Paylocity Uses Patterns & Practices To Cut Development EffortCompany Overview

Paylocity Corporation provides payroll and unemployment management services to small and midsize companies, primarily in the Midwest region of the United States. Paylocity was founded in 1997 and has grown from a startup operation to 70 employees servicing over 1,700 clients today. Paylocity’s 98% client retention rate comes from offering industry-leading technology backed by exceptional service. Paylocity was #105 in the 2003 Inc. 500 List of America’s fastest growing privately-held companies. In addition, Paylocity was named the 2003 Service Bureau of the Year by the IPPA (Independent Payroll Providers Association). Paylocity also received a 2004 Award for Business Excellence from The Business Ledger. Paylocity currently has offices in Chicago and Milwaukee and hopes to expand throughout the Midwest once its next generation of software is completed.

Situation

Paylocity has used a third-party commercial licensed package to manage payroll service bureau business. Due to rapid growth, the company was taxing the capacities of this system to manage its business. They had the option before they started developing in 2002 to upgrade to a newer version of the software they were using. They chose not to upgrade for the following reasons:

•	Competing companies all had their own proprietary software rather than relying on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software that they licensed from other vendors.
•	They wanted a product more tailored to their particular needs.
•	They felt the money spent on upgrading to the new version of the software they were using could be better invested in developing a product that they owned.
•	The new software from their vendor was PC-based versus Web-based, and they wanted to move in a Web-based direction.
•	They had had to extensively customize their existing COTS product to support their operations, thus making an upgrade significantly more difficult.
•	They were uncomfortable, especially as they grew, betting their company’s future on a third-party vendor which could be acquired by a competitor at any time.

Therefore, the primary reason for going forward was to be able to support their continued growth using their current business practices as well as a desire to control their own destiny.

Solution

The Paylocity Payroll and HR system allows the company’s clients to:

•	Input their payroll data. Paylocity then prints checks, initiates direct deposits, and files taxes on the client’s behalf.
•	Manage HR information.
•	Provide extensive reporting capabilities on all aspects of payroll and HR.
•	Provide an employee self-service portal for the clients’ employees to view and change their payroll and HR information and view paycheck stubs online.

The following Microsoft products were deployed with the final solution:

•	ASP.NET
•	.NET Framework 1.1
•	Internet Explorer 5.5 or later
•	Microsoft Word
•	SQL Server 2000

The following Microsoft patterns & practices Application Blocks were used in developing the final solution:

•	Application Updater Application Block
•	Asynchronous Invocation Application Block
•	Data Cache Application Block
•	Configuration Management Application Block
•	Exception Management Application Block
•	Logging Application Block