StackPilot and ELMO

StackPilot was founded by Gene Werry, who spent several years inside ELMO as a Business Development Manager across the Brisbane and Melbourne offices. Having helped more than 50 organisations adopt ELMO from the sales side, Gene saw the same pattern again and again: customers understood the value of the platform, but many were under-resourced and needed an extra pair of hands on their side of the table, not the vendor’s.

That gap became StackPilot. The business sits on the customer side of an ELMO implementation, mapping how an organisation actually operates and translating that into how the platform should be configured. 

We sat down with Gene to talk through how StackPilot came to ELMO, the work it delivers, and what a hand-selected implementation partnership looks like in practice.

Gene’s time at ELMO covered retail and financial services before he moved into the automotive sector, which is now StackPilot’s core vertical. The decision to leave and start a delivery business came from what he saw customers struggle with most.

“I’d helped over 50 clients sign up with ELMO and I knew how powerful it was. But speaking with customers, a lot of them were under-resourced and needed an extra pair of hands on the client side, not more vendor support. That was the opportunity.”

The model is deliberately hands-on. Rather than chase volume, StackPilot takes on a focused number of projects and gives each the time and attention it needs, so adoption is high and the implementation delivers real value from day one.

“A lot of the technical detail gets lost in translation. My job is to understand how a business actually ticks, then translate that into how ELMO should be configured so they get the most out of it.”

Patterson Cheney is one of Victoria’s largest family-owned automotive groups, with close to 950 people across multiple brands and sites. Before ELMO, the people function ran on a mix of spreadsheets and paper, with processes that varied site by site and reporting that was always around a month out of date.

The relationship started while Gene was still ELMO’s BDM for the account. The sales process ran for roughly three years, and the hardest part was never the technology. It was securing buy-in across every dealership, from dealer principals and general managers through to the executive team. ELMO’s configurability, the ability to tailor the system brand by brand rather than impose a single template, is what carried that decision across the line.

By the time configuration began, Gene had moved on to found StackPilot and already understood the business intimately, which set up an unusually deep starting point for the build.

“Before we configured anything, I’d go on site and map out exactly how each dealership operated. A lot of it was still paper. Getting that detail right up front is what kept the implementation moving.”

The Patterson Cheney rollout was a genuine three-way collaboration between the customer, ELMO and StackPilot, sequenced to keep an aggressive timeline on track.

StackPilot led the work on the customer side: data hygiene and uploads first, then detailed process mapping ahead of the configuration workshops. ELMO’s implementation team drove the build itself, with a project manager holding the timeline and follow-ups and the implementation consultants configuring recruitment, onboarding, performance management and learning management. With the processes and data sorted up front, that configuration moved quickly. 

From there the project moved into tailored training, adoption and final testing before go-live.

“It was a full three-way collaboration from start to finish. The ELMO project manager kept us on aggressive timelines, and the implementation team knew the system inside out. If something didn’t work exactly the way we wanted, they’d always find another way to get us there.”

The defining challenge was speed. A three-month go-live is ambitious for an organisation of this size, and all three parties knew it going in.

“Three months was the goal for a business this size, and that was aggressive. Being methodical before we touched the configuration, getting the data and the processes right first, is what stopped the rework and got us there.”

Patterson Cheney went live across recruitment, onboarding, HR Core, performance management, learning management and Insights in three months, considerably faster than most providers could have delivered.

For StackPilot, a successful implementation is not a system that is switched on. It is a system that people use.

“Success wasn’t just the platform being live. It was users logging in and actually completing their work in it. That’s what success looked like for Patterson Cheney.”

That outcome was engineered through training. StackPilot ran tailored, face-to-face sessions with leadership and managers across the dealerships, twice for every manager, so each could then train their own people. It took pressure off the HR team and set a clear expectation that the system was now the way work got done.

The impact is visible in the customer’s own results. Reporting that once took hours now takes seconds, and ELMO Insights has surfaced workforce risks the old spreadsheets never could, including a concentration of managers approaching retirement that reframed succession planning. As Daniel Waixel, Head of People and Performance at Patterson Cheney, puts it:

“StackPilot was a bit of a conduit. I was speaking in normal language, and they translated it into ELMO language. They had the time, expertise and capability that allowed me to get across my points while still doing my day-to-day job.”

StackPilot’s involvement did not end at go-live. Gene is still in contact with Patterson Cheney at least weekly, handling configuration changes as the business evolves, extending the Insights work that began late in the implementation, and starting on a built-in apprentice training program inside ELMO. The relationship has moved from project delivery into ongoing partnership.

StackPilot is a business built alongside ELMO, and Gene is candid about the comfort that comes from knowing the platform and the company from the inside.

What has made the partnership work commercially is how ELMO brings the right partner into the right opportunity. Rather than waiting until a deal is signed, ELMO has pulled StackPilot into the sales process on new automotive opportunities, where StackPilot’s vertical experience and a reference like Patterson Cheney add weight.

“They know which partners have which niche. What I appreciate is that they involve the right partner early, so I can understand the customer’s business before the project starts. It means I’m across the challenges and the people from day one, not playing catch-up after handover. It’s a real two-way partnership.“

Working closely with ELMO’s delivery teams also shifted how StackPilot positions itself. The face-to-face training and change management piece, originally a secondary part of the offer, is now central, precisely because it is the gap customers most often cannot fill on their own.

Asked what he would tell another consultancy weighing up the same move, Gene had some great advice for other partners.

“If you’re considering it, dive in. ELMO is a great company to work with. Whatever you need on a project there’s always a specialist on hand, and the partnership team look after you from start to finish.”

For Gene, the case comes down to three things. 

First, the people: there is always an ELMO specialist on hand and a partnership team that keeps you moving, which for a small firm taking on enterprise-scale rollouts is the difference between winning the work and walking away. 

Second, the commercial model: ELMO brings partners into opportunities early, so your industry knowledge helps win the deal and you build the customer relationship before delivery starts, instead of inheriting it as a subcontractor at the end. 

Third, room to grow: the services model spans advisory, implementation, integration and training, so a partner can own a niche, as StackPilot has in automotive, and build a real business on the platform while the program is still early.

StackPilot’s near-term focus stays where it has built its reputation: automotive and HR systems, where deep vertical knowledge lets Gene move quickly and add value a generalist cannot. The medium-term plan is to take the delivery playbook built alongside ELMO into new industries.

What makes that expansion realistic is the foundation underneath it. The face-to-face training and change management capability that began as a secondary offer is now central to how StackPilot wins and retains customers. And the ongoing Patterson Cheney relationship, from Insights through to a new apprentice training program, shows how a single well-run implementation keeps generating work long after go-live. As ELMO grows and signs more customers who need hands-on delivery, the partners doing that delivery grow with it.

“For now I’m focused on the automotive niche, but I’d love to work across any and all industries. It’s about continuing the journey alongside ELMO and seeing where I can make the biggest impact.”