TecHRseries Interview with Alessio Alionco, Founder & CEO at Pipefy

This time we are in is meant for us to embrace and accelerate digital transformation. The value of leveraging technology for business success has never been clearer. The future of work and the future of HR are being redefined right now and even if a vaccine for Covid-19 is quickly produced and employees are able to work in person again, some of these basic workplace changes may be here to stay such as remote work and the need for better digital employee engagement. “It’s time to dig deep during this time and see this phase as a learning opportunity and a chance to lead with values and strengthen company culture,’’ says Alessio Alionco, Founder & CEO Pipefy in this chat with TecHRseries. Catch the complete conversation:

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Tell us a little about yourself Alessio …how did the idea of Pipefy come about?

I founded Pipefy in 2015 after realizing that the challenges I was facing in my work as a mergers and acquisitions consultant were echoed by most of my clients and colleagues. It became clear that there had to be a better way to work when it came to streamlining business processes and achieving efficiency. Others like myself were struggling with productivity because of forgotten spreadsheets, lost emails and duplicates of information.

At that time, I experienced frustration with the inflexibility, poor user experience and cost of the limited tools available in the market for managing these challenges. And that is what led to the creation of Pipefy.

Prior to my time at Pipefy, I founded, grew and sold a startup called Acessozero, which was acquired by Apontador in 2012. I also served as CEO of a consulting company called Go4 Consultoria. I have extensive experience working as a consultant for M&A and have managed product and sales teams across a variety of industries such as foods, services, B2B, logistics and others.

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 Can you share your thoughts on the changing global HR Tech marketplace – what (please could you name them!) are some of the top HR Tech innovators you’ve come across from across the world?

Technologies for HR are rapidly evolving and since HR issues so directly impact the success of companies, these technologies are a high priority, particularly for enterprises where HR teams are large and having standard processes is paramount. Many of our customers use Pipefy for HR, it’s one of our top vertical segments (along with Finance/payments, customer service and marketing). We help automate workflows for recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement, HR case management and remote work access to name a few use cases.

Particularly in COVID times where HR teams are dispersed, having standardized processes is critical to providing a good employee and candidate experience. HR tech today needs to be more Agile and collaborative than ever. The greatest innovators in this space are those that see the need for collaborative, digital workspaces and those that embrace automation. Capgemini is doing this, they recently presented at the Shared Services and Outsourcing Week event on how they’ve improved digital operations for HR through leveraging automation.

How are you seeing the demand for HR Tech change with time- what are businesses looking for more of from their HR tech stack today?

HR teams today not only have a need to perform more efficiently, but they also must be able to measure progress. Businesses are going to continue to look for technology solutions that allow them to track success. On our own HR team and throughout the company, we use the OKR methodology, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. By ensuring the whole team has shared goals, we can then decide which metrics we need to use to measure our success.

In HR that could be a number of applicants per opening, time to hire metrics, or cost per hire. Utilizing software that connects the dots between all HR processes and also provides actionable data on the metrics that matter to your team is critical to the future of HR tech. The demand is for flexibility, personalization/customization, and ability to track and/or measure success.

How do you feel the ongoing Coivd-19 pandemic will impact the use and adoption of HR Tech and in what ways?

We conducted a survey on this at the beginning of the pandemic when we started to see how drastically the workplace landscape was changing. We called it, “The Pulse of Remote Work,” and it shares findings having to do with remote work before and after the pandemic.

We don’t know how long folks will be working from home. At Pipefy, we’ve extended WFH through the end of 2020 and I expect that even if we do return to the office in early 2021, the way we work has been permanently transformed by this pandemic. HR tech must take this into account and adjust.

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For example, we knew that our customers’ HR teams would need to have a renewed focus on employee health as we move forward. We created a special template to track our workers’ health data so that our management team could make better decisions and it was so helpful internally, we’ve made it available to customers as well. The template allows employers to track health data and COVID-19 status and share COVID-related information and resources.

We’d love to hear about some of the new upcoming plans / innovations at Pipefy…? Also, could you share a little about the different ways in which the team has adjusted business processes to adjust to the new normal?

Pipefy transforms the way teams work by making processes hassle-free from request to delivery—unlocking efficiency through automation, standardization, visibility, access control and by providing monitoring and metrics. We have innovated significantly in the area of monitoring and measurement so that teams can track efficiency and work more intelligently. Our no-code platform makes it easy for teams to optimize processes without needing IT involvement.

We just announced Pipefy 2.0, our latest product release which included major enhancements to the platform. We announced this at the Shared Services and Outsourcing Week digital event on August 31st. Pipefy 2.0 empowers managers to visualize data and transform the metrics they glean from the platform into actionable insights. This change to our solution was built in response to customer requests.

As far as the ways we’ve pivoted due to COVID, we are continuing to put our employees first. When the pandemic first broke out, we transitioned to a work-from-home model and have done everything we can to support the changing needs of our staff. Members of our team are facing unique challenges such as childcare, caring for loved ones and protecting their own health. Fostering a supportive culture is at the forefront of all we do at Pipefy and our business processes reflect that.

We announced in May that we will keep our offices closed through the end of the year in order to best protect our staff and their loved ones. We also will evaluate success of our staff using different criteria and goals then we may have used in-office and the emphasis now is on completing objectives rather than working a certain number of hours. In spite of all the changes we’ve had to navigate, Pipefy has experienced excellent business continuity. Morale is up and our sales are stronger than ever. Doing the right thing to protect our employees and community will continue to be top priority going forward.

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