isolved Overview and History
- They started in 1986 with COBRA administration (InfiniSource). To this day, Benefit Administration remains a core strength.
- In 2011, Accel-KKR (their current owner) acquired American OnShore (who were the creators of the original isolved software) and Infinisource for managed benefit services
- In 2020, they prioritized direct marketing and brand building. Previously, they were focused on supporting partner marketing. Today, they have a mix of direct sales, resellers (ASO/PEO), referral partners (COIs like brokers, accountants), and marketplace integrations. In total, they currently serve over 8 million employees across 189,000 customers
- The company's platform now includes a full suite of Talent Acquisition, HR and Payroll (including benefits administration), Workforce Management, and Talent Management tools, all with a focus on user experience. I was particularly impressed by their unique Employee Marketplace, which offers employee discounts and services such as pet insurance.
People Heroes World
isolved's community and engagement ecosystem is built around the tagline "Where People Heroes Grow."
It has the following components:
- People Heroes University: A learning platform with thousands of courses for HR/payroll pros and their employees, including articles, recorded webinars, quick help videos, custom content, career paths, and isolved certifications.
- People Heroes Community: Highly engaged online forum (with an average of 23 logins/month per member) for peer-to-peer advice and best practice sharing.
- Events: They have evolved their event strategy, evolving from 100+ city roadshows into regional "Community Meetups." They have also split the annual conference into regional customer events ("Connect for People Heroes") and a partner event ("Connect for Partners") for better relevance.
- They see this strategy as a major differentiator, fostering strong customer relationships.
Strengths & Differentiators
isolved emphasizes that its culture directly influences its solutions and customer approach. Key aspects highlighted are:
- Comprehensive Single-Vendor Solutions: They offer a wide range of Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, including unique and non-traditional services like HR augmentation and M&A optimization, all sourced from them.
- Strong Partner Ecosystem: They continuously grow their network of partners and resellers, contributing to a unique business model and offering.
- Customer-Centric Focus: They employ dedicated Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Relationship Managers (RMs) who are compensated based on customer satisfaction ("referenceability"). Furthermore, a significant portion (nearly 25%) of product enhancements are driven by customer input.
- Efficiency and Speed: They pride themselves on rapid implementation times (reportedly 67-75% faster than competitors), quick problem-solving (85% same-day resolution), and extremely fast support response times (average under 22 seconds).
Industries Served: The company focuses on several key sectors, with its top five industries being Restaurants, Professional & Business Services, non-acute Healthcare, Construction & Engineering, and Manufacturing.
Product Innovation & Roadmap
isolved is firmly focused on several innovations designed to help both the employee and HR. Below is a recap of a number of them:
Employee Workspace: Employee Workspace is a personalized interface, primarily for mobile use, designed to streamline the employee experience by consolidating common tasks and information onto a single homepage. Its key goals are to surface the vast majority (90%) of an employee's needs directly upon login and to reduce the number of clicks required to complete actions. Features highlighted include personalization based on usage patterns, quick access to time punching, and a task list for items needing attention, such as timecard verifications or time off requests.
Always on HR: An AI-powered chatbot or virtual assistant integrated into the isolved platform using customer-uploaded knowledge bases (handbooks, policies). This tool is designed to handle employee inquiries and automate repetitive tasks, aiming to improve efficiency by freeing up HR professionals' time. isolved noted that 51% of HR decision-makers report spending half or more of their day on repetitive questions. (Source: isolved’s Champions of Change Report 2024)
The key benefits highlighted for "Always-On HR" include providing 24/7 support to enhance employee engagement and satisfaction through timely assistance. It also promotes cost reduction by allowing HR staff to focus on more strategic priorities. Furthermore, the feature aims to ensure consistency and compliance by delivering uniform responses aligned with company policies and legal standards, thereby reducing risk.
Perfect Payroll: Focuses on its "Payroll Insights" feature, designed for managers. This tool aims to proactively identify anomalies and potential errors by comparing the current payroll data against normal patterns before the payroll is finalized. It helps users pinpoint and correct costly mistakes, such as zero net pay, excessive payroll amounts, or tax variances, before processing occurs. The interface integrates notifications for these payroll anomalies alongside other pending manager tasks.
Benefits Reimagination: This is a multi-year focus on improving the benefits experience, including AI-assisted enrollment guidance (2025 target) and better just-in-time education (2026).
The 2024 baseline includes core functionalities like benefit administration (eligibility, tracking), enrollment processes for various events, carrier feeds using EDI/API, reporting, various benefit services (Flex, HSA, COBRA, ACA compliance support), and tools specifically for brokers.
Planned enhancements for 2025 focus on "Enrollment Help," incorporating features like plan cost comparison and personalized recommendations tailored to employee needs (physical, financial, family), alongside "Automated Adjustments" to ensure seamless alignment between payroll and benefits.
Looking ahead to 2026, the focus shifts to "Benefit Engagement," aiming to empower employees with year-round, tailored interactions, insights, guided prompts, on-demand education, and wellness support, potentially including integration with external wellness platforms.
Analytics: isolved is developing KPI/ROI dashboards and an Analytics Hub for better report accessibility and contextual insights. It aims to embed data insights throughout the People Cloud platform. This approach goes beyond traditional reporting by delivering analytics in various formats tailored to user needs. These include high-level KPI and ROI dashboards for administrators, in-context insights presented directly within workflows, benchmarking against internal and external data (like Salary.com), and prescriptive guidance offering recommendations based on analysis. Natural language processing and voice control are also part of this vision.
The foundation for this is the isolved Predictive People Analytics (PPA) engine, which utilizes AI to generate data-driven results. This engine operates on data primarily from the isolved People Cloud, positioned as the single source of truth, but can also incorporate third-party data sources to enrich the insights provided.
AI Initiatives: isolved will in the future shift from current AI capabilities (like "Always-on HR," based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation or RAG) towards more advanced "Agentic AI" (conceptualized as "Autopilot-HR"). It contrasts the user-driven nature of RAG, where employees manually query the system for information or initiate tasks like checking policies or requesting time off, with the outcome-driven approach of Agentic AI. This future state envisions AI acting autonomously to proactively manage tasks, anticipate employee needs (like suggesting scheduling unused PTO), automate approvals based on rules, and optimize workflows with intelligent reminders, moving beyond simple information retrieval to proactive task execution.
Perfect Payroll Assist: A feature planned for release in the first half of 2026. For administrators ("People Heroes"), this tool aims to automate compliance by detecting risks like minimum wage or tax updates, autonomously updating records, assisting with employee classification (W2 vs. 1099), and ensuring multi-state payroll compliance. For employees, it will offer capabilities to simulate and analyze the impact of potential compensation changes on factors like taxes and salary projections, while also enabling payroll agents to efficiently process adjustments based on these models
My Take
Based on the update, isolved presents several positive aspects, highlighting its stability, growth, and customer-centric approach. With a long history dating back to 1986 and significant market penetration serving over 8 million employees across 189,000 customers, the company demonstrates considerable experience and reach. Its transition to direct marketing alongside a robust partner ecosystem showcases adaptability and a diversified growth strategy. Particularly noteworthy are its comprehensive single-vendor HCM platform, which includes unique offerings like an Employee Marketplace and specialized services, and its strong emphasis on customer relationships through the "People Heroes" community, dedicated support roles compensated based on customer satisfaction, and impressive efficiency metrics like rapid implementation and exceptionally fast support response times (under 22 seconds).
Furthermore, isolved demonstrates a strong commitment to innovation focused on enhancing user experience and operational efficiency for both employees and HR professionals. Key initiatives like the streamlined "Employee Workspace," the AI-powered "Always on HR" assistant for automating inquiries, and the proactive "Perfect Payroll" error detection tool underline this focus. The forward-looking roadmap, including the multi-year "Benefits Reimagination," advanced embedded analytics powered by Predictive People Analytics, and the planned evolution towards proactive "Agentic AI" (Autopilot-HR) and automated compliance features like "Perfect Payroll Assist," signals a clear vision for leveraging technology to simplify HCM processes and deliver greater value.
Founded in 1986, isolved has established a robust and enduring presence in the Human Capital Management (HCM) landscape, demonstrating consistent stability and growth over its extensive history. The company's significant scale is evident in its support of over 8 million employees across a substantial base of 189,000 customers, indicating widespread adoption and trust in its solutions.
