Senior HCM, Payroll & HR Transformation Women-Owned & Led

Your program deserves
senior leadership
that stays engaged
and tells you the truth.

Most firms present the picture they think you want to see. The Cadence Partners gives you the accurate one, and stays engaged throughout to ensure your program reaches the outcome it was meant to achieve.

What you can count on
Objective guidance grounded in 30 years of delivery experience
Senior principal involvement from kickoff through stabilization
Acquisition integration expertise for organizations in active growth mode
Your organization's long-term interests, always
30+ Years Experience
25+ Years HCM
100% Senior-Led
30+
Years in HR and HCM
25+
Years HCM Implementation
100%
Senior-Led Delivery, No Junior Handoffs

Honest senior guidance, delivered in cadence.

The Cadence Partners is led by Leslie Kinney, who started her career inside HR, not consulting. She has been the Recruitment Specialist, the Benefits Coordinator, the HRIS analyst, the person on the receiving end of a system decision made without her input.

That experience shapes every engagement: genuine respect for the people whose work lives inside these systems, and the honesty to tell organizations what they actually need to hear.

Honest assessment and disciplined execution. Both. Every time.

Most programs fail not because the problems were invisible, but because the right people were not in the room at the right moments. We identify those moments, bring the decision makers to the table, and ensure the program moves forward with the clarity and commitment it needs to reach the finish line.

We work with organizations running single systems and those managing the complexity of multiple acquisitions simultaneously. Whether integrating a newly acquired company, building a repeatable M&A playbook, or untangling a patchwork of systems left behind by years of growth, the discipline and platform depth are the same.

Honesty without execution is just a difficult conversation. Execution without honesty is how programs fail quietly until they fail loudly. The Cadence Partners delivers both, in cadence with your program from the first assessment through stabilization.

She has truly been the best consultant I have had in a very long time. Her eye for detail and personable way of delivering change has been a big success for our organization.
Michelle Bivans
Vice President and CHRO, DRH Health
Senior presence, not senior oversight
Leslie is the practitioner on every engagement. Clients have direct access throughout, not through an intermediary.
Independent, vendor-neutral guidance
No software affiliations, no referral arrangements. Our recommendations reflect your environment and your objectives, without the influence of commercial relationships.
Discipline and documentation
Delivery means the organization can sustain what was built. That requires documentation, knowledge transfer, and trained teams, not just a working system on go-live day.
The right people at the right moments
We know when a decision needs to be made and who needs to make it. Getting the right stakeholders to the table at critical junctures is what moves programs forward.
Featured Perspective · 2026

Built Over Years,
Not Generated from a Prompt.

What AI can change in enterprise systems implementation, and what it cannot. An honest take from someone who has watched every technology cycle in this industry since 1999, and who asked AI to argue against her own position before writing a word.

AI & HCM Data Governance Senior Judgment
Read the Article

"AI will not eliminate the people who implement enterprise systems. It will restructure which ones are indispensable and raise the bar for what they deliver."

Leslie Kinney · Founder and Principal
Request the full whitepaper →

Six practice areas.
One standard of delivery.

Three areas where The Cadence Partners is the reason clients engage. Three that follow naturally once we are in the room. Acquisition integration is woven throughout, the same discipline applies to all six.

Lead Practice
Program Recovery and Stabilization
When a program has lost momentum and leadership has lost confidence, an independent senior assessment changes the trajectory.
Strategic Entry Point
HCM Conversions, Upgrades & Acquisition Integration
Your implementation partner is accountable for delivery. The Cadence Partners is accountable for the outcome. This includes organizations managing active acquisition activity, from single integrations to repeatable M&A playbooks.
ServiceNow Practice
ServiceNow Integration and HRSD
ServiceNow connected to your HCM environment becomes the front end employees use to get help from HR and payroll. We own both sides of that integration so the systems work as one.
Implementation
HCM and Payroll Implementation Leadership
Senior principal-led delivery from discovery through go-live across Infor GHR, Lawson S3, Workday, Oracle Fusion Cloud, and ServiceNow.
Advisory
Technology and Platform Advisory
Vendor-neutral guidance on platform selection and implementation risk. No preferred platforms. No commercial affiliations.
Payroll
Payroll Transformation Advisory
Strategic guidance on payroll environment assessment, transformation planning, and vendor selection, engaged before the RFP.

Cadence is not just our name.
It is how we operate.

I
Assessment
An honest, senior-level review of where the program actually stands, gaps, risks, root causes, documented and presented to leadership directly, without filtering through the existing program team or implementation partner.
II
Program Setup
Structure, staffing, and clear milestones. The right decision makers aligned on what the program requires before execution begins. Most recovery efforts skip this step. We do not.
III
Delivery in Cadence
Structured rhythm, purposeful meetings, measurable deliverables, transparent reporting. Status reflects reality. When a program is at risk, leadership hears it from us before they hear it from the implementation partner.
IV
Go-Live
Senior oversight at every gate. The Cadence Partners does not appear at key milestones and disappear between them.
V
Stabilization
Recovery is not complete at go-live. We stay through the stabilization period to ensure the organization can sustain what was built. The engagement ends when you are genuinely stable, not when the contract term expires.

30+ years in business, HR and HCM
across the platforms you are actually running.

On-prem or cloud. Single system or a patchwork from years of acquisitions. Moving to a new platform or stabilizing the one you are on. We have worked in these environments at the senior level and understand their complexity from the inside.

Infor GHR
On-prem and CloudSuite
Lawson S3
Versions 7 - 10, HCM and Payroll
Workday HCM
Transformation and Migration oversight
Oracle Fusion Cloud
Including PeopleSoft migrations
PeopleSoft
Legacy environments and migration paths
Ceridian
Conversions and migration paths
ServiceNow
HRSD and HCM integration
ADP
Integration and migration support
Complex and hybrid environments
Multi-system, post-acquisition, on-prem alongside cloud, and environments no single vendor fully understands.

Ready to talk through your situation?

Every inquiry answered within one business day. No pitch, just a direct conversation.

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