Built Together, Growing Together

There’s one moment that I look forward to every year. It’s the moment our Network Partners fill the ballroom at Connect, and when I look at the faces in that room, I see the people that helped build something so unique and innovative together. Every single person in that room is instrumental in what we’ve built — and what we’re going to build in the future.

Where We Came From

Our Partner Network was never just a go-to-market strategy — it’s a catalyst for something enduring. Network Partners do more than deliver technology. They guide clients through complex people decisions and build trust that compounds over years.

The isolved story began with a simple decision to help brokers navigate COBRA. This isn’t the kind of origin story that makes the Wall Street Journal, but one that has defined everything since: a genuine belief that people deserve better, and that a community of experts can deliver it.

When we built the Network, we saw firsthand that small business owners would trust local leaders in their communities with their most important decisions around ASO and PEO. While others bet on just tech, we bet on relationships and people. That bet has compounded in ways none of us could have imagined.

Pivotal Moments

In 2014, there were only three truly cloud-native HCM companies in existence: Paycom, Paylocity and isolved. The other two went public. Suddenly, they had war chests we couldn't match. If we couldn’t outspend them, we’d have to outmaneuver them.

So we made a bet. Instead of chasing the street, we went to payroll service providers. We started relationships with local firms who knew their clients the way we knew ours. We asked them to grow with us. Ninety days later, what started as a bold pilot became a solid strategy.

Then Obamacare hit. ACA reporting became mandatory and most competitors couldn't produce it. But we could—and the network didn’t just grow, it took off.

Changes in the market kept coming. ASO came next, then PEO. Each time, we had the same instinct: find the path that deepens the relationship instead of commoditizing it.

Fast forward 12 years and the IPO market is shakier than ever. Companies that once chased roadmap valuations are now struggling to prove long-term profitability. Every HCM vendor that bet on the stock market is cutting services to keep their balance sheet clean. It’s great for investors, but terrible for customers.

Meanwhile, the value of our Partner Network keeps growing. Partners deliver customer feedback, excellent service and local presence where it matters. And isolved is a profitable, thriving business through one of the most uncertain economic periods in modern history. It was a long shot — and it worked. It reinforced our values and set the stage for our future.

Today our Partner Network is 247 strong, a true force multiplier for our collective growth and for every member individually.

The Power of What We’ve Built

We didn't have a master plan for where this would go.

What we had was a group of people who believed in what we were building and showed up every day to prove it. Our partners were a massive part of that. They took a chance on us when it wasn't obvious, and we grew together because of it.

You've introduced us to the majority of the ecosystem partners we're announcing this week. The marketplace we've built together, whether it be workforce visualization, voluntary benefits, language translation, health spending or IT management, is something our competition just can't replicate. Not because of the technology but because of the relationships that back us.

That's always been the point. Show me your partners and I'll show you your future.

What’s Ahead in AI

A lot of competitors have made AI a headline or a logo. For isolved, AI isn’t a chatbot: it’s a way to make meaningful changes in HR. Think payroll errors caught before they happen, benefits enrollment that guides every employee and compliance signals that surface before they become problems. That’s what a Platform of Action does.

AI agents are already running inside American businesses without oversight, without governance and without accountability. That is a workforce problem. And managing a workforce, from onboarding to offboarding, on a single system of record, is exactly what isolved has always done. Tomorrow, in Kelli Rico’s product keynote, she will talk about what it looks like when we build a platform designed to enable HR to truly manage their workforce.

Influence, Amplified

The theme of this year’s Connect is Influence Amplified. That’s what happens when advisors show up with the right knowledge, the right tools and the right ecosystem backing them up. If you’re a Network Partner in Vegas with us this week, we know you’re going to have an amazing time.

Forty-seven sessions. Twenty-eight continuing education credits — 14 HRCI, 14 SHRM. Exclusive roadmap previews, hands-on platform enablement and peer conversations across the partner community. Kelli Rico’s Day 2 keynote on the future of workforce management; The Benefits Inflection Point, a panel led by Barry Gauch on why the benefits conversation with clients has never been more urgent; a fireside chat between Pragya Gupta and World Cup champion Julie Foudy on building something that had never existed before; and a closing session with John O’Leary, author of On Fire, who at age nine overcame immense odds and has spent the decades since teaching others how to live with perspective, purpose and possibility. What a week we are going to have! If you’re attending the event, three simple things will help you get the most out of your time:

• Engage. Talk to us. Talk to each other. Share what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing from clients, what’s working and what isn’t. The more we share, the stronger isolved becomes.

• Grow. Forty-seven sessions is a lot of room to stretch. Lean into what you don’t already know, on sales, operations and the platform. Leave sharper than you arrived.

• Build. Build your business, your expertise and the relationships that will carry all of us forward. The partners who win the next chapter will be the ones who showed up and made the most of this time.

Connect is my favorite week of the year — not because of the agenda or the venue, but because of the people in the room. Network Partners come to strengthen their influence, deepen their expertise and leave ready to guide the complex decisions their clients are counting on them to navigate. That’s not just a partner. That’s a strategic force.

See you out there.
Todd