Post by Brett Ungashick

Rippling made two announcements last month that would each qualify as a major roadmap story for most HCM vendors. They launched them days apart. First came Business Banking, including a checking account connected directly to Rippling Payroll. The most interesting feature this unlocks is same-day payroll. Companies can hold onto their cash longer, make changes until 1 pm on payday, and fix certain mistakes without running a second payroll. Then came the bigger swing: Rippling's Data Cloud. Rippling wants to pull information from CRM, Finance, support, and other systems into one business intelligence layer. Their advantage is that most business questions eventually come back to people. Which sales teams ramp fastest? Which managers have the most turnover? What changed inside a team before performance declined? Answering those questions requires more than business data. It requires worker identity, reporting structures, historical changes, and permissions. Rippling already owns much of that context. Business Banking takes them deeper into the CFO’s office. Data Cloud puts them in competition for the CIO’s attention. My hunch is that Business Banking will resonate most with small businesses and startups. But Data Cloud has the potential to make business intelligence a standard mid-market purchase, rather than something reserved for large enterprises.