Jennifer dove headlong into her search, starting out with a system she used in a prior role: ADP. While it checked the box for payroll, she found it lacking elsewhere. After all, Jennifer was hired to tackle employee development—she needed something with a broader impact. “To get the level of performance management I wanted, we’d need an ADP bolt-on that we couldn’t afford.”
Then came Workday. Again, no dice. Jennifer felt like the provider saw Forrest as “small potatoes,” and the price wasn’t even remotely right. Vendor after vendor, the story was the same. Jennifer was starting to lose hope. That feeling came and went with an unexpected phone call one morning.
“I got a cold call from Namely out of the blue and recognized the name. The timing was just right.” After scheduling a demo, Jennifer was struck by how unique its HR platform was.
Namely’s employee news feed in particular made an impression. Throughout her career, Jennifer had observed that companies generally struggled with communication. “Namely provided a platform where we could push a message out in a narrative format, and even share it via email and to people’s phones via the app.” In many ways, Jennifer saw the feature as a great unifier, keeping employees at both the office and production centers all on the same page.
Unlike some of the other vendors out there, Jennifer also found that Namely’s HR software was actually what it claimed to be. “That’s where Namely really stood out. Even though they have a similar look and feel to Bamboo, they’ve got the full suite of modules and really take ownership of payroll processing.”
Much to Jennifer’s relief, it turns out that the leadership team didn’t need much convincing. When she pitched Namely, they were sold by the potential time savings. On average, Namely saves HR professionals 11 hours a week in administrative work. Those are hours that could now be spent focusing on development and talent management—the things that Jennifer was brought on board to tackle in the first place.
