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TPC, co-founded by Jeff Hunter, is on the Inc. 5000 for two years running.
SBJ photo by Wes Hamilton
TPC, co-founded by Jeff Hunter, is on the Inc. 5000 for two years running.

Business Spotlight: A Vision for Human Resources

Posted online

Seven years after the landmark Affordable Care Act was signed into law, human resources firms are still reaping the benefits of added regulations in the marketplace.

Last summer, a veteran Springfield payroll services firm went after the HR management market share, and officials say it’s paying dividends there, too.

The Payroll Co. capitalized on the law changes to form a subsidiary called TPC Vision. It centers on HR management, in short, because TPC officials found the new regulations put unwieldy pressure on HR functions in offices where many didn’t have the expertise to keep up.

“Our main headache was we didn’t really have an HR person,” says Alisha Young, the office manager at TPC Vision client TeleComp in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Like many small businesses, TeleComp’s owners held the net to catch the HR compliance responsibilities. The problem TPC identified was that owners were overburdened, and they’re typically marginally qualified for the work.

“HR regulations being piled on business owners amid ACA was kind of that last brick,” says Todd Linton, a co-owner and sales manager at TPC. “There’s just a lot more HR regulations today than there were in the 1990s or 2000s.

“We work with a company as their HR expert.”

Young says TeleComp signed on in December and now the firm is working with TPC Vision to update job descriptions, hiring and firing policies, and its employee handbook.

“That hadn’t been updated in 10 years,” Young says of the manual for staff. “Things like that have been put on the backburner.”

Not anymore.

A key cog in the TPC Vision service is an experienced HR executive. Enter Stephanie Cumley.

She came over from Ollis/Akers/Arney, where she served as a human resources consultant, and prior to that was HR director for Southern Bank.

Linton says Cumley joined TPC in August 2017 to help put together the plan, so that clients’ payroll and accounting solutions could integrate with the developing HR platform.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management, HR professionals are involved with several reporting requirements under the ACA, including employee notifications of company health insurance and the federally subsidized exchanges, a summary of benefits and coverage, and IRS reporting.

“Financially, it’s hard to go hire that person,” Linton says, particularly for companies with less than 100 employees. “We’re able to provide the expertise.”

With about 10 clients on board since TPC representatives began selling the service at the start of the year, Cumley and her team are often on-site performing HR audits, trainings on sexual harassment and other legal office matters, or guiding strategic activities, such as salary benchmarking.

Systemwide, TPC has 1,200 clients in all 50 states, says co-owner and President Jeff Hunter.

Hunter and accountant Greg Kollmeyer founded the company in 2001. Kollmeyer, who continues to run certified public accounting firm Kollmeyer & Co. LLC, serves TPC as vice president over the tax department. Hunter oversees operations.

Outside of Springfield, TPC has a presence in Kansas City, as well as in Bentonville and Little Rock, Arkansas.

Prior to the TPC Vision launch, the company already had been on a sizable growth curve.

TPC has placed in the Inc. 5000 the last two years, climbing to No. 3,476 in 2017 on $4.1 million in 2016 revenue and 90 percent three-year growth.

The trajectory continued last year, when Hunter says $5 million annual revenue marked a 22 percent annual growth rate. TPC Vision is positioned as the vehicle for the next phase.

With the addition, TPC also moved its software platform to a cloud-based human capital management solution that combines payroll, timesheet management, recruiting, paperless onboarding and the human resources information system.

“We can even automate the general ledger for companies,” Linton says, adding the integrated system can handle companies with more than 1,000 employees, previously TPC’s ceiling. “This solution will process a payroll in a matter of minutes regardless of the number of employees. It’s a real-time scenario.”

TeleComp, a communications technology firm, is on the smaller side with 28 employees, but Young says growth projections are pegged at 40 employees next year. The firm has hired three and let one employee go since Jan. 1, she says. With each personnel change, HR components are critical.

“The main thing that helped me was the onboarding for the new employees,” Young says of the now mostly paperless process. She says new employees log on to the TPC Vision website and complete paperwork online to create digital records. “And it automatically enrolls them into our payroll system.”

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