR platform for managing the entire employee lifecycle. Alejandro notes: “Paylocity gives us everything we need for HR in one place. All the tools are always available to us online and on mobile.” By replacing the older systems, Alejandro estimates AUDIENCEX has generated cost savings of more than $1k per employee, which can be redirected to support strategic HR initiatives.
Smarter Ways of Working Boost Productivity
By streamlining labor-intensive processes, AUDIENCEX is also saving countless hours of time. As a result, the HR team spends more time focusing on its real purpose: serving the business, connecting with talent, and helping people to grow and develop. “Every manual process we cut saves time and resources,” adds Alejandro. “For example, most companies still mail out W-2 forms. With Paylocity, we just let people know the documents are available via Employee Self-Service.”
Deeper Insights Enable More Inclusive Culture
Higher-quality data in Paylocity also improves accountability and supports more informed decision-making at AUDIENCEX. During regular audits by external investors, the HR team can quickly source data to throw light on trends such as attrition rates and labor costs. And rich DEIA metrics enable the company to develop more inclusive policies for hiring, compensation, and rewards that minimize the risk of unconscious bias. For example, AUDIENCEX has taken steps to ensure equitable gender representation, and is tracking its progress to this goal through Paylocity. Alejandro concludes: “The way that Paylocity is constantly developing ways to bring in information to enable better-informed decisions surpasses any other vendor we’ve worked with. It will help us to optimize our processes across HR and support our ongoing growth journey.”
“I love the flexibility you get as a strategic thinker in HR with the Paylocity platform. Using Paylocity empowers me to go out and provide better quality services to the rest of the company.”
Alejandro Phillips, VP of People Operations
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