Metafora is a management consulting and technology delivery firm focused on the
transportation, logistics, and supply chain industry. They engaged with Work Friendly initially to cover the parental leave of their Director of HR, then extended our services for an additional 6 months. The greatest accomplishment Work Friendly had during the partnership was the creation of automation in HR processes like recruitment, onboarding, payroll + benefits, and more through the implementation of Rippling, an all-in-one HR + IT platform.
Metafora was established initially as CarrierDirect in 2011, when they started solving problems as outsourced sales support connecting regional LTL (less than truckload) carriers and large 3PLs (third party logistics). Having worked at the intersection of trucking and logistics, customers began asking the CarrierDirect team how they could run their businesses better. As the company grew, CarrierDirect kept seeing incomplete business strategies without technology and vice versa. To better serve the needs of the transportation, supply chain and logistics industry, CarrierDirect also started building software for their customers in 2016.
In January 2022, CarrierDirect launched their rebrand and new name Metafora, which means “transport” in Greek.
Quickly after launching the engagement with Metafora, Work Friendly consultant, Kelly Fitzgerald, observed the lack of HR automation and efficiency in most processes related to the employment journey. Specific areas and opportunities for improvement included:
Kelly observed the above challenges and opportunities during the first month of the engagement, as well as heard first hand through interviewing the current People team members. Kelly ran a sample hours analysis for the total time it took to hire someone and onboard them appropriately at Metafora. Found that on average from offer letter to the new hire’s first paycheck, it was taking the team between 4-5 hours per hire due to all of the manual processes and lack of automation. Also noted that none of the current HRIS systems would “talk” to each other, as there was no integration.
The solution was to dive into a project alongside the Head of Technology at Metafora, who had also identified that there was a general lack of IT + HR automation and inefficient use of technology. The project team, led by Kelly, demoed 7 HRIS platforms together. They narrowed down to their top three and through comparing and contrasting must-haves and “nice-to-haves”, They landed on Rippling as the final choice as it solved the majority of the current HR + IT technology needs.
The implementation of Rippling was broken down into 5 parts and took about 60 days total to fully complete. (Implementation averages about 2-4 weeks usually, but it took a bit longer due to the fact that Metafora was also migrating payroll over from ADP and wanted a clean break for tax reporting purposes). The implementation steps were as follows:
The rollout to the Metafora team was very easy, as Rippling provides a full library of rollout tools such as videos, guides, and sample communications that are ready to use.