In 2020, the pandemic was in full swing, and many office workers were working remotely for the first time. Paylocity, a provider of cloud-based payroll and human capital management (HCM) software, found their proprietary Community application embraced by customers who were looking to nurture stronger connections and engagement within remote teams. However, the resulting upswing in traffic showed Paylocity that the platform's SQL-based architecture was no longer meeting their required performance metrics.
For a database solution that could meet all their needs, Paylocity tech leaders turned to MongoDB -- and found a solution that cost five times less than their previous vendor's solution. Today, Paylocity runs over twenty applications on MongoDB, and its developers can create an application within minutes -- something that used to take weeks.
VentureBeat sat down with Stephen Dick, VP of engineering at Paylocity, and Sahir Azam, chief product officer at MongoDB, to talk about that relationship -- from the opportunities and challenges that Paylocity and MongoDB have experienced as they've grown, to the ways Paylocity's partnership with MongoDB has helped drive their success along the way.
Along the way, we evaluated many options but ultimately chose MongoDB as our database partner. There were technical determinants to the decision for sure, like the flexibility of MongoDB's schema-less architecture, performance benchmarks and the scalability of the architecture. But important drivers were also how proactive the support and services team were.
And of note, the MongoDB development community is very rich and the company places a premium on making developers' lives easier. It's a commitment we share. I have an entire team dedicated to improving the developer experience within Paylocity, so there was a shared sense of purpose.
SD: It used to take a lot of time to create the infrastructure, integrate our standard frameworks and tools, adopt our commonly held libraries and so on. To move faster, we adopted modern developer experience (DevEx) frameworks, including SPACE, which emphasizes productivity, satisfaction, collaboration and flow to achieve a faster time-to-market. This led to investments in cloud infrastructure, starter packages, common platforms and innovative documentation. We're rolling out new AI code assist tools, including Tabnine, which will further enhance the developer experience.
Building strategic relationships with key vendors is a critical part of our productivity strategy. For example, MongoDB's support has been proactive, engaging with us early in the process to avoid common pitfalls and offering solutions before challenges arise, rather than reacting to issues after the fact. This level of partnership is incredibly invaluable. It helps us maximize the effectiveness of our tools.
Overall, we've freed up so much developer time to focus on higher-value work. This has led to faster iteration cycles and fewer code errors, contributing to both cost savings and a smoother development process.
SA: Sure, from the very beginning, MongoDB was created to empower innovators to create, transform and disrupt industries by helping them unleash the power of software and data.
And, as we like to say, MongoDB was built by developers, for developers. Our developer data platform is a powerful database with an integrated set of related services that allow development teams to address the challenging requirements for today's wide variety of modern applications -- all within a unified and consistent user experience.
Always looking ahead, we address developers' ever-growing needs through cutting-edge products to help them make the most of their data. Examples include MongoDB Atlas Search enabling developers to build full-text search at scale, Atlas Stream Processing for working with data in motion and at rest, and Atlas Vector Search to implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) in AI applications.
And we hear from customers all the time just how much MongoDB has helped them operate more efficiently. Like Rent the Runway, who was able to achieve a 67% decrease in inventory processing time using MongoDB Atlas. Or, GE HealthCare, which used MongoDB to manage the lifecycle of its medical IoT devices and saw an 83% decrease in retrieval time, resulting in better care for GE HealthCare customers.
We love tech-forward innovator brands like Paylocity. We strive to help them remove blockers so that they can focus on what they do best to better serve their customers.
SD: One of our core values is "think next generation." It keeps innovation at the forefront of everything we do. For example, with our recent acquisition of Airbase, we're expanding our product capabilities into the office of the CFO. It will allow our customers to use management and financial solutions alongside our HR and payroll tools, providing a complete suite of services to manage both people and finances, under a single unified platform.
We heard from our customers that they were looking for greater control over the balance sheet. So, we're excited to take these new capabilities to market. Airbase's technology will empower our customers with tools for expense management, bill payments and corporate card management and will enable customers to streamline their operations, reduce financial complexity and drive more accurate financial forecasting.
SD: We hear frequently from smaller clients that they need to move away from spreadsheets and siloed workbooks. From our Enterprise clients, we hear about the need to provide deeper connectivity between departments and richer insights. As we move beyond the borders of traditional HCM, our customers benefit from deeper connectivity and advanced capabilities that scale with their business.
That's why we're continuing to innovate. That's why Paylocity is on a trajectory of growth. We're driving further integration of HR, IT and financial functionalities into a single platform. Our customers will see simplified processes, fewer redundant systems and lower overhead.
That doesn't mean we will lose our focus on HCM. Our commitment to HCM is rock solid and we're proud of the impact our products have had. Our Community product, powered by MongoDB has helped create connected workplaces. And we're looking forward to future partnerships that allow us to have an amplified impact on the workplaces around us.
SA: I'd say that we're particularly excited about the chance to help developers make the most of AI.
Specifically, we recently announced the general availability of the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP). It's a first-of-its-kind program that's designed to help organizations take advantage of AI. MAAP offers customers a variety of resources to put AI applications into production: reference architectures, integrations with leading technology providers, professional services and a unified support system to help customers quickly build and deploy AI applications.