Name: Unleashing Workforce Advisory™, Powered by Rippling
Uploaded: 2025-11-13T19:16:30.423Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 24 s
Description: Unleashing Workforce Advisory™, Powered by Rippling

Transcript for "Unleashing Workforce Advisory™, Powered by Rippling": Hey, Will. We'll just give everybody a couple more minutes to get logged in and we'll get started. Absolutely. Exciting times. Exciting times. It's a terrific Thursday. Yeah. I cannot believe two weeks, Thanksgiving. Seer flew by fast. We'll just give everyone thirty more seconds to get logged in, and we're gonna go ahead and get started, everyone. Sure thing. Alright. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Unleashing Workforce Advisory powered by Rippling. We're thrilled to have you here today, whether you're joining us from the office, your own living room, or maybe somewhere in between, we wanted to thank you for carving out time to be part of this moment. Today, we're just not doing another webinar. This is the beginning of a new chapter in how firms deliver value, shape strategy, and support the modern workforce. And over the next hour, we're gonna explore how unifying HR, finance, and IT intelligence can elevate your advisory practice, transform your client relationships, and unlock entirely new opportunities for growth. So settle in. We have a great hour ahead of us, an exciting journey ahead. Well, let's go ahead. and hear of some of the logistics on the CPE credits. Yeah. Absolutely. Hello, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Before we kinda dive in, a quick note for anyone here to earn CPE credit. So to receive credits for today's session, you'll need to meet a few requirements, which are pretty easy. First, just make sure you're attend at least fifty minutes of the presentation. Second, you kinda must participate in at least three polls or polling questions that we're gonna have throughout the webinar, so keep an eye out for those. And then third, please stay logged in for the full session so that your attendance is properly recorded. Of course, you know, once those requirements are met, cpaacademy.org, who's partnered with us during this announcement and webinar will issue your CPE certification within, forty eight hours. And lastly, if you kind of run into any technical issues that might affect your eligibility, look, just drop us a note in the q and a and we'll do our best to help out. Awesome. Well, thanks for that. I'm Mike Trandos, vice president of sales for accounting and HR advisory firms here at Rippling, and I'm thrilled to be joined by three amazing industry thought leaders. Will Lopez, the creator of People Advisory. We have Dan Luthy here, partner and CEO of Ignite Spot, and Bill Halowski, president of Cruise Consulting. So over the next hour, I'll explain an exciting update from Rippling, what it is, why it matters now, and more importantly, how your firm can lead this shift. Dan and Bill, thank you for joining us and for this incredible announcement. We're excited to have you in this room and on this webinar today and honored to have the two of you join us for the fireside chat a bit later. So see you soon. Off to the backstage. Okay. Before we get started, we're gonna start off with a quick pulse check from the audience. So we're gonna run our first poll. So let's go ahead and bring that poll up. So the first question that we wanna ask the firm participants is, which area does your firm currently spend the most time on? Is it payroll and benefits compliance, client reporting and data collection, strategic advisory and consulting, or technology setup and integrations? So we're gonna run this poll for the next twenty seconds as we get the results in. So, Will, Thanksgiving's coming up here. Got a question for you. What's your I gonna run payroll and compliance during Thanksgiving? Is that. was that the question? run payroll and compliance on Thanksgiving. What's your favorite Thanksgiving dish? Oh, you know, I was having a conversation about this earlier. Super tough. But I I think I gotta say the, like, sweet potato, like like, mashed with, like, you know, marshmallows on top. Like, I think that is my favorite dish. I think your favorite. a it's a terrible one because it you just it just slides down so easily. Mine's always been? this mine's been all always been the stuffing or the dressing. You know? That's that's my favorite. So Yeah. Yeah. Over the years, I've learned, like like, less and less turkey on the plate, more and more sides. Like, I think that's just gonna be the strategy from here on Yeah. Let's see where the results are coming in here. out. Oh, very nice. Strategic advisor and consulting, top of the list. Nice. Nice. That's perfect. Yeah. It's aligned to what we're we're talking about today. Alright. Well, Well, give. us a little background here. Absolutely. It sounds like, a lot of you are gonna really love what we're gonna have to say here. For those who are in the other categories, there's nothing wrong with that. I started payroll benefits compliance in the beginning when I had my accounting firm. Obviously, graduated towards more, strategic advisory. But, you know, what's interesting is that many firms really focus on compliance benefits, payroll, HR, admin, and that work will always stay essential. It always has. It always will be. And I think what's interesting now is that clients face really hybrid teams. Right? Global growth, complex labor costs, rising demands for strategic insight. They want more than just a paycheck. We all know that. They need kind of people alignment guidance. And that's really exciting for what we're gonna have to share today because clients really face these, you know, hybrid workforces, global expansion, new tech, new tech every day, rising labor costs or just people costs, complexities, and just evolving talent, you know, expectations. I mean, just think about what happened during COVID and just the disbursement of talent across The US. And so clients really want more than just process paychecks. They need insights. They need strategy, people alignment. And your opportunity today is is really compelling. You understand businesses. You understand numbers. You understand systems. Accounts have really become not just more than just, financial preparers, but they've become advisors, and they've also become kind of technologists at the same time. And so you can bring that together with people, design workforce design, tech investment decisions. That's been really critical to your role today, and so you can elevate your role from that kind of former vendor status to really strategic growth partner, which is what our focus is today. And so in our time today, we're gonna unravel a compelling narrative for you guys around the new offering that Rippling has to offer. And first, obviously, consider the challenges faced by many firms. Right? We are in a world where, you know, compliance is no longer enough. It is the foundation. It is the backbone. You can't have strategic advisory without compliance, but clients really are demanding strategic insight more and more, kinda meet the those evolving demands. So just imagine the lost opportunities when you're not adapting to those situations. Mike, can you touch on some of the, the shifts in thinking that are kinda going on today? Yeah. So let's let's kinda unpack this from a ship perspective. And and and, really, what I wanna walk through here is the key learnings and objectives that we want you to walk through today. The first thing that we're gonna introduce is this concept envision, and we really want you to witness how this transformative model really defines traditional roles within your firm, but more importantly, how these roles integrate into your overall advisory strategy. Second, we're gonna really kinda dive into the three pillars that power this strategy and kinda discover the foundational strength that facilitate really impactful change and strategic growth within your firm. We're gonna dive deeper into features, usage, and I think more importantly, like, these practice stories and understanding how these elements can drive results and highlight the road map to success. And then lastly, we're gonna analyze by bringing Dan and Bill back how your firm could implement, scale, and win with this offering and clearly defining a path to becoming a strategic partner in building what we call future ready organizations. So this session's gonna be interactive. Drop questions in the in the q and a. We'll pause the answer as we go along, and you'll get the recording materials after. So let's begin by defining what we're launching today and why it matters. So today, we're excited to announce workforce advisory powered by Ripley. So workforce advisory powered by Ripley is a new consultative service built to unify HR, IT, and finance intelligence, and it really acts like a GPS for talent, tech, and finance. The service ultimately helps you navigate complex business landscapes, making it easier to guide your clients in building modern and successful teams. So what does this mean in practice? Your firm moves beyond simply processing tasks. You help clients answer the bigger questions that they need. When should we hire next? Where should we hire next, either domestically or globally? Are we comp compensating fairly across the workforce? What's the impact to cash flow of the business? And are we aligned to the client's long term strategy? And lastly, is our tech stack supporting our teams or holding them back? In this new practice model, you become the workforce adviser, someone who transforms people insights into business guidance and ultimately outcomes for your clients. You're not just reporting historical headcount on payroll or benefits. You're architecting growth, supporting culture, and aligning investments to the talent strategy of the organization. Why this is different from what many firms are offering today is pretty simple. Most advisory services remain transactional. They are compliance driven, focused on month end financials and reporting in HR administration. Or if your firm has already moved beyond compliance, firms struggle with the complete three sixty view across their accounting, HR, controller, and CFO practitioners in ultimately providing this unified story and solution to their clients. So what makes workforce advisory different? It's really built on three key strengths, and you can move to the next slide. The first strength is workforce advisory's breaking down data silos between HR, finance, and IT. It's really about unifying data into one single source of truth. And by unifying this data layer into one platform, it sets the foundation for workforce advisory. The second strength in workforce advisory is taking this unified data layer across HR, finance, and IT and automating the data into countless workflows that free you and your team from manual work. And this automation has two key benefits for your firm. The first one is around standardization. So you you and your team can efficiently scale your firm across multiple clients. And secondly, it frees up your time to deliver real time insights for workforce advisory. The last area and the last strength that I'll cover is now that you have those two foundational layers in place, you get to deliver real time insights, which brings us the last strength of workforce advisory. Through data and automation, you are now empowered to deliver immediate guidance and action for your clients that is forward looking versus historical. And this is what will set you apart from other firms in the market. While the past is a proxy to the future, entrepreneurs and business owners care more about what you can do to help transform their business in the next three to five years. So when positioning your firm this way, you aren't just another compliance firm or delivering services in silos across your client advisory services practice. You're the strategic partner bringing your teams together and helping your clients build resilient, future ready organizations guided by workforce intelligence to fuel not only your clients' growth but also yours as a firm. So, Will, let's explore and unpack the pillars that make all of this possible. Yeah. Absolutely, Mike. Thank you so much. Alright. But before we do that real quick, let's actually run our second poll before we move on. Alright. If we could run that second poll, that would be great. Basically, you know, if your firm could unify HR, IT, finance data into one system, which outcome would have the biggest impact on your clients? Is it faster insights for decision making? Is it reduced manual work and errors, stronger people alignment, improved financial forecasting, or all of the above? So we'll give some folks, some time there to answer the question. Back in my day when I on my practice, you know, I think where I would have loved to focus, and this is obviously before workforce advisory, is probably faster insights for decision making, but kinda know a little better now. So it's been great. So we'll get some folks, some, some time there to answer the question. Feel free to keep going. Let me take a look so far, see how things are going. You doing well, Manisha? Cool. Alright. Let's show those results real time. Let's see where folks are at. Wow. What is it? 67%? All of the above? I love that. That's actually the right answer in my mind. So, I I think what's pretty incredible nowadays is that we can do that. Right? We can really do all of the above because we have better systems, more unified systems, and and basically the kind of this all in one platform, which is really exciting. So if we go to the next slide for, pillar one, that'd be awesome. So here we go. Pillar one, accelerated advisory. So in our opinion, accelerated advisory really is about turning this everyday workforce data, which we all have access to, it's real time insights and natural language recommendations that drive action for yourself, drive results for your clients. So imagine this in a three simple step process. You know, before implementing something like accelerated advisory which is just you know adding gas to the fire when it comes to comp you know consulting, a client may might struggle with inefficiencies, they might have reactive strategies which we know clients really fall prey to, burdened with slow manual reporting processes which is where we kind of step in to help unlock some of that kind of stuff, and then during that transformation really what happens is that real time data insights become available, Right? It enables that proactive decision making and immediate response to emerging needs, emerging situations, even emerging advice, in my opinion. So after adopting kind of this approach of accelerating advisory, clients no longer need, really are bogged down, by inefficiencies, but instead they're empowered with, like, clear strategic guidance that really aligns their business objectives with that kind of expertise that you have to deliver. And so the moment you spot an efficiency, you can act or inefficiency, you can really act. So the moment you anticipate a team's need, you can guide it. And in my our opinion, really, first, based on what Rippling has to offer is this headcount planning. So imagine working with a client planning for growth, planning for the next year or two, you can really use those tools that Rippling offers to kind of forecast hiring by role and department compared to budgets and revenue targets, really even highlight, you know, capacity gaps that your clients have before they become crises. And so that level of insight really elevates your conversation from proactive or from reactive to proactive, which is very very exciting when it comes to workforce advisor really focusing on a client and their teams. Second, natural language underneath this accelerated advisory model, you can really ask like which department, department's labor cost grew faster this quarter versus the last, how does it compare to revenue, And really the systems returns insight within minutes, which is really exciting. And then you can prevent that and provide advice along the way, or even provide this kind of type of advice. Right? You know, we should pause, let's say, hiring and sales until we kinda optimize, you know, our cost per hire metric or, you know, really what it takes to bring a team member on and keep them engaged and and and really productive. And so this isn't just about reporting. It's really about guidance. This really isn't just about talent, it's about empowering people which is really exciting. And so in short accelerated advisory, one of the main pillars of workforce advisory, really means that your firm speaks with speed, your firm speaks with authority, and it also speaks with foresight or with foresight. So the next pillar here, unified platform. If we go to that second pillar, that'd be great. Really, this is the foundation, the unified platform. So you need amazing tech. Look, I in my opinion being an accountant my entire life you know accounting and advisory really is a a almost like a mental model it's a structure of providing great advice, great solutions, great deliverables really, but we all know that tech is at the foundation of a lot of it makes our job a lot easier. So with a unified platform, in my opinion, advisory really is only as strong as the data and the systems behind it. We all know that. Right? What's the old term? Right? Junk in, junk out. And so, really, Ripley brings HR, finance, IT together in a single all in one connected view of the business, and that's exactly what we're looking for when we're trying to guide clients, especially at scale especially no matter the size of the client. So let's kind of walk through some of the key capabilities in my for this particular pillar underneath Rippling's platform. Rippling has something called like the financial suite, and really it converges spend, payroll, reporting into this one single environment for your client. They also have this HR three sixty tool which is really exciting and it kind of gives you that holistic view of compre compensation bands, talent flows, attrition, and you can even link it to finance data, which is really exciting. So people data, finance data, you know, people plus numbers is such a powerful connection. Also, Rippling offers this onboarding, offboarding workflow, this like from from the day they start to the day they graduate from a company live into a single system, and so the automation really frees you in particular from those manual tasks and it really enables your firm to focus on insights rather than kind of grunt work. And we all know you know a lot of what we do as accountants we think it's really important some of it really is grunt work because we want to get to the other side but some of those things really do need to be lifted from us that way we can really focus on what matters. Rippling also offers something like, you know, compensation and reporting modules. These incredible reports and workflows and they really tie the hiring and back pay or or payback, to strategic goals rather than desperate systems, silo system, things of that sort. So, you know, when all of that is unified, HR, finance, IT, you really operate with one truth, one lens, one source of data, and that really means that when your recommendations to clients are grounded in that holistic view backed by data, backed by context and integrated insights, not these desperate systems and spreadsheets, you're really doing a great service, for your clients and their teams. The third pillar, which in my opinion is very, very exciting, is this powerful analytics. We all love data. I know you guys are accountants. You're probably working on spreadsheet right now during the webinar, but really powerful analytics, they really guide us with foresight. It's not enough to know that what happened. You need to advise on what should happen, and getting to that should is a lot harder than knowing what happened. We like to think retrospectively, but we really think need to think with foresight. And so a use case here, especially when it comes to the world of rippling, is rippling offers these surveys and employee sentiment analytics. I love this. I love knowing how my teams feel. I love knowing how productive they think they are, and it really measures measures their engagement, tracks the pulse of the company, tracks the pulse of the individual, surfaces risks right right right before becomes attrition or somebody really burns out. So when you use this performance management analytics, really, you can track reviews, you can track feedback from team members, track goals, turn these into trends. So, for example, like, if team a has a rising, you know, review backlog, team b is hitting 90% of its goals, maybe we kinda shift investments to team a for the next quarter just to see how things work. Right? You can model scenarios within Ripley. If we hire five more engineers, our labor cost increases by x, revenue grows by y, our ROI is by z. Right? And it's really handy to see how for people to impact, you can really get in front of a lot of that data. So when you combine all those things, really these analytics let you draw, deliver advice and guide decisions about who to hire, when to hire, how to allocate budgets, when to reallocate budgets, when to invest in systems, and really how to align workforce strategies with business, outcomes. So when we all think about pillar one, pillar two, pillar three, and we combine all of these, right, the integration of these pillars, now you can imagine a world of working together in concert with this experience and with your clients. You really can identify a cost spike with accelerated advisory. Right? If the recruiting process is misaligned, causes attrition to rise by 5%, it could lead to a 2% shrinkage, right, in cash flow. You can trace it back through a unified platform to identify the root cause. You're knowing this end to end impact. Then you can run scenario models with powerful analytics to propose solutions to your clients. Give them the advice that they need from a holistic point of view. You can deliver that comprehensive briefing to your client, which helps them make informed decisions backed by your expertise, backed by great data, and that is the full narrative, in my opinion, in our opinion of workforce advisory. That's what we're trying to deliver here today from insight to platform to strategy. So, real quick, now that we've kinda gone through all that, let's let's run our third poll here, if we can, and I'll turn it over here to Mike here real quick, but let's run our third poll. Question is, you know, which workforce advisory pillar really excites you the most for your firm's future? Is it that accelerated advisory path turning that data into action? Is it a unified platform experience, right, connecting HR, finance, IT? Or are you a data person? You're like, oh, powerful analytics all day long. Right? Guiding clients with four, site. I wanna forecast that data. Or is it all of them that you would love to see at your firm? So, Mike, Mike, which pillar excites you, I would say? The one that excites me the most, you know, I would I would have to say it's all of them. Right? And because I think all three of those knew you would say that. it's all it's all interconnected. Right? So you need to have that unified platform to drive the powerful analytics, and then, ultimately, the powerful analytics drive the accelerated advisory. So it all. is integrated together. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. It is all of them. What here's what's even more exciting is, you know, I remember a day where really just the the accounting profession was really focused on analytics and data, And it's really exciting that things like workforce advisory is kind of out and about because, you know, we're we're so focused on the client. We we're kind of unaware of what our decisions and our guidance can really do to the client and their teams. And. so now that there's a unified platform and you're kinda pulling all this data together, you can you can have more passion for clients by really considering their teams as well. Right? Happy team members creates a profitable company, higher bottom lines, things of that sort. Let's look at the results here real quick. Of course, everybody agrees with you, Mike. I I mean, just nail it every single time. All of them works together. Right behind that is a unified platform. Wow. In my opinion, I think that's also very telling. Right? I think there's a lot of app fatigue out in the market, and so I think a unified platform is is is really speaking to a lot of folks. So, I agree. I agree. Yep. yeah. Yep. So, you know, now that we've walked through these three pillars of workforce advisory, and thank you for that, Will. You know, these pillars, you know, form that framework that we've been talking about during this during this webinar. But I know what you're probably wondering. What does this look like in practice? How does it feel when a firm actually brings these ideas to life? And that's exactly what we're gonna explore next. So we're thrilled to be joined once again by two incredible Ripley and Accounting partners who've started this journey with Dan and Bill. So So in this next segment, Will is gonna walk us through a fireside chat with with your peers so they can share their experiences on what they did in delivering advisory inside their firms and for their clients. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Will. Alright. Sounds good. Thank you, Mike. And as you mentioned, let's kinda bring this conversation to life. You know, first, I'm excited, to be talking with my peers. Like I said, I am an accountant through and through. So so thankful for Dan and Bill to join us. We do have Dan Luthy. He is the partner at IgniteSpot accounting. You know, Dan's been a long time friend. We've known each other for for quite a while. He's been a big advocate for modern firm systems and operations, tech driven advisory. You've seen him around with his hat, of course. Zero that's the only identifier. for Dan. Right? Yep. But he's really built that scalable people first accounting systems that help drive, you know, and, great results for clients and and help them really thrive together. Also joining us is Bill Haloski. He's the president of Cruise Consulting. Bill brings decades, not not not to age you, Bill, by the way, resemble that remark. of experience helping firms involved beyond compliance, building practices rooted in efficiency, trust, growth. Guys, thank you so much for being here. I'm really, really excited to have some conversation here. Thank you. for having to be here. Yeah. Yeah. You know, first off, let's just get everybody kind of familiar with you. In my opinion, you know, once again, thanks for joining us. Let's let's start with kind of your before story, and then kinda tell us how you got to where you're at now, and how you've kind of built your advisory practices. And and Dan, I'd love to start with you first. So, you know, what what's your story? How did you get here? Yeah. No. I appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, I I started out as a transactional accountant. That's the that's the fancy word we're using right now for for bookkeeping. Right? But, no, I mean, fifteen years ago when I was going to college, I was looking for a job in the space to get some experience and started working for Ignite Spot at the time, working on-site with clients, doing their day to day accounting needs. Over the next couple of years, we transitioned from being in person to being virtual, which completely changed the landscape of how we interacted with our clients. But also, what was great about it is that actually gave us the ability to hire people throughout The United States because our customers were all over the place. That being said, data wasn't enough for our customers. It was one of the things that we were able to do really well with all the change in technology, with adding in, you know, online platforms and things along on those lines, but our customers were really looking for information to help them make better decisions. And that can range anything from, you know, where are we at with our financials, what's happening with our business, how do we navigate through this. But also at the at the core of it, and you mentioned this earlier, people were are a big component of what's going on within our customers' lives ranging from small to, you know, midsize business. People are really a critical piece with that. And so we we made some changes in our on our service offering to be able to start really looking at the. people component of what happens within our our customers and trying to create better understanding of visualization, not only from an analytical perspective, but giving recommendations on how to to manage that better in their organization and hopefully aggregate the data better a little bit easier so that they weren't all over the place in a thousand different systems. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Bill? What's your story? Yeah. Like both of you, I started off as a early transactional accountant, you know, bank reconciliations, auditors coming in, having to manual enter stuff. It was just, you know, crazy days. Right? At Cruise, we specialize in venture capital backed start ups. And with that, one of the first things we do is we wanna build an integrated tech stack so that when you've got two found a pizza, or now it's three founders and an AI agent. Right? So how do we build that tech stack that's integrated that they can focus on growing the business and scaling? So the early days, it's you got standalone systems, then you're pulling data, you're trying to upload, you're trying to, you know, enter data in. Now it's building those integrated systems from scratch, so you don't have to worry about it. And, you know, and still today, there's so much compliance, So you've gotta get the framework and the basics right. Once you've got the integrations, the categorizations, everything is flowing in, things are posting, then what that enables us to do is really step back, take a look instead of being the compliance cops, you know, where, you know, we're not the bad guys. We're trying to help you. I make a joke. I say, hey. We're trying to keep the founders for from, one, from getting fired and, two, from going to jail. So, yeah, by by working through that, we can actually help the founders figure out, okay, when you're gonna grow and scale, when you raise that next seed round or that next round, alright, what are your KPIs? I gotta hire 10 people. I gotta hire 20 people. And you mentioned earlier, okay, cash flow and cash burn, that is, you know, that's how you keep the lights on. Right? So these unified platforms, that's what I love about the three pillars is that it gives us one big system that we can use to advise our clients with. And on the other side, the clients can use it to actually look at the day to day, what they're doing, make sure they're in compliance. So we've got, I think, just under 300 clients that are on Rippling, and we're actually a user of Rippling too. So we love things like the automated payroll, and I could go on and on about the different key things we use internally, but what our clients love also. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Dan, you you mentioned something about going from, obviously, transactional accountant over to being more conscientious of everything beyond that, you know, and then starting to start starting to kinda focus in more or at least include more of this people component. Were you seeing a lot of client demand from that? Were a lot of clients coming to you saying, you know, we wanna take care of our teams. We know our teams are what matters and what drives this business. Right? Because people create products. People deliver services. As accountants, all of us, we're in the people business. And so at some point, did it just dawn on you guys to be like, wait a minute. You know? Like, it's a lot more than just numbers. Really, it's like, you know, finance and people kinda coming together. Were you seeing just a lot of surge of clients and asking more about those kind of things? Yeah. I think the the first step we saw or the first phase we saw was people just trying our our clients trying to get an understanding of what was happening in their organization. And that, Right. as kind of Bill mentioned earlier, is that direct correlation of platforms and softwares and tools as it related to the people that worked in their organizations. And we work quite a bit with, with customers that are online as well in a lot of different places, whether they're startups or just other regular organizations. And one of the things that we we found very heavily and we we do as a part of our initial assessment with our clients now is we look at the technology that's associated with each individual user, because that's the part, of course, that customers get excited about. They start buying things. and clicking on things, and people in their organization start setting up these subscriptions, and they forget that they need to turn some of them off. Or they start getting a position to where there's multiple licenses throughout the organization, and they're not creating benefit from those pieces. And so as our customers came to us, they were wanting first clarification on really where their money was leaking from that perspective and and how they could get a better understanding of it. And so for us, that was a big component of just getting started. It, it was easy for us to start kinda diving into that perspective of looking at the at the expense. But then it turned into also an understanding of once you start getting some of those pieces and systems in place, customers are now starting to ask, how can we make better decisions with those people? How can we make better decisions in helping them to get the right offerings? We're struggling to be able to compete in the market right now with benefits and all these other kind of things. How can we create an environment where people wanna stay, and they want to love going, you know, being in our organization? Benefits are a huge component of that. Platforms are a huge component of that. And so being able to centralize that to give them really a direct understanding of what the best options are for them, was was huge. That was that was really where our customers started making the shift and where the demand started increasing on how do we keep these people happy, how do we keep them connected, and and what can we do to offer them the best possible solution internally. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Love that. Bill, on your side, I mean, obviously, Cruise Consulting, very, very well known as well. You have an incredible background and expertise. You know, obviously, when I you know, I've been around the space for a long time, and I think when we get ourselves into the business of advisory, we're all excited about it because it's a kind of a new business model for us accountants. And I always feel I've always felt like there's a little bit of a tinge of, like, oh, is this you know, we kinda forget the client side and well, because we're excited about the business model itself. Right? Like, we're rolling out this new advanced thinking, this new infrastructure of delivering services. It's called advisory, and we kinda lose, you know, the the beneficiary of all those kind of things. At Cruise, how do you measure success in your advisory engagements, you know, even when you're thinking about something like workforce advisory. Right? Both for your both for the client and for the firm and for your firm, you know, how do you use those success metrics to really refine your service while keeping things client centered, people centered. Great question. There's, like, 10 questions in there. So know. I'm sorry. yes, accountants, the first thing we wanna do is we're gonna look at, you know, margin, ROI, revenue. But, you know, for us, it's really about, you know, working with the client, understand where they're going and what they're doing next. So the nature of our business niche and startups is, okay. What do they have to do? Typically, when you're raising, you've gotta grow the team. You need engineers. You need sales. You need marketing. Right? So it's it's helping them understand what am I gonna you know, what do I need to hire first? How do I hire? From the back end side, it's about how do I be compliant? So for example, when COVID hit, all of a sudden, people started hiring everywhere, multiple different. states, which then there's a ton of compliance around that. And then there was hiring outside of The US, right, globally. So with the EORs, the PORs, the global payrolls, they'd be able to handle the contracts and stuff like that and have that in an integrated system is super cool. What's important is for start ups, you wanna hire great folks, but you wanna keep them because it's so important to growing that business. You know, focus on getting your MVPs, getting the products, getting the services out the door. So with that, you wanna make sure you're compensating them. You know, how am I paying them? How am I onboarding? What is the back end, you know, client experience that I'm using for my staff or, you know, for as I'm bringing on people? So that for us, that was really important for our clients so that they could use, you know, the the systems to be able to run a smooth operation in the back end so they could focus on their business. So KPIs are, for example, you know, we'll look at, like, okay. Have you accomplished your headcount growth? Because you have a model, you're building out your projections. And and say, for example, if you if you're raising several million dollars and you need to hire five staff, 10 staff, 15 staff, what does that timeline look like? People go, well, I'm gonna hire 40 staff, you know, in three months. We're like, okay. Think about that. 40 staff in three months? No way. Let's be realistic. Right? So a lot of that is just really helping clients understand what their KPIs metrics are and helping them get to it. But it's hard to do that without proper systems, good data, compliance, and everything integrated. Yep. So that's some of the things we look at. What about your side, Dan? I'm just kinda really curious. How do you guys measure success in your advisory engagements? Yeah. I mean, for for us, it a lot of times, it's based on what we can do or what we can provide to the clients to help them to understand what's happening in their business. As accountants, we can't always decide we can't always, make determining factors which will help the business stay open if they're we're not in control of revenue sources or things along those lines. And so. for us, if we can provide them with information so that they can make better decisions, this helps them to be able to really navigate through some of those troubling times that they're going through. The hardest part about being an accountant in a lot of cases is that we impartially are after the fact in a lot of the considerations that we go through. Being able to integrate the people association, being able to bring all that information into a centralized place for our clients and then communicate to them on what that impact is and what's going on and how satisfied those people are, really create an opportunity for the business owner to to be aware of what's happening internally and to be able to make better decisions if there's a client adjustment that needs to happen. And so the intrinsic association with it is long term, longevity with our customers, being able to give them that visualization, helping them to be able to see the changes that are going through. A lot of it also too. is the feedback and connection or deciding to add additional services within our organization as well too. We get asked a lot of questions too is is like, how do we how do we decide which tools to provide to each of them or recommend to each of them as well as a part of the Rippling platform to help them navigate through that. And it's not a one size fit all solution for our customers in that space because they're all in different needs. They're all in different spaces. You know, we use, you know, and and so for me, it's not necessarily always regulated off of the apps that they associate, or the amount of money we get from that, you know, perspective, but truly longevity in the relationship, value appreciation that show that showing up with it, and continued growth in services, that we offer to our clients are really those three critical components that we focus on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Love that. Love that. You know, so, obviously, we're announcing workforce advisory powered by Rippling. Right? Which is really, kind of like what's next around a mental and business model and supporting clients and their teams. And, of course, there's incredible backing to this. Rippling has products that support this higher arching concept and, you know, I'll say that workforce advisory is bigger than Rippling but powered by it. Right? And so, you know, when you think about advisory in general or even workforce advisory today, and even being a workforce advisor and trying to deliver those services, you know, in your expertise of just delivering advisory, you know, how would you identify clients that would benefit most from transitioning to from payroll compliance in one bucket, HR in another bucket, benefits in another bucket. This kind of siloed people thinking to something that's holistic, well rounded, thoughtful about the end to end journey of of those who are building careers at a company. You know? Based on what you know about a work advisory today, and I know you guys have read the playbook, which is awesome, but, you know, how would you look at clients? How would you identify perfect clients for something like that? Bill, I'll start with you. Sure. So we'll we'll take a look at it at two different types. So I mentioned the early start ups just getting going. It's really important that you build that infrastructure right up front. So it's a no brainer with integrated unified systems. Right? Because then you've got that ability to hockey stick, grow, and scale. We work with clients that'll come to us. They maybe could be series a, series b. They wanna do something different. They need their books cleaned up. So first of all, we'll take a look at everything they're doing. We'll come back and we'll make recommendations. They might have 10 different separate systems. We're like, alright. Do you know how much time and complexity that you have behind all that? And so what we'll do is we'll make recommendations about, okay, let's bring these together. You can drop these, move to here. And so it helps build them the right, you know, the the the right foundation or cleaning up and moving forward. And so for us, it's two different, if you will, approaches. And, it it it you know, I think it really comes down to where they're at, what do they need, and how to get to where you wanna go. But, yeah, it's a it's a mixed bag of of different scenarios. And you can imagine we've seen people with uncle Bob doing their books. I've got a spreadsheet. You know, I've just got receipts in a shoebox to, hey. You know, we've been running for a couple years in live. We got revenue. We're growing like crazy. Everything's a mess. What do we do? So Yeah. What are what are your thoughts, Dan? Yeah. I mean, I I absolutely agree with Bill, when it comes to that context of the assessment and and really bringing that information together. Organizations have all different shapes and sizes, even if they are venture backed startups like you mentioned, Bill. I mean, some are coming in with three people and a bot. You're not gonna need an EOR. You're not going to need potentially all these other, you know, pieces or even feedback modules from that perspective. But in looking at that, we're gonna there's gonna be needs for security on your equipment. Yes. There's gonna be needs to understand, you know, rev or cost per employee as it relates to, you know, making sure people get paid in the right way and, you know, format. But with your point too, and I and I love the comment you made about this as well is setting them up in a place to where they can scale into a stronger platform, I think is one of the most critical parts of this advisory role. Oftentimes, Yep. I think. when we look at advisory as a whole, and and I think specifically in the accounting space, we're looking for a report to give. us that information to change the landscape of the client. Now there are the critical natures of the tools to help associate that for us, but it's never just that, hey. Your net income went up, and so this is great. Or, hey. Your employee account went up. Now this is great. It's being able to holistically see and connect that whole understanding of what's happening in their organization and with their people together. And that starts. to change the interaction and starts to really set up the right framework for for the customers you're working with. Yeah. Yeah. So, Will, one of the things we love from a firm perspective. is that you have the firm portal side. That's I can I can log in? I can be looking at my org chart, great. looking at salaries, running my reports, seeing how my operation is doing. I can flip over to the administration side, and I can see all of my clients, where they're at, what's happening. And it's a it's a it's a beautiful system behind the scenes, so I don't have to log in to 10 other systems just to figure out or I have to log in to hundreds of different client accounts. So another big thing from the firm perspective in terms of the command centers, as it's called. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for, just chatting around that. I think advisory is so exciting. Of course, it's always been exciting. Now Now we have something like workforce advisory afoot, and that's gonna really change the game when it comes to, like, you know, people and data or what I would call tech and touch. Right? The technology side, really that that client white glove touch, side. We'd love to turn it over to q and a now. We've actually had, questions from the audience kind of pop in, which is really exciting. I actually want to mention one by David Wilkins. David, thank you so much for this question. I think it's fantastic. He asked, is there a minimum or there is there a practical minimum client size that fits the ideal client profile for something like workforce advisory in your in our opinion, revenues, number number of employees, etcetera, or even on the rippling platform? Dan, I actually wanna kick that over to you first. What what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. I I think it's slight I mean, for me, it there's no perfect formula when it comes to determining it. The part that I really like about and and I know we're here talking about rippling, so I I think it's critical to be able to give context into the the tools that go along with it. But one of the biggest pieces for us in helping to determine what are the right feature sets or the right things to provide to our clients in those service offering was first, I really understand all the different tools that are available within the Rippling platform. We've talked a little bit about AI or IT. We've talked a little bit about reporting. We've talked a little bit about, you know, HR and benefits and all these other kind of things. But when we first dive dove into learning about the Rippling platform and understanding each of the different parts that it associate with it, it helped us to be able to navigate and not have to pick a specific, I you know, ICP for this offering for it. Some of our smaller clients may only use the payroll piece to get started with it, and that's the best start for us with it. It may be someone who doesn't even offer benefits and who's getting ready to offer it in the next, you know, six to twelve months. We may also be something where they're starting with a, you know, a widespread workforce, and they're looking for something. like a PEO to help support them in that space. Everybody doesn't need all of the features that are available in with it, which is one of the parts that has been really helpful for us in making sure that we're we're measuring the right types of services for these clients as we're navigating through it. And so for me, there's no perfect, perfect profile for it. I think it's also just us determining what is the best fit in our firm to coach and support them and and provide that advisory level service, as they navigate through it. Yeah. Love. that. For us, that. I'd, say there yeah. oh, go ahead. I was gonna say there is no perfect profile, but, you know, from the thousands of startups we've worked with, you can just see this typical road map. Right? So what we can do is we can say, hey. If you're hiring five, if you're growing to 20, these are the three things you need to start to plan for, work on, be prepared for today. So it gives us the opportunity to say, get ready to do this because you're gonna need it because we've seen it over and over again. So go ahead, Will. Yeah. Yeah. I I love that. What what I was gonna toss into is, you know, trying to identify clients that are perfect fits based on number of team members, revenue, etcetera, has been a method for a long time. What I've learned when it comes, especially owning a practice or or empowering firms across the country is you could you you'd probably be more better off finding a pattern in the desires that your clients have. So I think if you could find patterns and what their goals are, you could actually start identifying clients saying, like, you know, there's a there's a common theme here in desire, envision, in goals, and that's the ideal profile for this set of services because that's what we wanna try to help deliver for them. And so when you really boil it down almost like, I would say to, like, more sub metrics like people, revenue, margins, things like that, you kinda lose, I think, touch. It might for me, I would say, I I would lose touch on really what's what is this company trying to do. And so I think if you could find trends and patterns around more of desires, vision, goals, that will really help you kind of identify the the the proper client profile, especially in the world of advisory. I wanna take, like, one more question and, because I know we're gonna end this. We're gonna run our fourth poll, by the way. I know everybody's asking. Thank you so much for being patient. Let me just go straight at it. Gentlemen, you know, or or let me see here. There's a question here from Sam and Bill, I'd love for you to tackle this first. So Sam says, can you explain how workforce advisory differs from what firms are already doing with client reporting, outsource HR services? So So what are your what are your thoughts there, Bill? Yeah. So I see it as the the the latter being more transactional, more compliance, getting payroll run, getting somebody hired, getting the offer letter signed, getting somebody onboarding, getting the benefits. Right? And then trying to pull the data and then do cost analysis and projections. It's all, if you will, sorta transactional versus when we look at workforce advisory, it's you've gotta have that basics in place. And now the question is, if we're where do you wanna go and how are you gonna get there? So that is where. we can provide the value, and we can actually help, I think, clients actually navigate around major mistakes that we've seen repeated over and over and over again. And so that's where I see the difference. The value is is that peace of mind helping and some clients won't listen to you. Right? I mean, you'll say, do x, and they're gonna do y anyways. But you could say, hey. You're gonna hit these roadblocks, these issues, these hurdles, and here's what you can do to avoid them or how to get around them, and this is what you need to prepare for. And I think that's where the value advisory comes from, not from, you know, the comp have you been registered in the state? Did you have unemployment? You know? Did you file. your business return? Blah blah. You know? That's just those are those are table stakes. So my my take. Dan, K. you probably got a whole different perspective. No. I I love what you said though about the the table stakes, table stakes aspect of it because I think that's good of. the parts that yeah. It's it's one of the parts that we oftentimes we we oftentimes get lost in, or we oftentimes. don't understand the transitional change. Because I think for me, as as professionals, our goal is to always keep our clients in the best possible scenario and best possible situations, but their needs and demands have changed in that process. Yeah. And so to your point about it being a part of it, the compliance aspect, these systems are a critical component that associates with it, but it's just a portion of it that helps associate. It's being able to then translate that information, being able to give recommendations on how they can be able to improve or create better opportunity is where that advisory component really comes into place. That's where the workforce force component really starts to change that interaction with the client, because we're not just. saying, here's your report. Here's what happened. You know, here's what may happen in the next six months. It's this is the report. Here's what happened. Yeah. But if we do this, and we do this, or we do this, this is going to potentially change the situation you're in. If we're looking at recruiting or hiring, these are the potential impacts that you're going to see in your organization because of those pieces. And so it's really taking those core critical pieces that we have to maintain as as accountants, as professionals for the clients, and taking it that edge further and saying, now what? Now what do we do with it that provides or applies to your goal, to your vision, to the direction that you're going in your organization? The tools are there to help facilitate it, but the conversation is where we start navigating forward because the system is providing those core pieces quicker and more accurate for us so we don't get lost in just gathering data and producing a report like we've done historically. Yeah. Love that. Gentlemen, Dan, Bill, thank you so much for your time, for your expertise, your vision, just everything that you do. It's it's really good to see you guys, just virtually. Love to see you in person as always. But, you know, I think Ripley is is more than honored to have you guys part of this announcement, part of the workforce advisory concept, but, of course, even more proud of, you guys just being partners with us. So thank you so much for. joining us. Thank. you very much. Thank you. Happy Thursday. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now I know everybody's, waiting for the fourth poll. So if we could run that fourth poll, that would be excellent. Go ahead and answer the fourth poll. How ready is your firm to, to really, consider and start thinking about workforce advisory? Just go ahead and answer that. We will not show results on this one. Just go ahead and answer, and that'll knock out your final poll. Mike, man, it's been it's been an hour. It's been an hour. Cannot believe that it's gone by so fast. That was that was awesome hearing from Dan and Bill. You know, as I start thinking through that, I know there was a lot of questions coming from the audience around, well, how do we step into this? What do we do? And the the some of the things I was just thinking about, and I think Dan and and Bill hit it just a few minutes ago is, like, when you think about how we kinda define client advisory services, especially in the accounting world, you know, it's we have this concept of financial gas and business insight gas. Right? And I think about it, you know, in terms of, you know, what's your capabilities today? What do you have in terms of your services that you're delivering? That may span into controller services, FP and A services, CFO services, and, ultimately, Yeah. what I think about is the COO services as well. And so you can wrap. around this workforce adviser around all of that, Right? And then, you know, use the software to power that advisory. So. you may step into it initially, but as you kind of expand your services or you have it right now, it's just about optimizing that. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Mike, let's, let's wrap it up. Let's let's bring this home. Yeah. So as we do wrap it up, you know, I do wanna revisit kind of the core message here for you and your firm more than anything else. And, you know, what we've done here as well, to give you some, you know, tools to walk away from today outside of what we discussed in the webinar. So, you know, with workforce advisory powered by Rippling, you can really start leading that shift. And it's really kind of thinking through your vision as as a firm. And when I think about that vision setting, I think about it in terms of arcs. You know, what's gonna be the twelve next twelve months for you, the twenty four months and thirty six months of how you wanna kinda transform your firm? And those are the key steps that you need to think about. And then creating that clear road map for your firm to how to package this, how to deliver this, and how to scale this service. So, Will, we put something together here for the for the participants to to help kinda guide that process. Right? Yeah. Absolutely, Mike. So here's what's next for everybody that is that is still here and joined us. You could do three things. You can download the workforce advisory playbook now, an incredible document that really walks you through what this is, how do you implement it, or how do you think about workforce advisory. It's really a step by step service guide in your immediate toolkit, to help you transition into something like this. Also, you can explore our partner resources at Rippling for training for your team, demo access, collateral. I know folks were talking about demos in the chat. This is exactly where you're gonna want to go to get those kind of demo access information. Lastly, keep an eye an eye out for our next webinar where we're going to dive into packaging, pricing, staffing, you know everything that you would think of to deliver workforce advisory to your clients in order to go confidently to the marketplace with such an amazing concept to help. your teams. So, Mike, it's been great. Yeah. Awesome. I just wanted to thank the audience for all of their time here, and let's build the future together. So look forward to our next webinar. Absolutely. Take care, everybody.