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Zellis - HCM Technology & GenAI: The Workplace of the Future
Vendor Analysis
published on Aug 08, 2025
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Report Overview:
This vendor assessment analyzes Zellis' offerings and capabilities in HCM Technology & GenAI
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall’s HCM Technology profile on Zellis is a comprehensive assessment of Zellis’ offerings and capabilities, designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of HCM Technology and identifying vendor suitability for HCM Technology RFPs
- Vendor marketing, sales, and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the HCM Technology sector.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Zellis’ HCM Technology offerings, capabilities, and market and financial strengths, including:
- Identification of the company’s strategy, emphasis, and new developments
- Analysis of the company’s strengths, challenges, and outlook
- Revenue estimates
- Analysis of the profile of the company’s customer base, including the company’s targeting strategy and examples of current contracts
- Analysis of the company’s offerings and key service components
- Analysis of the company’s delivery organization, including the location of delivery centers.
Key Findings & Highlights:
Zellis Holdings Limited (Zellis) is a U.K.- and Ireland-based provider of payroll and HR software and services, and global benefits management software. Its strategic proprietary platforms include:
- Zellis HCM Cloud and Zellis Payroll BPaaS - for HCM and payroll solutions serving both public and private sector organizations with workforces ranging from 1k to 50k+ employees across the U.K. and Ireland markets
- Moorepay - HCM and payroll software and services tailored for the SME segment, targeting organizations with <1k employees. Moorepay serves ~4.8k clients within this market
- Benefex - an employee benefits business for SMB and multi-national organizations with between 100 and 100k employees.
Zellis has ~2.4k employees and 60+ years of expertise in HR and payroll. It was founded in the U.K. as Peterborough Data Processing. The Zellis name was established in 2019 due to the divestiture of the NGA Human Resources UK and Ireland domestic payroll business, including its HCM and payroll platform, ResourceLink, and Moorepay. Bain Capital privately owned the organization, and in April 2024, Apax Partners LLP ("Apax") announced a definitive agreement to acquire the Zellis Group ("Zellis" or "the Company").
In 2025, Zellis acquired elementsuite, a full-suite AI-enabled HR and workforce management software, offering customers a full suite of services for the employee lifecycle. Additional key Zellis milestones include:
- 2025: acquires Hastee, a financial wellbeing platform that offers tools for earned wage access, financial education, savings, and comprehensive money management
- 2024: launches Zellis HCM AIR, a significant product upgrade that deploys AI and introduces real-time payroll calculation for enhanced functionality and user experience
- 2024: acquires Benify, integrated with Benefex to deliver a unified offering in global benefits, reward, recognition, and employee engagement
- 2023: launches Zellis AI Labs, to develop and deploy AI solutions
- 2023: acquires Natural HR, a cloud-based HR software provider, to strengthen Moorepay's HR software capability and accelerate its strategy to provide a fully integrated and modular payroll and HR software suite
- 2023: launches a pilot of its new customer support portal, designed to improve the customer experience. The portal provides customers with ways to interact with payroll and HCM support teams and to find answers to their queries efficiently
- 2023: acquires Cloud8 to accelerate growth and scale for its benefits business, Benefex
- 2021: launches Zellis HCM Cloud suite, which offers payroll and financial wellbeing, core HR, and broader HR applications, to succeed its proprietary ResourceLink HCM and payroll software. To date, the Zellis HCM Cloud suite has been sold to ~60% of Zellis customers
- 2018: acquires Benefex, a global benefits administration provider
- 2008: acquires Peoplechecking software, delivered as Zellis Background Checking.
Zellis currently has 650+ clients in the U.K. and Ireland, including 46 HCM clients.