Paycom has carved out a strong position in the human capital management market by championing a radical idea: let employees manage their own payroll data. Founded in 1998 in Oklahoma City by Chad Richison — who started the company at 27 with a single product and a relentless sales pitch — Paycom has grown into a multi-billion-dollar public company serving tens of thousands of businesses.
The company’s single-database architecture sets it apart from competitors that cobbled together their platforms through acquisitions. Every Paycom module — payroll, time and attendance, HR management, talent acquisition, talent management, and benefits — runs on the same codebase with the same data. Its flagship innovation, Beti (Better Employee Transaction Interface), flips the traditional payroll model by having employees verify and approve their own paychecks before payroll runs. This dramatically reduces errors and the administrative burden on HR departments.
Paycom went public in 2014 and has delivered impressive revenue growth ever since, driven by a direct sales model that bypasses brokers and resellers entirely. The company maintains a sales office in every major US market and builds long-term relationships with mid-market employers. Richison’s insistence on building everything in-house — rather than acquiring — gives Paycom a unified user experience that many competitors struggle to match. The company employs over 7,000 people, most of them based in its massive Oklahoma City campus.
