Podcast: Pipefy’s Giordano Perly Talks About Automation, Workflows and HR

Meeting Overhead

Transcript

Mark:

Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer. My guest today is Giordano Perly, an HR business partner manager for Pipefy. They optimize business processes to help every team member organize and control their work in a single place. They also help streamline and automate processes and integrate legacy tools without the need to write code. We’re going to talk about new tools making their way into HR tech, the challenge of juggling multiple business lines and the importance of process. All on this edition of People Tech. Hi, Giordano. Welcome. So what exactly does Pipefy do?

Giordano:

Okay, cool. Pipefy is a workflow management software. So basically it streamlines and automates business processes through local automation. And this is important to state and therefore it allows teams in less technical departments, for example, HR, procurement to optimize their processes within REOs from it. So basically it empowers teams to go ahead and do more for themselves without needing IT.

Mark:

Could you give me a little bit more detail about how your tools connect with HR? I mean, you offer CRM tools, for example, and you offer talents acquisition tools. It seems like there’s a lot of overlap between them, so it is there and is that why you offer them both?

Giordano:

That’s a great question. The processes, they are all connected. We can connect all of those pipes as we call them. So for example, the HR department has lots of repetitive tedious tasks. For example, sending welcoming letters and updating employees statuses, routing signatures, and whatever those tasks are. So what we want to do is we want to connect lots of HR areas such as payroll, compensation, recruiting, training, and finding the best employee experience. So for example, when a person joins, all the recruitment process happens through Pipefy, and then whenever they actually do join, there is a card that goes straight to payroll. So it’s all interconnected and the same card will go to the onboarding pipe. It’s like the systemic experience.

Mark:

You could argue that there’s a certain breadth there. You’re doing CRM, you’re doing talent acquisition, you’ve got your fingers in a couple of other areas too. If I was cynical, I could argue that that requires everybody in the company to be running in a lot of different directions. So do you think that this… well, again, this breadth, is it a strength or a weakness or a challenge or how do you look at it?

Giordano:

Cool. I think it’s a strength because we’re talking about a local platform here, so it doesn’t require this great knowledge. So people would easily be able to use the tool. And I don’t know if I would say that people would run in different directions because of the interconnection between them. What we want to do is integrate the workflows along the areas. As the more integration we have, the happier we would be.

Mark:

So zeroing in on HR a bit, could you tell me how does Pipefy fit into HR? You’ve touched on it before, but could you give me a little more detail?

Giordano:

Of course. Sure. I was talking about those repetitive tasks. So this is one of the main points. What we do with this local automation tool is like we’re able to streamline those tedious tasks such as payroll processing, managing employee requests, allowing HR and people operations team to focus more on employee experience. With them not having to deal with all of those repetitive tasks anymore, there is more room for people to focus on employee experience and dedicate more time to other things that don’t require and do not demand so much time as they did before.

Mark:

Another thing that you folks emphasize as low code tools. Could you talk about that? I mean, how does it factor into your commercial thinking, your business philosophy and what you give to your customers?

Giordano:

Yeah, of course. Well, low code is, it’s being used more frequently as organizations face challenges like the shortage in IT workers, the need to lean on technical resources to support digital transformation efforts. What I’d say is that when we implement this local tool, it definitely simplifies the complexity that comes with customization. It enables processes’ consistency across the organization. It’s going to increase agility through accelerated development and deployment, and it’s also going to contain costs. I think those are some important things when we talk about low code.

Mark:

A lot of people think initially that low code is about the citizen developer that I could use it to code, which I couldn’t do. You have to do a lot of education about that and a lot of handholding because of what low-code actually is?

Giordano:

I don’t see that a lot in Pipefy because it’s very intuitive so people get the hang of it easily. We do, of course, have training and there is the platform implementation and everything, but we normally get feedback about people do not needing so much time to get the hang of it.

Mark:

When we talk about the people using it, are they technology professionals more often than not?

Giordano:

That’s a great question. When we’re thinking about the HR vertical, for example, we’re not talking about HR professionals, so we’re talking about enabling the HR team to use a platform by themselves. And this is a great thing because with the shortage in IT and with HR always having to depend on IT, it brings in new context, it brings a new reality in which the HR team can go ahead and do everything by themselves per se.

Mark:

Now, a couple years ago, 2018, 2019, there was a lot of talk about low-code and it seems to have quieted down a bit since COVID. What do you think is going on? Did interest wane during COVID and has to come back or did the dynamics of development change or what’s doing

Giordano:

It’s a great question. When I think of how it’s evolving, where it’s moving forward right now, I think that the demand for software is outpacing the number of developers. This is a first thing. Low-code adoption is expected to continue to increase. I think it’s going to keep on increasing as it’s the only way an organization can meet growing technical demands on top of limited talent pool. It gives this liberty to organizations and based on that, I definitely think it’s going to keep on improving. And I have read this article article recently that says it’s going to grow like 20% in 2023.

Mark:

Was that the reason that you got into it? I mean, there’s a lot of companies that do something like what you do. You’ve got competitors out there and it’s just a lot of technology businesses, not all of them are signing up with low code. So what was the thinking behind you doing it?

Giordano:

I think the thinking was empowering the people that are going to use the tool. If I am talking about a person using the tool in the HR vertical, I want to empower that person and then giving this local perspective, this person is going to be easily empowered much more than if it was a different situation. The thinking behind it and our mission is to actually empower people when automating those workflows.

Mark:

My last question is just one of these, look around you and tell me what you think questions. What is the most interesting, most promising technology or technology movement out in the world today?

Giordano:

It’s a good question. When they start to think about it… I think the move is in this empowerment because as we’re talking about a situation where we did not have people needing to depend on the IT area for everything, we get to this new reality like I said before. I don’t necessarily know it’s the new biggest movement, but I think it’s a very important movement and not having people depend on IT anymore to be able to automate whatever workflows they want in whatever areas we’re talking about, HR, procurement, I think this is the case.

Mark:

Well, thank you very much. It was great to meet you and I appreciate your coming by.

Giordano:

Of course. Thanks for having me.

Mark:

My guest today has been Giordano Perly, the HR business partner manager at Pipefy. And this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of Recruiting Daily. We’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs, visit www.evergreenpodcasts.com. And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.

Image: iStock

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