This past week I had the privilege of attending isolved’s Connect annual user conference at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida. The event marked a few firsts for me personally: my first time attending isolved Connect and the first time I have traveled for an in-person event in 18 months. It was great to get back to meeting and connecting with vendors and buyers face to face again!

Considering current events, the conference was quite well attended, with isolved confirming a 70% increase in conference attendance y/y from 2019 – which speaks to the value its HCM platform and extended HR services are enabling for its buyers and partners. isolved has done a lot to keep that value flowing, maturing its solution through product development and select acquisitions. 

isolved’s strategy, tactics & roadmap

On the strategic side of the platform, isolved quickly put its recent purchase of AI-enabled analytics platform provider TrenData HR to work, launching isolved Predictive People Analytics at the event. The offering provides leaders access to AI-driven predictive insights against data from across its People Cloud suite of modules, surfaced through configurable dashboards and augmented by a voice-enabled virtual assistant.

From a tactical perspective, isolved introduced People Cloud Expense Management, which becomes available in Q4, and offers two levels: Essential and Premier. Both will offer isolved’s Adaptive Employee Experience, which includes a mobile-first UX, OCR for receipt capture, and full transparency into the process through to payment. For leaders, the solutions each provide automated workflow approvals, company-wide reporting, and dashboards for drill-down insights and control. Further, the Premier edition will support organizations with more complex expense management features, including credit card transaction importing, job and project costing, and deeper GL export capability.

isolved is focused on continuing its growth by maturing its technology and deepening its service offerings. Its roadmap looks to advance its talent management capability, including enhanced onboarding experience, support for total compensation management, career and succession planning, LMS integration to its wider engagement and talent products, and more tools to support reward and recognition. From a services perspective, isolved is focusing on supporting health and wealth, with benefits a key area of growth, and will launch a benefits brokerage capability and offering in 2022. 

isolved will also continue to expand its partner network: both its payroll services reseller partners and its marketplace partners. isolved is working to further expand its marketplace of integrated partner solutions to address white spaces within its offerings, and further support its adopters in addressing unique needs and growing their businesses.

Key observations & takeaways

Throughout the week, I spoke with multiple isolved clients and partners (in many ways, clients themselves, commonly leveraging isolved’s platform to enable their own managed services offerings). Something that stands out in conversations with clients is their collective confidence in isolved, its executive leadership team, and the technology itself. Every firm I spoke to indicated lengthy tenures with isolved, commonly over five years, which speaks to the value, customer experience, and care isolved places on long-term relationships and retention of their clients.

I also noticed in my conversations just how much work SMBs need to do to mature HCM practices and support their planned growth as they also navigate today’s challenges as the future workplace continues to evolve. I think it’s indicative of the attendance increase this year, as many have important HCM buying decisions to make to address key gaps and futureproof their HR operations for continued growth. The challenges they face, while smaller in scale, align with those seen by their up-market peers. Top operational concerns I heard this week centered on enabling HR to support growth plans and strategic initiatives more efficiently and effectively for their businesses, finding and retaining top talent, and maintaining compliance.

Looking ahead, isolved’s leadership is keeping its foot on the gas in terms of innovation, platform maturity, and client adoption and retention. A key area of opportunity for the platform is talent management, which will see capabilities advance through its roadmap in 2022. The acquisition of TrenData HR fills a gap in cognitive capability which has enabled its predictive analytics offering and will support further AI-driven capabilities, which will be key for deepening talent insights and supporting an eventual talent marketplace offering. Further, isolved has some work to do to expand its partner integrations, particularly to deepen its capabilities to support unique client requirements and sector challenges and meet the growing demand for multi-country solutions by emerging SMBs. 

With its platform and clients maturing, isolved is on a positive path to continue its growth trajectory. The challenge will be helping SMB buyers realize the need and value in adopting these more advanced capabilities and embracing technology to modernize their HCM practices and advance their business initiatives.