Paycor

production window in which to take in the data,
generate checks, process secure direct deposits, and
handle wire transfers to banks. “A 12-hour period
each week—from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday—is our ‘get it done’ time,”
says Kevin Armour, Paycor’s chief technology officer.
Growing the business depends on IT
Paycor is growing at 15% to 20% per year, primarily
by adding new clients and sales offices as well as
by increasing the size of the companies it serves. The
company plan moving forward calls for doubling
revenue every three years.
In the summer of 2010, Paycor knew that to keep
up with growth they needed to upgrade their IT
infrastructure. Armour says, “On busy days we were
tapping out on capacity, running our existing servers
at 75% or 80% utilization. We needed to keep
utilization much lower. We needed headroom
to keep growing.”
They also needed more computing horsepower to
maintain the superior client service that is the heart
of Paycor’s business philosophy… and that provides
the competitive edge driving their growth. Dedicated
service associates know their clients by name and
understand their businesses, personally taking their
calls and getting them the answers they need.
“Our service model is responsive, one-to-one service,”
says Armour, “and our associates’ ability to respond
depends on our IT infrastructure.”
And there was a sense of urgency: It was already July,
and any upgrade had to be completed by the end of
November to lock down the systems in time for the
peak loads generated by year-end tax reporting.
Choosing the ProLiant DL980
For most of its history, Paycor has relied on HP
technology and on HP partner Agilysys Technology
Solutions Group. “Our Agilysys rep understands our
applications and how the equipment will be utilized,”
says Armour, “so he could propose an application-
driven solution.” Agilysys recommended the HP
ProLiant DL980 Server, scheduled to be available by
fall 2010, and even set up a visit for Paycor with the
DL980 development team in Houston.
Before committing to DL980 servers, Armour and
his team looked at the benchmarks of competitive
systems, including some IBM servers. “Nothing we
saw made us change our minds,” says Armour. “It was
almost impossible to consider competitors after our
great success with HP. And with Agilysys assuring us
that the DL980 was just around the corner, we had no
need to do a competitive bake-off.
“We are getting comments about the
system being ‘a lot faster.’ Some large
database downloads from starting
new clients that used to take 10 minutes
now take half that time. Overall, I think
that downloads are actually more
than 50% faster.”
– Kevin Armour, chief technology officer,
Paycor, Inc.
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