GOVPH

A local startup firm in Cebu developed a comprehensive and customizable system that would allow HR groups to devote more time to developing and planning programs related to career advancement, skills development as well as the creation of an ideal workplace for their employees. 

Called Payruler, this web-based application is tailor-fit for HR process automation of different businesses in the country. The project is supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) through a grant under the business incubation program. 

This innovation answers the common dilemma of the HR department that spends a great deal of their time on administrative tasks instead of actual strategizing, creating, and planning for the company and its most valuable resource.

Co-founder Timmy de Jesus said that Payruler would minimize or eliminate some clerical and manual work of the HR staff and allow them to focus instead on the role of being a strategic business partner.  

She shared that a study from Stanford School of Business indicated that 60% of the time of HR staff is spent on administrative tasks and other filing activities and only 40% is devoted to actual creation of strategies and planning for the company. 

“When we created Payruler, our overarching goal is to take care of all repetitive administrative things so that our HR people could focus more on strategic things,” said de Jesus in her interview in one of the episodes of ExperTalk Online that is broadcast in the DOSTv Facebook page last month.

Payruler has customizable modules that cover the employee’s life cycle. These are Hire for Recruitment, Identify for Employee Information, Track for Timekeeping, Compute for Payroll, Employee for Self-service, and Analyze for Analytics Purposes.

De Jesus shared that currently, Payruler has more than 100 companies in Metro Manila and Cebu that are now using and enjoying their services and platforms. 

Meanwhile, as most of the areas in Metro Manila and Cebu are still under the community quarantine which limits the movement of the people, Payruler’s web login feature has supported the work from home arrangement of their clients during the pandemic. 

De Jesus also shared that they are also planning to integrate a contact tracing app in their system called WeTrace. It is a community tracing app that can be used for patient mapping, case reporting, and location tracking. 

“Some of our clients are asking us when we go back to the office after all the work from home stuff, how can we ensure that our employees are safe? That is the reason why we would like to integrate WeTrace in our app to add another layer of protection of the employees of our client.” explained de Jesus. 

DOST’s role on Payruler’s growth

De Jesus shared that the essential part of their growth as a company when DOST helped them is to have a conducive environment for developing innovative and game-changing ideas. 

“DOST has been at different points in the life of Payruler. Aside from providing us our first home, they opened the doors for us in terms of opportunities to build game-changing products for our client through a grant they offered us,” said de Jesus. 

From 2018 to 2019, Payruler has received a research grant from the DOST-Technology Application and Promotions Institute (TAPI) under Technology Innovation for Commercialization (TECHNICOM) program.

Currently, the said company is housed at the Cebu Business Incubator in IT (CEBUNIT) in the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu that is also supported by the DOST- Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD). (By Allan Mauro V. Marfal, DOST-STII)