HRAnswerLink

ISV Takes New SaaS Business to Market Thirteen Months Sooner with LongJump

HRAnswerLink Provides Verticalized Web Application Solutions to Channel Partners in the Payroll Industry

“Explosive,” is how Adam Day, VP of Business Development at HRAnswerLink, describes the LongJump platform’s impact on their business. “Every day we are more excited about what LongJump can do and the opportunities we have to build our business. Our biggest challenge is being able to focus our energy, because of LongJump’s capabilities.”

“We initially estimated that it would likely take 18 months of development, anywhere from $800,000 to $1,200,000, a development team of 3 to 5 full time developers, plus external contract help,” says Day. “With that kind of major investment in resources, time, money and energy, the decision was made to table the project for a year.”

But recognizing there was a market for nimble, process-oriented payroll, human resource and insurance CRM applications, Day continued looking into what it would take to build the multitenant SaaS platform that they would need to execute their plan. While performing online research he discovered LongJump.

Accelerating Time to Market

“I’m not a developer, but after signing up for the free trial, it became abundantly clear how intuitive it was to build applications on the platform,” recalls Day. “With a platform like LongJump, we felt we could realize our vision and create 85-90% of our solution through included UI without writing a single line of code.”

Day and his team continued looking into other application platforms that would enable the multitenancy and a partner-based delivery method they were looking for, but ultimately returned to LongJump for its robustness and depth.

“There were less expensive options, but LongJump seems to have a 12-month lead in maturity over the other platforms,” explains Day. “The extensibility through the Java API, the independent whitelabeling and customization for tenants, the ability to host anywhere we wanted – these are just a few of the reasons that made LongJump ideally suited for our objectives.”

HRAnswerLink began development in April and launched their product in August, effectively cutting their time to market by 75%. During this process, they added one Java developer and two support personnel to perform implementation and customer support. They’ve also built integration into key payroll systems required by their customers using LongJump’s SOAP messaging capabilities.

“At first, there was a little bit of a learning curve for our developer going from a pure Java-based design to LongJump’s UI-driven, Java-based development platform,” remarks Day. “But because LongJump enables ordinary business users like me to build the majority of application through the standard interface, it offloads work from our primary developer and allows him to focus on customization and integrations rather than commonplace features.”

In fact, Day often finds when talking to his partners and customers that LongJump is highly customizable, even on the fly by business users. He explains: “There have been several occasions where we engaged a customer in a demo and they ask about changing the data model or automating some process or designing a new dashboard report. It literally blows them away when we make the changes as we’re talking about them. Ultimately, that flexibility adds to their confidence and excitement because LongJump is clearly powerful and accommodating.”

Like many other LongJump customers, HRAnswerLink found that with a great platform, also comes great service and support. “The support team has always been responsive and willing to go the extra mile,” explains Day. “We sometimes will get a response to a case outside normal business hours. If there were ever issues, we always have an acceptable workaround so we don’t slow down our own business.”

That level of support is also apparent at the executive level. “The entire LongJump team from support members to the CEO is attuned to our business needs and works with us to resolve issues. We really feel like a partner when it comes to contributing to the product development which, as an ISV, is critical for us as we continue to build and evolve solutions for our customers.”

The uptake by partners and customers has been so positive that HRAnswerLink has already started building a user group around their products to further explore best practices and share use cases. With the signing of 14 channel MSP partners in the first four months of introducing the application, HRAnswerLink looks to add more business and evaluating rebuilding their legacy applications on LongJump as well.

“Building and customizing applications on LongJump is fun and easy,” concludes Day. “And that makes our business exciting because we can see a vast horizon for the growth of our company.”

To other ISVs building on the LongJump platform Day offers this advice: “There is a real market for verticalized, customizable application solutions. The key is to translate industry knowledge into a packaged solution, then use the multitenancy of the LongJump platform to support the unique requirements of each client. ISVs can also encourage those clients to customize their solutions on their own as well, as it increases their commitment to the application, and relieves your service investment. I think only LongJump can help complete that ISV-to-customer lifecycle so quickly and with such a full-featured, quality application platform.”

About HRAnswerLink

HRAnswerLink is a leading provider of online human resources products and services that are distributed through its affiliates’ custom branded websites. Products and services include the HR Support Center, a subscription-based human resources service for small to mid-sized businesses. The HR Support Center combines online resources with personal assistance to help organizations get the information needed to make correct human resources decisions. HRISLink is an affiliate-branded, customizable Human Resource Information System that tracks employee data for the lifetime of their employment. CRMLink is an industry-specific sales force and client relations management system.

With corporate offices in Fremont, California, and facilities in New Albany, Indiana and Fort Collins, Colorado, HRAnswerLink makes its products and services available to businesses through affiliates such as insurance providers, brokers and administrators, payroll services providers, resellers and associations. For more information, call 510-979-1225, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or go online to http://www.HRAnswerLink.com.

Summary

• Reduced time to market by 90% from 18 months to 2 months
• Refined resource requirement from 3 to 5 engineers plus contractors to 1 developer and 2 support members
• Signed 14 MSP partners within 4 months of product introduction