The Company

Sapporo-Stone Brewing, one of the largest U.S. breweries, produces the #1 selling Asian beer brand in the country and the beers that defined the craft beer revolution. It brews, markets, and sells all of Sapporo’s beers in America while upholding Stone Brewing’s legacy of innovation and hospitality through their Tap Rooms and Stone Brewing World Bistro and Garden locations. Committed to sustainability and community, the company supports local initiatives and eco-friendly brewing practices. Passion, innovation, and excellence define their craft.

Client Goals

Turnover is a natural aspect of any organization, especially those with frontline workers. While it presents challenges, it also creates opportunities for growth and innovation—particularly in service-based departments like human resources and information technology, which are often significantly impacted by turnover. Our client sought to enhance collaboration between these departments, streamline onboarding, job transitions, and offboarding processes, and integrate disparate platforms to minimize manual efforts and reduce data entry errors.

Our Role

With separate and disconnected HRIS and IT identity platforms, HR manually entered new hire, job/title changes, and employee separation data into their systems, which then had to be re-entered into IT tools. With dozens of employees joining, being promoted, and leaving each week, both departments faced an overwhelming workload. Citrin Cooperman stepped in to assess the situation, analyze business processes, and evaluate the capabilities of existing tools, to develop an integration plan that reduced manual effort and streamlined operations.

Key Challenges

Human Resources had long-term contracts with their HRIS provider, Paylocity, and IT was deeply invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, including Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory). Although third-party identity providers were considered, they were ultimately not cost-effective. Native integrations between Paylocity and Microsoft offered only single sign-on functionality and lacked an out-of-the-box solution to streamline the onboarding and offboarding processes identified in the assessment.

Our Approach

Citrin Cooperman integrated Paylocity with Microsoft platforms using scripting and Power Platform, automating employee data transfers and reducing manual workload. New hires received accounts, licenses, group assignments, and secure onboarding notifications. Job changes synced automatically, ensuring accurate titles and permissions, while offboarding streamlined account deactivation and manager notifications for continued access to files and emails, even accommodating sensitive terminations. This seamless integration improved efficiency, minimized errors, and enhanced the overall employee management process.

Key Results

Human Resources department saved time by eliminating manual data transfers, reducing errors, and improving efficiency. IT department, no longer needing extra staff for onboarding and offboarding, reallocated resources to more strategic initiatives. The successful integration not only streamlined operations but also led to its expansion across other critical applications, further enhancing automation and overall business efficiency.

Client Quote

”Citrin Cooperman proved to be liquid gold in assisting us with automated integrations between Paylocity and Microsoft. With the expanded integration into other applications such as Klaviyo and GoTab, we’ve managed to save the team thousands of hours every year. Cheers!“

- Neal Butcher, Senior Director of Information Technology

To learn how Citrin Cooperman can help, please contact Zach Saltzman at zsaltzman@citrincooperman.com.