Hi, I’m Alastair Brown form BrightHR and this is our Tech Talk.
BrightHR is a software-as-a-service product that our customers use to manage HR matters. That might be absence management, presence management, documentation control, health, safety, expenses, or clocking-in.
The problem we’re trying to solve with our software is that most businesses don’t have accurate records. Most businesses rely on word of mouth, post-it notes stuck on the side of cabinets, or there is a total lack of process. Our software allows our customers to bring processes together in one place. Industry data shows that employers can lose up to £522 per employee per year from absence.

We launched in 2015 with 30 employees in the UK and now have over 230 staff. Our staff and customers have proudly helped us become the leading digital HR software platform in the UK. We have offices in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland and serve over 800,000 users and 70,000 companies globally. Typically, our market is small to medium sized enterprises, so that’s customers with around 10 employees. Although we have a full range of customer numbers, our largest has close to 1,000 employees.

So, what is BrightHR’s USP? There are serval. We combine our service, so that means we provide software-as-a-service features, and we provide an absolutely world class consultancy service. We also leverage AI. We have a product called BrightHR Lightning that enables customers to get advice that is generated robotically. The useability of our software is world-class and we found that necessary to make it super simple for customers to use our product.

We’re also extremely responsive to customer needs. During the pandemic we pivoted, and we built out the furlough navigator which we achieved in 8 weeks. That is unheard of in a SaaS business to make brand new software that quickly. We also provide features alongside the core offering. So as an example, Bright Exchange is an exchange platform where customers can create adverts, offer discounts to all our customer base. That’s potent for a small business, it allows them to market themselves and provide their services and generate new business.

[Demo]
This is the dashboard. This is where you go to find out information about your employees. You can view people’s profiles, and see information about their employment, personal details and emergency contacts. This is adding annual leave for a member of staff. It enables you to choose the start and the end and add notes. This then creates a leave request that manager or administrator can then approve. This is the documents section. This is where you can upload documents that you want all of your employees to see, or where you can upload documents that are private to specific employees. Employees can also upload documents into this area, and you can set read receipts to show that they have read them, you can also set expiry, you can also share them with selected people.

This is our rota management tool this enables you to create rotas and add shifts to them. This is useful to make sure you have the right skills attending at the right time in the business. You’re able to colour code shifts, so you can group similarly skilled people together, and then you can publish the rota.

This is Lightning. Lightning is our AI solution for advice. It enables you to ask a question, and then our technology selects the most appropriate response. We also offer other recommended questions. If the topic is high risk, we warn you and we give you the opportunity to call an advisor. You can also share the answer with your colleagues, through email or any other platform.

This is Bright Exchange, our platform for advertising services. Customers can create adverts, offer discounts, and publicise them to the whole user base of BrightHR. You can search for adverts that are relevant by setting a region, or a service type.

Our software is mobile, agile, and extremely easy to use. Previously businesses may have used manual systems, may have been paper documentation, may have been post it notes for recording things. Obviously, that is very haphazard and likely to fail. Thanks to our highly transparent recording system, 60% of our customers have seen a reduction in staff lateness after two years of using our software.

So how do we know this is successful for our customers? Well, Feefo reviews say it all. Over 400 reviews were left last year with an average rating of 4.9. So, limitations in our software? Well it’s an extremely rich product set. However, we respond to customer feedback. We’re bound to find things in the future that we don’t currently support, so as an example we’re currently building BrightHire. That’s a feature to help our customers onboard people into their business.

Quirks in our software? We’ve been very early adopters of both AI and geolocation. We use geolocation in our Blip product. Blip is a product that allows you to clock-in. Previously we found clocking in systems susceptible to gaming. So, a friend clocking you in, or a QR code being scanned and copied elsewhere. We use geolocation to ensure that the person is where they say they are.

Our platform BrightHR Lightning provides responses to HR questions that uses AI. It learns as it goes, so the more questions it answers, the better it gets.

So where does our tech fit within the stack? Ok, so, we provide a rich application and typically when that goes within a customer’s environment they want to integrate. Because of the vast number of different systems that our customers use we haven’t chosen a bespoke integration, we’ve chosen an open platform. Our customers can get the data that they’ve put in in a common open format and use it anywhere else they want. We also support integration platforms like Zapier. This allows a customer to integrate with other systems. So, they’re open to build whatever they want without us having to build hundreds of different integrations.

BrightHR is a commodity platform. We offer a superb service at a really low cost of entry, £4.28 per employee, per month. We offer the service in three packages, Connect, Protect and Prime. The basic service gives you software, and as you go up the scale you get increasing levels of cover through advice, into insurance.

During onboarding you’ll have a one-to-one session with our onboarding team. They will help you get your data into the software, to understand the package and get the most out of the solution. Following onboarding we have a customer success team that ensures you have a smooth experience as you continue to use the software. When selecting a new software for your business make sure you thoroughly understand the problem you’re trying to solve, and make sure the solution solves that problem. Don’t listen just to the glossy marketing information, make sure you get underneath that feature and that it will solve the problem.

I’ve been Alastair Brown, the CTO at BrightHR, and thankyou for listening to our Tech Talk.