A #SHRM21 Interview with Corey Berkey, Senior Vice President, JazzHR

We hear digital transformation more frequently than ever, a needed disruptor of businesses and for their growth. So, what is digital transformation? According to CIO, "digital transformation is a foundational change in how an organization delivers value to its customers with the implementation of new technologies, talent, and processes to improve business operations and serve their customers better." Remote work due to the pandemic has accelerated the pace. In addition, the adoption of technology which takes years in digital transformation, has sped up in just months due to Covid19. Automation is part of the digital transformation, automation as defined by IBM, is the "Application of technology, programs, processes or robotics to achieve outcomes with minimal human input." In simple terms, automation makes mundane, repetitive tasks easier and efficient. Therefore, automation is one of the critical drivers for a successful digital transformation. One of the sessions caught my attention at the SHRM Conference in Las Vegas, "Leveraging Automation to Bring the Humanity Back to HR," by Corey Berkey - Senior Vice President, Human Resources at JazzHR and spoke to him about his session and the world of automation.

Q: Let's talk about Pipefy, the platform you recommend to augment HR automation. Is this your product?

Corey Berkey: Pipefy is not a JazzHR product, but I used the product, and I am speaking as a satisfied user.

Q: What is the right technology for HR professionals to automate? 

Corey Berkey: A product or platform that helps businesses to be efficient, e.g., Pipefy, we used  Pipefy to do a particular set of tasks, and I thought in my mind, this is if I can get it to do this, this set of things. My life is going to be so much better. So, what turned out to happen is once we got it to do that, it expanded, and then it expanded and then expanded. So, now it does several different things for us which are all, you know, definitely exciting for us, and they create efficiency that we did not have previously. And so for that, we're excited and grateful. 

Q: As you know, many organizations have HR systems, and almost all HRIS does the workflow to automate HR business processes, right. So, where does Pipefy come in, is there any specific niche conventional HRIS doesn't offer?

Corey Berkey: I think that much like solving the different operational challenges. HRIS captures employee data, but, still, they're not engaging with the employee; they're not helping us manage the cap table or update the benefit invoices. Pipefy is a high-touch, user experience, focused onboarding platform. Emails are staged at specific points throughout onboarding. So they're pre-populated with particular pieces of information, and I couldn't do that with my ATS. 

Q: Does Pipefy function as stand-alone, and can it be integrated with HRIS? 

Corey Berkey: Pipefy is working on the integration piece right now; once complete,  it should be easy to integrate Pipefy with the HRIS system

Q: As you know, almost all of the current HRIS optimizes HR Business processes, are there any specific areas Pipefy does better?

Corey Berkey: Pipefy gives us the ability to do work with collaborative tools like Slack. New hires show up in Slack channels for our leadership team and our executive team so that they know an engagement has been completed; those notifications are hard with standard ATS. Pipefy creates that sort of cross-functional communication in the organization and helps collaborate with teams via Slack.