Rippling's Employee Identity Focus After Series C Funding

Rippling's Expansion Following $250 Million Funding Round

Just last month, Rippling, a company established five years ago under the leadership of founder Parker Conrad, successfully secured $250 million in Series C funding. This investment propelled the company’s valuation to $6.5 billion.

Introducing the "Unity" Platform

Parker Conrad is now detailing the factors that attracted investors to the company. Rippling currently assists businesses in managing employee payroll, benefits, devices, and applications. Today marks the launch of a substantial number of new features integrated into its existing services.

Conrad expressed considerable ambition to develop a large-scale organization during a conversation earlier this week. He drew a parallel between Rippling’s potential and that of Salesforce.

Salesforce consolidates business systems around a central customer identity, while Rippling aims to achieve a similar integration, but centered around a common employee identity. This unified approach will streamline data across various business software platforms.

A Comprehensive Suite of New Features

Given the existing landscape of HR and IT software – some of which was previously developed by Conrad himself – this is a bold undertaking. However, it presents a compelling vision when considered as a whole.

These new capabilities are collectively branded as Rippling’s “Unity” platform. It is structured around five distinct product units, designed to be most effective when implemented as a complete package for larger clients. Currently, access to the full suite – “unlimited Unity” – is priced at $25 per user monthly.

Key Components of the Unity Platform

• No-Code Automation: A system enabling company leaders across departments – HR, sales, engineering – to create custom workflows that trigger automated actions within Rippling and connected third-party applications.
• Advanced Analytics: A newly built analytics suite designed to process and analyze extensive datasets.
• Streamlined Access Management: Simplified configuration of employee access to SaaS products and corporate spending policies.
• Customization with RQL: A scripting language, RQL, allowing for the creation of “formula fields” within the analytics suite.

Automating Workflows and Addressing Pay Equity

Rippling’s new features include the ability to automatically identify potential pay disparities and establish cross-system workflows. For example, an engineering team can be alerted via Slack if an engineer is unavailable to address a critical JIRA ticket due to being out of office.

Data-Driven Insights with the Analytics Suite

The analytics suite allows companies to analyze large datasets, such as employee referral bonuses. Previously, this required exporting data from multiple systems into spreadsheets. Rippling now provides a centralized view, simplifying the process of determining bonus eligibility and amounts.

Simplified Access Control and Offboarding

Rippling simplifies the process of granting employees access to various SaaS applications and managing corporate spending policies. It also facilitates the swift revocation of all access privileges when an employee leaves the company.

Rippling's Approach to Third-Party Integrations

The RQL scripting language, inspired by Excel and SQL, allows for advanced customization within the analytics suite. Further details about these features can be found on the company’s website.

Conrad emphasized Rippling’s commitment to integrating with a wide range of third-party providers, including Ramp and Checkr. He stated that Rippling “wants to work with everyone.”

He mentioned ongoing discussions with Brex and Expensify to deepen existing integrations. The addition of more third-party services is seen as a way to enhance Rippling’s value and stickiness.

Future Plans for Transactional Spend Management

Over the next three to six months, Rippling plans to integrate transactional spend management data, enabling clients to analyze spending patterns, identify top vendors, and set spending alerts within the platform, and even within integrated systems like Brex, Ramp, and Expensify.

Rippling is also integrating with systems that offer similar functionality to its own, such as time-and-attendance systems. The goal is to provide a seamless experience regardless of whether clients choose to use Rippling’s native tools or third-party solutions.