.png)
Jim Jensen on WFM consolidation, payroll accuracy, frontline time collection, and why Traxxion is rebuilding workforce management from the ground up.
Jim Jensen didn’t leave the workforce management space because he ran out of things to do.
After decades helping build some of the most influential platforms in payroll and WFM, he stepped back because things had become predictable. The work had settled into maintenance mode. And for someone who thrives on fixing what’s broken, that wasn’t enough.
What brought him back wasn’t nostalgia. It was a shift in the market.
As Jim put it, “Nobody chooses to go into payroll. Payroll kind of chooses you.” His career reflects that reality. He joined Ultimate Software early, helped build it for more than two decades, then moved on to Dayforce to take another platform public. Over the course of 30 years, he wore nearly every hat imaginable, from product and development to partnerships and strategy.
But around 2021, with consolidation accelerating across HCM and workforce management, something changed.
“I like to come in and be disruptive and figure out what’s broken and fix it,” Jim said. “When things kind of got to status quo, it wasn’t as interesting.”
Over the last several years, workforce management has quietly narrowed. Independent players were acquired. Suites expanded. And while consolidation simplified buying for some, it also removed choice.
Jim laid it out: Workforce management is one of the most complex parts of HCM, sitting right next to payroll in terms of risk and operational impact. Yet as the market consolidated, a gap opened up.
“With the consolidation that was taking place in the market, there’s this vacuum created where there’s not a great SMB to mid-market enterprise WFM solution companies can feel safe to partner with,” he explained.
For partners and buyers alike, that safety matters. When WFM is bundled into a larger suite, it’s harder to find a partner that won’t eventually try to own the entire relationship. That vacuum is what ultimately led Jim back into the arena and became the foundation for Traxxion.
Traxxion was built around the frontline worker from Day 1.
“What we found is that we took an end-user-first, mobile-first approach, and then built back from there,” Jim said.
That decision shaped everything that followed. Instead of optimizing only for configuration power, the product focused on the lived experience of frontline employees. People clocking in at the start of a shift. People moving between locations. People who do not want to fight a system just to get paid correctly.
The response surprised even Jim. As he demoed the product to advisors, systems integrators, and operators, the reaction was consistent. The experience felt different. Simpler on the surface, more flexible underneath.
One of the clearest through-lines in the conversation was Jim’s emphasis on time data as the root of everything else.
“We actually posted something the other day about statistics showing that 80 percent of payroll errors start in poor time collection,” he said.
The implication is straightforward. If the data going into payroll is wrong, no amount of downstream processing can fix it. Even the best gross-to-net engine cannot overcome bad inputs.
“I could have the best gross-to-net engine in the world, but if my zero-to-gross is wrong, everything downstream is going to be wrong,” Jim explained.
That framing shifts how teams think about accuracy. Payroll errors are rarely payroll problems. They are upstream problems that show up late, when the cost of fixing them is highest.
Jim also shared a grounded perspective on AI, especially in a space where accountability matters.
“I like to call it assistive intelligence more than artificial intelligence,” he said. “We’re never going to have AI make decisions where there needs to be accountability.”
Instead, the goal is to help operators see what they should be paying attention to. Trends they might miss. Questions they did not know to ask. Signals that allow them to act earlier, not just react after something breaks.
Most teams, Jim noted, do not have data scientists on staff. They are forced to be tactical because the system does not surface what matters. Assistive intelligence changes that by helping teams move from hindsight to foresight.
Many of the most compelling examples Jim shared were simple.
A line of employees waiting to clock in before a shift starts.
A building services team that cannot install a physical time clock.
A home healthcare worker traveling between jobs all day.
Traxxion’s approach focuses on removing those small sources of friction. Geofencing that knows when someone is on-site. QR codes that cannot be misused. Route-based tracking that understands how work actually happens.
“It’s really about eliminating the friction for frontline workers to be able to do what they do,” Jim said.
When that friction disappears, accuracy improves. Adoption improves. And the rest of the system works better by default.
After four years away from operating, Jim had a simple test for returning. The problem had to be real. The market had to be large. And the work had to matter.
The consolidation in workforce management created that moment. Traxxion is the result.
Not a bolt-on. Not a shortcut. But a deliberate attempt to rebuild a critical layer of HCM with clarity about who it serves and why.
As Jim put it, that was enough to put his cleats back on.
