Customer Stories
The PUR Company takes a bite out of the healthy snacking industry
Streamlining its payroll processes with Powerpay has given The PUR Company its time back to focus on scaling the business, investing in its people and planning for the future.
Scaling a small business
The idea for PUR gum grew out of a marketing business that The PUR Company Founder and CEO Jay Klein started out of university. Back in May 2010, in the brand’s infancy, PUR had no distribution and one full-time employee in sales. In its first month, it launched in 33 retailers, and in the second month, they were up to 100 stores.
Today, it has grown to over 50,000 distribution points globally (in 2016, The PUR Company was named as one of Canada’s fastest growing companies by Canadian Business, with five-year revenue growth of 5496%), and a robust 60-person team in three countries, with capabilities in creative, sales, finance, business intelligence and warehouse operations.
What began as a healthy chewing gum company that “kicks aspartame” has scaled rapidly, introducing mints in 2015, and is now taking a bite out of the healthy snacks market with three flavours of popcorn.
Read more about Jay Klein’s entrepreneurial journey
Challenges in rapid growth
Two main challenges with PUR’s rapid growth were managing its growing team in a more structured way, and processing payroll efficiently. In many ways, these challenges were closely linked, in that they were draining energy from the business and its culture.
Operationally, the team was growing fast and the organization didn’t have the processes in place to onboard and set everyone up in the system properly. From an administrative standpoint, the finance team was spending too much time on payroll via manual entry – a full day that could be spent more productively on brand building and fueling the company’s growth. PUR needed a partner with a robust payment structure so employees could get paid accurately, on time and in full.
A payroll partner dedicated to delivering results
PUR was committed to switching its payroll system from a manual process to working with a partner to transform and streamline its payroll processing.
Founder and CEO Jay Klein notes that PUR wanted to invest in a result – that is, a partner that delivered a successful outcome (in this case, operational and payroll efficiency), so that the PUR team could focus on delivering its own successful outcome – creating great products for their consumers.
“When we bring on great partners, it gives us confidence to focus back on what we do well. It allows us to run our business operationally so we don’t have to spend too much time on administrative tasks,” says Klein.
Ceridian’s Powerpay stood out as a system that could help PUR continue to build its business and drive growth. PUR went live with Powerpay in January 2017 in what Klein called a “seamless transition” resulting in everyone being “very happy, paid on time and paid right.”
Reinvesting a business’ most precious commodity: time
The PUR team traded a cumbersome full day of payroll for a quick, seamless process with Powerpay. In a growing company, time is precious, and PUR’s leaders now have more time to invest in the business. With a structure firmly in place, the organization can look ahead and plan for the future, versus just the present.
The organization can also focus on its people, which is what has enabled it to grow at an accelerated rate and sustain that growth. That includes investing in employee engagement and wellness, and supporting employees in going outside of their comfort zones to drive creativity and innovation.
Fundamentally, implementing Powerpay has allowed PUR leadership to focus on scaling the company with the comfort that there will be no interruptions.
