$25,000 became $500. With full control.

Every HR integration at OVG depended on ADP's Smart Quotation Request (SQR) process. HR (P&C) owned the SQR and acted as project manager for a project ADP actually controlled.

The typical industry pattern is 4 to 7 weeks just to scope and start an SQR project. Another 10 to 16 weeks of build. Plus roughly 3 weeks of testing. Roughly 20 weeks total per integration, with SQR projects typically running $10,000 to $25,000 in vendor fees, and no visibility beyond a static spec document.

The operational reality was harder than the timeline suggests. Communication from ADP slipped into a blame game when work was late. The assigned project services rep didn't know what was in OVG's system, so OVG ended up coaching the vendor through its own data.

New hires were sometimes assigned to the wrong company in payroll. Coordinators needed extensive Excel and vlookup skills just to translate iCIMS records into formats ADP could read. Every change outside the original scope was billable. The team paid for the privilege of fixing what the vendor didn't understand.

OVG evaluated other integration tools. Several would build integrations faster than ADP. None gave OVG control.

The intake from the People Systems team makes the distinction explicit: alternatives would still build the integration for you and ask you to wait two weeks for changes. Aragorn let the team build, change, and own the layer themselves.

First live integration: 1 to 2 weeks. No IT involvement. No consultants. Only the People Systems team.

OVG hires constantly across arenas, food and beverage operations, and venue staff. Every hire has to move from applicant tracking to payroll cleanly, on time, and without dropping data. At venues, payroll problems become customer-experience problems within days.

Before Aragorn, the team ran a report from iCIMS and translated every item to a code ADP could read. The work demanded extensive Excel skills. Coordinators were expected to know vlookups well enough to reconcile two data models in spreadsheets. End-to-end cycle time was about 3 weeks per batch.

After Aragorn, field mappings were configured in the platform. Run frequency moved from 'when we get to it' to hourly. Real-time error reporting was added so failed records surfaced within the hour, not on payroll day.

Peak hiring weeks see hundreds of new hires arrive in iCIMS. Hourly runs feed ADP throughout the week. The People Systems team watches the dashboard, fixes the rare mapping exception in minutes, and moves on.

Before Aragorn, OVG's People Systems team was not operating its own system. It was coordinating a vendor that operated the system. Every meaningful change required scoping with ADP's SQR team, a statement of work, vendor build, and roughly 20 weeks elapsed time. SQR projects in this category typically run $10,000 to $25,000 per integration.

Vendor changes are common in HR. Each one queued another SQR project at typical industry pricing and a roughly 20-week timeline. The constraint wasn't talent or strategy. It was an operating model that put control of People Systems' own layer outside of People Systems' hands.

Adding a new payroll mapping for a venue acquisition used to be an SQR project: scoping, vendor estimate, IT coordination, vendor fees, and roughly 14 weeks. Now it is a configuration change made by the People Systems team, tested in the platform, and live the same week. The 883 changes the team has made are not edge cases. They are how the function operates.