Who we spoke to for this case study:
- Jurren de Groot, Partner at Briddge
Briddge, a renowned legal and accounting services provider headquartered in Amsterdam is a trusted partner for multinationals seeking to establish or expand their presence in Europe.
With clients across 25 countries and various sectors, and services encompassing law, tax, accounting, HR, and payroll management, Briddge has positioned itself as a one-stop solution for companies looking to expand into the European market.
Especially companies headquartered outside the EU, lacking familiarity with local regulations, benefit from Briddge's payroll management services. By managing payroll on their behalf, Briddge enables its clients to focus their efforts on their core business, not having to worry about the complexities of paying employees across dozens of jurisdictions with different regulatory frameworks in a compliant and efficient way.
“Payroll processes are extremely important to our clients, it affects their employee experience - if things go wrong it can create big issues” – Jurren de Groot, Partner
The Challenge: Manual processes and lack of consolidation
Briddge operates two payroll teams: one focusing on the delivery of payroll processing in the Netherlands (for domestic and international companies), and an international team that focuses solely on the coordination and management of multi-country customers. Together, they manage the entire end-to-end process of their customers' multi-country payroll.
Working with multiple payroll partners, local payroll engines, and outputs, meant a lot of manual work for Briddge’s team. On top of that, there was no common technology stack across Briddge’s entire partner network. Some used very little technology while others used local market solutions. This meant documents were still being shared manually and processes, workflows, and deadlines were managed via email.
This led to errors and inefficiencies, and like many providers, Briddge found themselves being held back in various aspects of their payroll operations, a result of manual processes, disparate systems across different countries, and overall a low-tech environment. Moreover, these issues were impeding customer growth.
The lack of a centralized platform hindered the consolidation of payroll data, not only affecting Briddge's efficiency, but also the ability to provide comprehensive, data-driven insights to their clients.
"If we wanted to keep adding more clients, and larger ones, this was not the way." – Jurren de Groot, Partner
The decision-driver: Improving service to move up-market
As Briddge grew and moved upmarket, working with larger multinational companies, they saw that the demands from clients also changed: better insights, automation of manual processes, and stronger technology to enable better customer experience and at the same time drive internal efficiencies
Not only was the market evolving, their clients’ demands were too – and being able to meet these demands became the trigger for change.
“How can we keep moving forward? We knew we wanted to provide better, more streamlined, automated solutions to be able to service larger clients in multiple countries.” – Jurren de Groot, Partner
Driven by this vision of enhancing their service delivery and responding to their clients’ evolving needs, Briddge recognized that it was time to adopt a more streamlined and automated approach to payroll management.
In search of a solution that could allow them to do this, Briddge prioritized the need for a centralized platform that could seamlessly integrate with their existing partner landscape while also offering scalability and autonomy.
The solution: Simple, flexible and streamlined
Briddge explored the options on the market, looking for a ‘long-term solution that they believed in’. It was crucial for them that the platform be easy to use, easy to implement, and easy to present to clients while delivering significant value.
After discussing their needs with Marc-Oliver Fiedler, Payzaar’s CEO, they decided to start working with Payzaar, due to the simplicity and flexibility of the technology.
"It was straightforward, simple. Easier to manage and more insights both for us and our clients" – Jurren de Groot, Partner
With Payzaar's solution, Briddge gained access to a robust multi-country payroll bureau management platform which streamlined their processes, facilitated collaboration, and provided valuable insights.
Now, Briddge are able to leverage the technology to enhance their payroll production processes, resulting in greater efficiency and accuracy in their outputs while still maintaining ownership of all processes.
The impact (Clients): Better communication and collaboration
Since implementing Payzaar, Briddge has witnessed a significant transformation in their client interactions. The platform's centralized approach has facilitated clearer communication and access to information for their customers.
This has resulted in incidents being resolved 30% faster on average compared to pre-Payzaar.
"Clearer lines of communication with clients - everything is centralized and commented within the platform." – Jurren de Groot, Partner
Clients are happier to have more insights and details, and the platform has allowed them to be more efficient by streamlining data input and transformation during the pre-payroll stage. It has also made checks and validations easier by standardizing data and allowing the different stakeholders to review, catch errors, and fix them directly in the cloud.
Overall, the Payzaar platform has elevated customer experience by offering enhanced reporting capabilities, greater transparency, and improved collaboration.
The impact (Operations): Efficiency, accuracy and scalability
In addition to providing an enhanced customer experience, the platform has also had a significant impact on Briddge’s operations.
By centralizing all customer management, data management, communication, and approvals in one environment, Briddge has been able to speed up its processes and reduce errors.
This has translated into time savings of 30% to 40% during the processing stage, thanks to efficiency gains and a reduction in manual work.
Furthermore, by becoming more efficient, reducing manual intervention, and streamlining data flows between its team and its customers, Briddge has been able to become more diligent in checking and verification processes, resulting in a reduction in errors of up to 50%.
Overall, thanks to these time and cost savings, Briddge is now able to handle more customers without increasing resources, which has an enormous impact on its bottom line and profitability.
“It allows us to save time on payroll for our clients, which means we can service more clients with the same number of team members, enabling scalability for the company.” – Jurren de Groot, Partner
New-found scalability is allowing Briddge to acquire new customers faster, and to start attracting and servicing new, larger multinational companies.
This mix of technology and service not only strengthens Briddge's market presence, it also sets them apart from competitors who can’t offer the same technical capabilities or customer experience.
Looking Towards the Future
Looking ahead, the integration of Payzaar represents a pivotal moment for the company's payroll business. After a successful first year, that saw the initial rollout to a portfolio of select clients, Briddge is now in the process of deploying the platform to its entire payroll customer base.
The partnership between Briddge and Payzaar shows that by embracing technology and prioritizing customer-centric solutions, providers can streamline their operations, strengthen their offering and position themselves as market leaders.
