Week 1: Discovery & data audit
The first week is diagnostic. Our implementation team conducts a 4-hour workshop with your HR, finance, and IT leads to map your current state: which systems hold which data, how many entities are involved, what custom workflows exist, and what compliance constraints apply.
In parallel, we run an automated data audit on your exported HRIS, payroll, and ATS data. The audit identifies: duplicate records (typically 2–4% of any export), missing required fields (typically 8–12%), invalid values (e.g., termination dates before hire dates), and orphaned records (employees in payroll but not in HRIS).
The output of week 1 is a migration plan: a documented mapping of every field from your current systems to HiFive AI, plus a list of data quality issues that must be resolved before migration. Most clients resolve 80% of issues in week 1; the remaining 20% are handled during migration in week 2.
Week 2: Data migration & validation
Migration runs in three stages. Stage 1: bulk import of employee records, compensation history, and organizational structure. This is automated and takes 2–4 hours for a 200-employee company. Stage 2: validation. We run 47 automated checks comparing migrated data against source data; any discrepancy > 0.1% halts migration for manual review.
Stage 3: reconciliation. Your HR lead reviews a sample of 20–30 migrated records against the source system, signing off on accuracy. This human-in-the-loop step catches issues that automated checks miss (e.g., a compensation field that migrated correctly but lost its currency context).
Critical principle: migration is non-destructive. Your source systems remain fully operational throughout week 2. If migration fails or validation flags issues, we roll back and try again. No data is lost, no business operations are interrupted.
Week 3: Configuration & workflow setup
With data migrated, week 3 focuses on configuration. We configure: SSO via your identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace), role-based access permissions (who can see compensation data, who can approve terminations, who can run payroll), approval workflows (offer approval, compensation change, termination), and notification rules.
This is also when we configure the Ask AI semantic layer for your specific org. We map your custom fields (e.g., "cost center", "billing entity", "project code") to the reasoning engine so that queries like "show me fully loaded cost by cost center" return correct results.
Most clients have 5–15 custom workflows that need configuration (e.g., a unique contractor approval process, a country-specific onboarding checklist). We configure these in week 3, with your HR lead reviewing and signing off on each one.
Week 4: Parallel payroll run
Week 4 is the highest-risk week: we run HiFive AI payroll in parallel with your existing payroll system for one full cycle. Both systems calculate payroll independently; we compare the results line-by-line for every employee.
Typical parallel run results: 95–98% of calculations match exactly. The 2–5% that differ are usually due to: rounding differences in currency conversion (resolved by aligning rounding rules), benefit deduction ordering (resolved by configuring the correct sequence), or one-off adjustments in the legacy system that were not documented (resolved by re-entering the adjustment in HiFive AI).
The parallel run is gated: payroll does not go live in HiFive AI until your finance lead signs off that the results match to within an agreed tolerance (typically $0.01 per employee per cycle). If the tolerance is exceeded, we investigate, fix, and re-run. No payroll goes live with unexplained variances.
Week 5: Manager training & UAT
Week 5 is user acceptance testing. We deliver 3 training sessions: a 90-minute executive session for VPs and above (dashboard navigation, Ask AI queries, approval workflows), a 3-hour manager session for people managers (performance reviews, compensation changes, terminations), and a 60-minute employee session (self-service portal, document access, time-off requests).
During UAT, a sample of 10–15 users across roles tests real workflows: approve a time-off request, run a compensation change, query the dashboard for a specific KPI. Any usability issues are logged and prioritized: P1 issues (blocking) are fixed before go-live; P2 issues (annoying) are scheduled for week 6; P3 issues (nice-to-have) go into the backlog.
Training materials - video walkthroughs, written guides, quick-reference cards - are delivered to your internal wiki. The goal: every user has a resource they can consult without opening a support ticket.
Week 6: Go-live & hypercare
Go-live is typically scheduled for a Sunday to minimize disruption. Monday morning, all employees log in via SSO; the first payroll cycle runs the following week. We staff a hypercare team for the first 2 weeks: a dedicated Slack channel, 4-hour response SLA on all tickets, daily check-ins with your HR and finance leads.
Typical go-live issues: SSO configuration quirks (usually fixed in 1–2 hours), dashboard performance on slow connections (optimized via caching), and questions about specific workflows (answered via the hypercare channel). No data loss incidents in our 240+ implementations.
After 2 weeks of hypercare, we transition to standard support: 24-hour SLA on tickets, monthly check-ins, quarterly business reviews. Your dedicated customer success manager monitors adoption metrics and proactively reaches out if usage drops below expected benchmarks.
- •6-week timeline: discovery, migration, configuration, parallel payroll, training, go-live
- •Migration is non-destructive: source systems remain operational until validation passes
- •Parallel payroll run: 95–98% match rate typical; variances resolved before go-live
- •Training: 3 role-specific sessions (executive, manager, employee) with video + written materials
- •Hypercare: 2 weeks post-go-live with 4-hour SLA and daily check-ins