Money Matters with Greg
Needing guidance on finances, or just curious about investments? Join CEO and Owner of Farrall Wealth, Greg Farrall, as he dives into all things relating to money and often interviews interesting people he is fortunate enough to call his friends.
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Money Matters with Greg
Episode 173: How HR Software Cuts Costs And Stress
Hiring shouldn’t feel like juggling chainsaws, and payroll shouldn’t require a spreadsheet rodeo. In today's episode, Greg Farrall, CEO and Owner of an independent wealth management firm, Farrall Wealth, sat down with HR consultant Mike Ramian from Paylocity to show how small and mid-sized businesses can streamline the entire employee lifecycle, save real money, and sleep better at night.
From recruiting to retirement, we connect the dots on what to centralize, automate, and cut so your team can focus on the work that grows the business. We dig into the high cost of noncompliance and why the rules shift by state and headcount. Mike explains how Illinois biometric consent differs from Indiana requirements and how missing a step can lead to fines and lawsuits. Then we move to the practical upside of modern HRIS platforms: automated compliance checkpoints, cleaner onboarding, and faster time-to-productivity. With AI built into the workflow, HR leaders can generate sharper job descriptions, screen candidates more effectively, and fill roles sooner—often cutting 25 to 50 percent off the time spent in early hiring stages.
Retirement plans get a refresh, too. Instead of clunky census pulls and back-and-forth emails, open APIs enable 180- and 360-degree integrations, so demographic changes, eligibility, and deductions sync without manual re-entry. That matters for plan sponsors, advisors, and TPAs who need accurate, real-time data. Mike shares a standout case study: a nonprofit reduced software sprawl and reclaimed up to $100,000 annually by consolidating tools and tightening integrations. The result was fewer licenses, fewer errors, and a smoother payroll process that actually pays people on time.
If your HR stack feels bloated or brittle, this conversation offers a blueprint for change: map your tools, measure the manual handoffs, and unify where it counts. Subscribe, share with a business owner who needs it, and leave a review to tell us which HR headache you want solved next.
Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor. Member FINRA/SIPC.
The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may suit you, consult the appropriate qualified professional before deciding.
Welcome to Money Matters with Greg, where we dive into the money conversations shaping your life. From investments to estate planning, insurance to taxes, we cover it all with a fresh perspective. Join Greg and his guests each week to get inspired and take control of your financial future. Let's get started. Securities and investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor, member PinRed IPC.
SPEAKER_00:And uh we are broadcasting on WVLP103.1 FM uh here at one o'clock on Thursdays, and then rebroadcast on Saturdays at one o'clock as well. Uh we also uh are anywhere you pod, you can go to Apple, YouTube, you name it. Uh just look up Money Matters with Greg. And today is our episode 173, and we're excited because on this show we talk about money. We talk about things we can save you money on, uh, invest your money and maybe actually save some time as well because your money, your time is valuable as well. And we have guests on the show uh on occasion. We've had uh realtors to mortgage brokers to uh investors and investment different advisors and you name it. Um today we are privileged to have Mike Ramian from Paylocity as an expert on payroll and HR solutions. Uh, we're gonna talk about how small business owners can really uh help themselves in a number of different ways, lower their stress level, uh lower their the workload level. I know everyone's looking to uh have better ideas of productivity and better uh uh opportunities to be able to use their more time their time wisely. Um so that's one thing we want to be able to bring up today. We were uh we work with Mike on a lot of different uh cases and conversations with uh um uh business owners and overall businesses, and we've seen how much you can help. And I asked him to be on the show today. So uh Mike, hey, welcome.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, Greg, good afternoon. Thanks for having me on the show. Uh, very excited to be here and chat money today with you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, looking forward to it. Uh, we're gonna talk about a number of different things, but do you want to talk about exactly what you do and maybe what you could share initially to kind of set yourself up?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Um yeah, I work for Paylocity. Uh, we're an HRIS company, software company, uh, started in the 90s, built from the ground up. Uh, so all of our all of our solutions are really focused on recruiting the entire employee lifecycle, right? So whether you're a small biz, medium biz, large, large biz, uh our software is helping you streamline, uh, helping our clients streamline their solutions from recruitment all the way to retirement. So uh every every key uh life cycle component in between, we we have software that really helps automate, save time, uh, save money, of course, and just really make lives easier for leadership and everybody underneath.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it makes perfect perfect sense. Um how does sort of like how do you help an HR team and an overall company save money?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think uh every every let's like think think uh from from high level real quick, but um the cost of an employee is the highest expense for for any business, right? Whether that's the time it takes to hire somebody, uh the the amount of money it takes to pay them, benefits, uh, and whatever you do you can do to retain that quality employee, because it's expensive and and very challenging to replace that uh employee. So, you know, we approach uh HR teams and and finance leaders, you know, just really trying to figure out what it is that they they need help with. If it's if it is a budget, if it is a price point. Um, but it's certainly most always customer service, UI, uh user interface, and of course, just you know, solutions, whether if it's helping them uh you know notify supervisors to check time cards or uh automating the the taxes upon onboarding a new employee. So we just really try to figure out and and listen to what HR's needs are and then go from there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and along the way, thanks for the update on that. That's great, it was a huge help. Um and also like along the way, you've got to be compliant too, right? I mean, how does compliance and making sure everything's covered, you know, basically across the board, still save money, but also do it the right way.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah, great, great point. Compliance is uh is is critical, right? So small business owners have to stay compliant with with OSHA uh or you know, safety and and risk needs. Um, and when companies get a certain size, like over a 50 employee mark or a hundred or mark, uh a hundred employee mark, states have different compliance needs. So here in northwest Indiana, I work with clients both on the other side of the border in Illinois, where there's different needs, and Indiana has different laws that impact those HR needs. So, for instance, uh uh, you know, it's very expensive for a client in Illinois to um, you know, receive a lawsuit from an employee for not having them sign a biometric user form, right? That's uh uh you know uh fingerprinting and uh facial scanning of clocking in and out. You can you can get fined heavily in Illinois if if you're not uh you know having your employee sign that authorization form. Or in Indiana, that there is no uh compliance law there, but there's other laws that um you know business owners or or leaders could get fined for not uh following, such as Affordable Care Act compliance, you know, having the employment verifications updated and just maintaining uh you know a proper organization. So yeah, compliance is huge. Uh software helps automate a lot of that and and provides extra eyes behind the scenes uh and new tools for leaders to use to stay compliant.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and if you make a mistake or you don't do something, it's gonna cost you money, which is the whole point, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you want to save money. You don't want to uh uh be be in the red with any of that additional expenses. Yeah, that's that's not good. It's not a good spot to be in.
SPEAKER_00:No doubt, no doubt. Um, how are you guys using AI? And uh like when did you adopt it? When did when have you like you know what exactly are are how are you using it and how is it helping save money?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, as a as a user, as as an employee of Pelocity, I I use AI, but certainly in our system, we have AI integrated throughout our system. Um, it's helping HR managers think a little quicker. Um, they're getting pressed with folks knocking on their doors, uh, you know, um, you know, pulling reports for leaders, doing all sorts of stuff related to people. Um, they don't have time to think about like a job description, right? So there's AI tools inside Paylocity, for instance, that can help automate those job descriptions, um, help automate which candidates uh might be best fit for that position. Uh so it's really shaving, you know, 25 to 50 percent of the time that it typically takes thinking about posting the right position or using the right job rate uh or uh job description to post it. So uh AI is really expediting the ability to recruit the top top talent into an organization. Yeah, that's a huge help.
SPEAKER_00:Saving money and saving time, right?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, for sure, time. Most of the you know, savings that we are providing our clients, it's it's time savings. It's reducing the time of getting employee hired to in the door, to producing on the floor, uh, to uh you know, engaging other team members so they start following suit and uh then you start really building a strong culture inside inside your company. So we're trying to facilitate that, that, that culture, right? Of uh success and and efficiency.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. Uh one of the things that we've worked together on is uh because we do 401ks and manage 401ks and have a number of accreditations of what we do as a fiduciary on those 401ks, you know, 316, 321, 338, you name it. We can do all of those here. Uh, but you've really kind of you use TPAs and work with TPAs to be able to introduce you as well um for uh 401k plants. Can you kind of explain how that works for you? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:So so paylosy, I'll I'll use my my company for for example. Like we don't offer uh we don't we don't do financial advising, we don't broker benefits for our clients. So we reach out to our partners like like you, Greg, and and y'all could probably help our clients um you know have more intelligent conversation on on retirement and stuff. So um, but as a software company, we partner very, very well with with other uh you know API centric, open API centric companies to have those 180, 360 integrations built in between the carriers. So when when our uh data administrators on the payload side are updating demographics inside retirement counts, our software is able to communicate clearly with with the carriers uh for on the 401k side or or the TPA side on and getting that those demographics and those changes updated on the other software side too. So um, you know, it makes for a good partnership on the software side, which which helps uh folks obtain reports cleaner, uh quicker, um, where they're not, you know, TPA folks aren't having to wait on their client to give them the data they need. They can go in to the back end of our software and pull that data and see that data uh immediately. So that that makes for a really good partnership uh all around with uh software provider, TPA, and client. It makes for really good partnerships.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a lot of times we see yeah, we see um uh you know having to run a census is just it seems to be a daunting task for a lot of business owners for some reason when they can just go into your system and just pull it out, pull it down from whatever they need to pull it. Oh, yeah. It just seems to delay the process for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Greg, every other week, Greg, I get a call, like hey Mike, uh I need to set up a workflow to get access to my clients' beta. So we so we we submit some forms and we make that happen.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it just slows everything down. That costs time and that costs money. So overall. Um, real quick, uh the show's Money Matters with Greg. I'm Greg Farrell, CEO and owner of Feral Wealth, uh registered financial advisor and owner of the firm. And we talk money on the show. Uh if you've listened to any of the 172 episodes, it's usually always about a topic of some sort to be able to help you save money, you know, add value to your life, uh, save your time because time is money. And today we are uh at 103.1 uh FM WVLP broadcasting on Thursdays at one o'clock, and the Saturdays replayed on Saturday. And then anywhere you pod, you can find us as well. We're talking with Mike, Mike Ramian uh from Pelocity about the HR solutions and what he does as an overall group. A few more questions, just want to get to some of the case studies and some of the examples maybe you could maybe as you could offer out to some of the business owners that are listening about maybe how you've solved a solution or solved a problem for for a client.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, great question, Greg. Wow. When I think of solving uh solutions for clients, there's there's usually three things that always come to mind. You know, service, of course, right? Um there's a lot of time wasted with waiting back on answers on how to either fix solutions or add solutions or uh training. So, you know, I'm always trying to help help my clients save time on on with service, of course. Um, you know, recently I've worked with a nonprofit organization here in um in in Porter County and uh integrating with other systems is is always a topic. Uh so what what companies, small, big, or large, what what they typically do is when something's broke, they go out and they buy a tool to fix that. Uh fix that part of their employee lifecycle that's broken. You know, if it's recruiting, Greg, it's it's you know, going out and finding an application tracking system. If it's onboarding, you know, go to find an onboarding tool and so forth down the line for time and labor, clocking in and out and benefits. So before long, over a couple years, uh a small business that needs to be very, very smart with its money has gone out and invested in way too much software, and they're paying way too much to do eight to ten different things. So it's important to you know evaluate every two or three years with an HRIS company. And pay lossy is just one of many out there. Um, you know, and I I enjoy helping your clients out, of course. Um, but you know, finding out how to how to save money, centralize in a one one login system, uh, and you know, start removing some of those other softwares that are not utilized and really wasting businesses' money. So uh yeah, that's that's a big key, big part of the conversations I have with clients. Um, so uh we were able to go in and really work with this client here in Porter County who it's a larger uh employer, but um, you know, probably shaving about 50 to 100k a year in in simple integration and and marketplace would cost.
SPEAKER_00:Which for a nonprofit is an insane amount of money. Um for anybody, let alone you know, someone that's trying to has a has the cause that the money needs to go to in the meantime. Yeah, absolutely. You're spot on. So you did a lot of the the seamless, like they they had all these different silos out there basically, and all these different things that they thought they needed or over time added, and then you you you basically can come in as a consultant and sort of say, you know, you don't necessarily you need it, but it's much cheaper out there, or it's more efficient if you just go one stop.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, uh so like exactly in the payroll manager's lens, like they just need the the for instance the the labor hours to to make the payroll, right? If there's salary, there's salary, if they're clocking in and out, they calculate those hours and push it out to pay. Well, if you're using four different systems and every system has to export a spreadsheet and manipulate that spreadsheet and hand it off to the next person in line, it's it's gonna waste uh several hours of of time uh over over a year to pay your employees. So, yeah, so so uh you know, creating a fast pass from you know getting those employees paid efficiently, that's that's what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00:So for all those people out there that are in HR that are listening today, uh there if you don't already know there are solutions out there that can actually help you do your job better and quicker and faster and save you money along the along the way. Um let me ask you this where uh where can someone find you and just reach out? Like where's the best place to catch you?
SPEAKER_02:Oh yeah. Um, you know, I I hang out at local Sherm associations and and chamber uh coffee events and luncheons, but LinkedIn search search Mike Ramian. Um I'm always checking my messages and uh you know consulting with friends and and co-workers and uh community members all the time. So look me up on LinkedIn. Appreciate that, Greg.
SPEAKER_00:So and it's our yeah, it's R R A M I A N, right? Correct? That's right. Yes, sir. Just want to make sure we're good with that and uh certainly maximizing your ability to be able to also mremium at paylocity.com uh was you know email-wise if you want to be able to find them there. Um is there anything else you want to share with uh with with with the listeners today? Mike?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you know, uh every every uh you know small business owner, business owner, every every organization is different. You know, don't think your your your uh financial situation is unique. You know, everybody has very very very different things going on. So be open to a conversation and go from there if people are looking to help out.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, thanks so much. We had Mike Ramian here for Palocity on today on Money Matters or Greg. I want to thank everybody for listening today. Again, the show's uh uh broadcast at one o'clock on WBLP 103.1 FM here locally, and then uh rebroadcast on Saturdays um at 1 o'clock, and then also anywhere you pod. This would be pod uh episode 173. You can find it anywhere. I want to thank Mike for being here today. Um, and uh you know have a great holiday. Thanks, Greg. Go Hoosers. Go Hoosers is the right. See ya.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for tuning in to Money Matters with Greg. We hope you gained some valuable insights today. Remember, your financial journey is personal, but you don't have to go it alone. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe and share. Until next time, here's the making your money work for you. Securities and investment advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a registered investment advisor, member FINRA SIPC.
