Employee management software Paycom files to go public, following competitor Workday

Workday went public. And it was good.

So it’s not surprising that another cloud-based human-capital management software company is going public.

Paycom Software, a profitable outfit based in Oklahoma City, today filed a form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to kick off the process of an initial public offering (IPO).

Companies can use Paycom’s software to sort through job applicants, manage when employees are clocked in, and keep track of employee pay and benefits, and handle payroll.

Workday offered some of these capabilities when it went public in October 2012. That day share price jumped 72 percent. With plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PAYC, Paycom could be hoping for similar success.

Note that Paycom is already doing quite well for itself, thank you very much. It reeled in more than $105 million in revenue last year, up from $75.4 million the year before, with most revenue coming from payment processing. The company has been profitable every year since 2011; last year net income came in at $7.7 million.

Paycom started in 1998, and as of Dec. 31 it had 840 employees and more than 10,500 customers. It runs its software from data centers in Oklahoma and Texas.

As the company acknowledges in the S-1, it doesn’t compete only with Workday. Oracle, SAP, and Paychex deal in the business of handling relations with employees. Meanwhile startups like ZenPayroll focus on the small-business market. Some competitors charge less than Paycom, the company wrote, but it has been diversifying into areas other than payment processing, which could keep it growing.