How Australia’s largest contractor payroll company made the switch to using Snapforms’ secure, Australian-based online forms solution
A form should be simple to use no matter how complicated the information it gathers.
It was this universal truth that prompted Ian Lindgren – Founder and Executive Chairman of PayMe Group, one of Australia’s leading contractor payroll and salary packaging consultants – to make the switch to Snapforms.
“Already we’ve had three users of our salary packaging form come back to us and say what an improvement it is.”
“No one gets excited about forms and in fifteen years no one had ever rung me to say your form looks great.
“But already we’ve had three users of our salary packaging form come back to us and say what an improvement it is, and how great it is just to be able to get in there, fill it in, upload the details and sign it without having to go through any other steps.”
After an injury in 2002 ended his 21-year career in the armed forces, Ian and his wife, Maria, established a modest consulting firm with twelve employees providing IT project management and business analysis services to the Department of Defence.
They soon realised that paying contractors properly was hard work, but they made sure their people were paid on a regular basis and wouldn’t be disadvantaged by the uncertain pay cycle most contractors experienced.
Their reputation grew and in 2005 they founded PayMe, turning over $600,000 in revenue in the first six months and then an incredible $9 million the next financial year.
Today, the PayMe Group comprises four separate businesses paying approximately 1,000 contractors at any one time and managing around 3,000 vehicles under lease.
So the need for lots of forms to gather all the information required from their clients is an inescapable aspect of running each business.
“The problem really came to a head when the pandemic hit and the majority of people were working from home,” Ian explains.
“Downloading the form, signing it and sending it back to us was impossible for some people because they didn’t have a printer.
“I needed to be able to have a solution that overcame the issue of people working from home during the pandemic…”
“Everything we do is in real-time and immediate so I needed to be able to have a solution that overcame the issue of people working from home during the pandemic and doing it in a way that was seamless (for the client).
“With our previous form provider, this typically took the client ten clicks compared to just two with Snapforms.”
“Snapforms saves them time, saves them clicks and mental effort. It’s the simplicity. People are so time-poor. A lot of people are actually working harder and longer than they were before the pandemic, so if you can help them save effort they get a positive experience out of what was normally quite a bland one.”
And then there’s the crucial issue of security.
“With our clients working for the government… out of the 1,000 people we paid, probably 250-odd have top-secret clearances and above.
“A lot of them work in cyber security roles, so they know as well as I do that when you send an email and put your financial details on it that’ll get stored on 10 or 15 servers.
“So we needed to have something secure and something in Australia.”
Snapforms stores all client data and information securely on our Australian-based servers, adhering to the Australian Privacy Principles, unlike overseas-based form providers.
Ian and his team tested the interfaces of several potential solutions, including Snapforms, in his quest to replace their existing overseas-based forms provider.
But it was Snapforms that stood out for Ian, particularly the tailored demo form we put together for Ian so he could get a hands-on feel for the functionality of our system.
“I was just impressed by Ron’s (Snapforms Technical Director) initial contact with me and the fact that I gave them an example of something that I did and they replicated and demonstrated the capability of the system.”
“Compared to what I was producing on Jotforms and compared to what I started producing on Snapforms, what Ron’s team did just showed us the capabilities.”
“We’ve decided to adopt Snapforms across our four companies…”
Implementation progressed smoothly, with Ian and his team currently working on embedding the many forms they have developed directly onto the company website.
“Being a project manager I knocked up a number of user requirements and our employees contributed to that as well so we had employee buy-in.”
Ian is now working towards deploying the Snapforms solution across all four of Payme Group’s companies.
“We’ve decided to adopt Snapforms across our four companies and take up a yearly subscription because not only have we had great feedback within PayMe, but our customers are now complimenting us on our forms.”
The fact that Snapforms is an Australian company that provides clients with locally-based support also appealed to Ian.
“I’m the CIO and not always available for my team. The team need to be able to get support locally and that’s what we’ve been able to do with Snapforms.”
Pictured: PayMe founders Maria and Ian Lindgren
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