From 20 to 100 Employees With No HR Staff: Observe, Inc.

Observe, Inc. was ready to exit stealth mode and accelerate their growth, but they didn’t have any HR staff or infrastructure in place to grow quickly.

Introduction

Observe, Inc. was ready to exit stealth mode and accelerate their growth, but they didn’t have any HR staff or infrastructure in place to grow quickly. They knew they needed help, and they knew from experience that they didn’t want to select a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) or any other outsourcing option that made them beholden to their vendor.

They wanted a trusted partner that would be with them long-term but didn’t require long-term contracts or stick them with proprietary technology that would limit their options down the road. Observe selected Melita as their partner because of their comprehensive model that would give them a complete turn-key solution with the wide-ranging services provided by PEOs, but without the “stickiness”.

Partnering with Melita gave them full control and “ownership” of their HR technology and infrastructure. Melita implemented their out-of-the-box, but highly configurable HR infrastructure including ADP’s Workforce Now all-in-one technology platform, combined with expertise from an assigned team of specialists to manage the administration and support of payroll, employee benefits, compliance and employee support. All built specifically for Observe and built to grow.

The Story of Observe, Inc.

Founded by Sutter Hill Ventures in November 2017, Observe focuses on a core principle: that enterprises are data rich, but information poor. It recognized that siloed data had made it difficult for enterprises to understand what was going on inside apps and their infrastructures.

The company developed an observability app, designed with the SRE team in mind. This product delivers intuitive and data-rich dashboards to engineers so that they can spend more time coding and less time investigating incidents, allowing companies to eliminate wasted SRE work hours and enhance the customer experience.

We needed a long-term HR partner to help us scale quickly and efficiently. Melita did both!

Christi Fontenot, Executive Assistant to the CEO, Observe, Inc.

The Challenge

As a company with ambitious growth goals, Observe needed an effective and efficient way to onboard new employees with high quality support during and after their onboarding experience. But their existing HR procedures and technology were rudimentary and didn’t provide for the level of quality or the scalability their business required. Additionally, without the expertise in HR, benefits and payroll compliance and administration, the company was exposed to employment liability, not to mention frustrated employees.

Add that to the need for rapid growth, and it was clear Observe needed an HR solution to address their growing challenges. And although they needed to move quickly, a “quick and easy” fix wouldn’t suffice; Observe was on the lookout for a long-term HR partner that would work with them to build something special by understanding their needs and pain points and build an HR infrastructure that would scale with them now and into the future, without disruption.

They did not want the typical one-size-fits-all solutions offered by the PEO market.

Why Observe Chose Melita

In seeking a solution to their HR challenge, they determined they did not want a traditional outsourcing solution like a PEO or typical HR Outsourcing (HRO) vendor because of the common limitations with those providers, including:

• Technology that is proprietary to the PEO/HRO, and/or controlled by the PEO/HRO to the extent that if their client wants to terminate the relationship, they must migrate to a new technology platform.
• Limited control over the benefits they could choose and no protection from large rate increases.*
• Co-employment contract which requires that the PEO be a co-employer of your employees.
• Call center support for your employees.
• One-size-fits-all service package with little to no flexibility.

Moreover, the company was looking for a true partner, not just a vendor. After evaluating and vetting several options, Observe selected Melita. Key among their decision criteria were Melita’s reputation for being high integrity and obsessive about service, their extensive experience implementing HR technology, and the flexibility of having a partner that could grow with them over the long term. And one of the biggest reasons for choosing Melita was their “no stickiness” guarantee which gives them the freedom to transition to independence at any time with no disruption to their business.

Observe felt comfortable knowing that Melita had done the same for many other startups in similar situations and came highly recommended.

*PEOs are able to selectively increase the premiums of each of their clients, whereas most states have rules that require health insurance carriers to issue pooled rates with minimal annual increases.

Migration Project Management

Melita assigned an experienced Implementation Specialist to project manage the entire implementation and migration from Observe’s current technologies and processes. Observe’s assigned Melita Team of Specialists kicked off the project by doing a deep dive into the current processes and technologies and gained an understanding of Observe’s objectives and priorities for their HR function. Most of the work effort was handled by the Melita team, including:

• Consolidated the company’s various HR technologies into ADP Workforce Now, configured specifically for Observe’s business.
• Migrated payroll data and payroll processing from the current vendor.
• Developed a paperless, user-friendly new hire onboarding process utilizing the ADP Employee Portal/Mobile App.
• Took over all outstanding Leaves of Absence and implemented the required documentation and process for managing future Leaves.
• Launched a paperless employee benefits open enrollment via the ADP Workforce Now benefits module.
• Developed an employee handbook and all other HR compliance requirements.
• Launched the ADP employee self-service portal and the Melita Employee Support Advocate help desk to all employees.

Melita’s approach of taking full ownership of the migration project along with the experience of the assigned Melita team allowed Observe to focus their staff on the critical mission of the business. And post-implementation, Observe’s assigned Melita team took over all tactical operations of HR, benefits and payroll, including employee support. In Melita, Observe now had a partner who could serve as an extended part of their team for as long (or short) as they needed.

The Results

As a result of partnering with Melita, Observe now has:

• A unified HR infrastructure including technology and process automation, built for scale (including international locations).
• “Big company” HR muscle at a fraction of the cost.
• Access to a complete Team of Specialists that takes ownership of all HR, Benefits, Payroll and HR technology functions.
• HR policies and processes built specifically for their business.
• White glove employee support from the Melita Employee Support Advocate team.
• A robust, scalable, global HRIS technology, completely managed and supported by Melita, but “owned” by Observe, allowing them to maintain that key component of their infrastructure with or without Melita.

In summary, by choosing Melita as their partner, Observe was able to aggressively grow their business from 20 to 100 employees in over 21 states and 4 countries, all with the comfort of knowing their Melita Team of Specialists were keeping the company compliant, managing all of the day-to-day tactical work of HR and payroll, and serving their employees with the highest levels of responsiveness, expertise, and care. Equally important, Observe is not beholden to the company that helped them achieve all of these milestones.

At Melita our purpose is to help our clients succeed and prosper, so we give them the freedom to do what is best for their business. We believe the best way to have a “sticky” relationship with our clients is to deliver exceptional, and consistently high-quality services at a fair price, rather than putting road blocks in front of them.