The hurdles cleared, Kronos president Paul Lacy to retire

Email|Print| Text size – + By Hiawatha Bray

Globe Staff / February 6, 2008

Paul Lacy always meant to retire before age 60. He didn't quite make it, but the president of Kronos Inc., the Chelmsford human resources technology firm, now says the time has come. A search is underway for Lacy's replacement, and he expects to step aside by June.

"I was compelled to stay around longer than I had planned to," said Lacy, who turned 60 in October. He's had to oversee a host of major changes at Kronos, a leader in software for tracking employee working hours and activities.

In June, the company went private in a $1.8 billion acquisition by Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Lacy also oversaw the October acquisition of privately held Deploy Solutions Inc. of Newton which makes software to help companies hire and retain qualified employees. Combined with the 2006 purchase of Oregon-based Unicru, the deal made Kronos a leader in hiring-decision software.

Lacy also moved Kronos into key overseas markets. Shortly after the company went private, it acquired Captor, a Belgian maker of human resources software.

Kronos has also opened operations in China and India, where booming companies are finding it hard to hire and retain well-trained workers.

"They are the leader in the workforce management space," said Christa Degnan Manning, research director at AMR Research Inc. in Boston. Manning said Lacy deserves much of the credit for growing the company from revenues of $26 million 20 years ago to $662 million in 2007. "He certainly helped to get the company to where it is today," she said.

"The war for talent is heating up worldwide," Lacy said. "The international market is incredibly strong for us right now."

Lacy joined Kronos in 1988, when the company was mainly known for making time clocks for tracking employee attendance. The company now makes digital timekeeping hardware, as well as an array of software-based products to manage employees.

"It's one of the few companies that has stood the test of time," said Jason Averbook, chief executive of Knowledge Infusion Inc., a human resources consultancy in Minneapolis. "It's graduated from the manufacture of the time clock to the Internet."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.