HiBob CEO says Pento acquisition is 'significant' payroll services expansion

Market-leading HR platform, HiBob – the company behind Bob – has today announced the acquisition of Pento, the innovative cloud-based payroll automation platform.

The acquisition marks another growth milestone for the company – after securing $150M funding in September 2023.

In an exclusive interview with UNLEASH, Ronni Zehavi, CEO and Co-Founder at HiBob, explains how the move will enable to company to evolve, as well as the future benefits it will bring. He says: “At HiBob, our mission is simple: To create the best HR platform for the needs of today’s businesses.

“Recognizing the challenges of the fragmented payroll market in the UK and with ambitions to evolve our product portfolio, we thought about evolving Bob beyond payroll integrations.

“We looked around the UK market and discovered Pento, a payroll company that instantly stood out. They offer an innovative, SaaS-enabled self-service approach to payroll which was unique in the market and aligned perfectly to our technology principals at HiBob.”

Automating payroll to reduce errors and optimize HR staff

As a result of the acquisition, HiBob will bring significant enhancements to its HR software offering, including an ‘all-in-one’ experience to efficiently solve current payroll complexities.

Payroll traditionally, and by design, is often one of the most time-consuming tasks for HR which, without the help of software, is prone to human error – the results of which can have a huge impact on employees.

Being able to automate payroll will not only free up HiBob’s HR team time for higher-value tasks – maximizing operational efficiency – but it will also reduce mistakes.

Pento – which is headquartered in London – allows customers to reduce payment processing times from weeks to minutes for more than 400 customers while enabling HiBob to expand its modern approach to human capital management into payroll.

Speaking to the Pento team, we realized we already had over 100 overlapping customers, sharing a lot of the same values,” Zehavi adds. “This, together with the company’s proven track record and high integration rate with Bob, made it the perfect choice.”Speaking to the Pento team, we realized we already had over 100 overlapping customers, sharing a lot of the same values,” Zehavi adds. “This, together with the company’s proven track record and high integration rate with Bob, made it the perfect choice.”

What’s more, the platform provides accurate data, compliance, and self-service capabilities, which will positively impact employees. It will also help foster happier working cultures, with higher rates of productivity and greater retention rates due to the seamless integration and centralized data.

Pento’s offering will remain uninterrupted for the foreseeable and over time, will be seamlessly integrated into HiBob’s platform.

“It's an exciting time for HiBob,” Zehavi concludes.

“This acquisition not only marks a significant expansion of our services offering – with a move into integrated payroll – but it also represents a strategic step towards becoming a true one stop shop for all your HR and people management needs.”