noun_Email_707352 noun_917542_cc Map point Play Untitled Retweet Group 3 Fill 1

Three ways to help your mid-market company grow

Is your company growing? Do you know that the right HCM and Financial Management system can help you improve your efficiency, make data-driven decisions, attract and retain the best talents?

Thorbjorn Nielsen / June 01, 2021
Watch a webinar to learn more!

In Europe, the mid-market makes up a small percentage of total companies (ranging from a low of 1.2 percent in Germany to 1.7 percent in France), yet generates about one-third of private sector revenue and employs about one-third of each country’s workforce, according to a report by ESSEC Business School and GE Capital.

If you’re helping lead a mid-market company (or a smaller company hoping to become one), this data demonstrates not only the significant value your sector contributes to the global economy but the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead for continued growth.

What will it take for your organization to reach its next level of success, whether that’s achieving financial goals, geographic expansion, or moving beyond the mid-market to join the big leagues?

The answer lies within three critical areas:

  • how efficiently your company operates
  • how quickly you can adapt to change
  • and how successfully you recruit and retain talent.

Operational Efficiency

One of the mid-market’s biggest growth challenges is complexity around administrative tasks and back-office functions, such as payroll and accounts payable.

Often, the problem is not having the right systems in place (or any real systems at all, causing these companies to rely on manual processes). As a result, employees end up creating and developing processes that use spreadsheets and other applications across many disconnected systems, which introduces the risk of data inconsistencies and errors.

BlaBlaCar, the world’s leading long-distance ridesharing service headquartered in Paris, was challenged by increasing complexity and administrative work as it expanded globally. Too much time was spent on manual, time-consuming processes such as extracting and reconciling data from multiple systems.

Moving to a cloud-based financial application enabled BlaBlaCar to standardize financial processes and improve decision-making. As an innovative organization expanding rapidly into new markets, it needed a standard set of financial processes across many regions and the ability to add new entities quickly. BlaBlaCar now has a single source of financial data that key stakeholders can access in real-time, enabling them to make critical, in-the-moment decisions regarding the organization’s future.

Elekta, a rapidly growing multinational company headquartered in Stockholm and a pioneer in the treatment of cancer and brain disorders, previously used a number of different HR systems that made simple tasks very challenging. “Even confirming the basics, such as how many employees we have, was difficult,” says Raymond L’homme, global HR business application manager.

To support its growth plans, the company replaced more than 20 disparate systems with a single cloud-based human capital management system, which unified processes across the company. “The biggest advantage is one system, which is huge for our global managers,” says L’homme. “We have the same processes, the same look and feel. If we want to increase salaries, it’s the same process in China as it is in Sweden.”

imagelckkn.png

Adapting to change

In today’s environment, you have to be aware and ready to respond to change, whether it’s identifying potential disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, or competitive threats, complying with new regulations, or keeping up with evolving customer expectations.

That requires you to adopt a mindset of continuous planning, so you can adjust as conditions change. Traditional planning approaches such as static annual budgets no longer make sense.

Cloud-based planning systems—especially those that leverage data across operations in one system—have changed the game when it comes to data and analytics.

Consolidating HR and finance into one system of truth allows companies to capture both the content and context of everyday business events to deliver financial, operational, and management reporting from the same set of data in real time. This significantly improves the quality of data and reporting and gives you better insights into your business for planning.

It also provides a great advantage when it comes to planning and executing growth strategies. People are often a company’s biggest cost, and having real-time metrics such as headcount, costs, revenue, and cash flow can help you better understand performance, identify issues, and adjust and change when it matters.

Recruiting and retaining talent

Developing more formal talent planning and management processes may feel beyond many midsize companies reach. Many work with several obsolete applications across HR, talent, benefits, payroll, and recruiting, which takes considerable time and resources to manage and doesn’t provide the foundation and capabilities needed to support more effective talent management practices.

However, advances in technology are now making it easier for midsize organizations to build out more sophisticated talent capabilities. Cloud-based systems that bring together human capital management, talent, recruiting, and learning in a single system enables companies to streamline these processes, reducing the amount of time spent working manually between systems.

Having a single source of truth across these functions also provides greater visibility into overall costs and performance of people. As the organization grows and expands, you can answer questions such as: are my best people working on my most critical initiatives; where do I find the best talent; who are my retention risks; where are the gaps in the leadership pipeline; and what talent is contributing most to revenue?

Unibail-Rodamco, Europe’s leading listed commercial property company, chose to transition its HR operations to the cloud to support its presence in 12 countries and drive future growth. “As we prepare for the future, it is important that we adopt an HR system that can support fast growth and change while also giving us deeper visibility into our workforce globally,” says Sylvain Montcouquiol, chief human resources officer at Unibail-Rodamco.

The mid-market serves a great need in the world economy, fueling jobs, innovation, and growth. While this group faces unique challenges, advances in technology and evolving approaches to operational efficiency, planning, and talent will help your organization address them in new and better ways. The future is bright with greater support and tools to help you grow and build on your success.

 

Are you interested to learn more about this topic? Good news! Tietoevry prepared an event about HR and Financial Management for Continuous Growth – click here to check the event recording.

For even more information you can contact us or visit our Workday page.

Thorbjorn Nielsen
Guest Blogger - Regional Sales Director, Workday

Thorbjorn is the regional sales director and country leader for Workday in Denmark. He joined Workday in 2020 having previously worked for the company as a solution consultant between 2014 and 2016. As country leader, he is focused on driving growth and success for Workday, its customers and partners in Denmark.

Author

Thorbjorn Nielsen

Guest Blogger - Regional Sales Director, Workday

LEARN MORE ABOUT WORKDAY

Tietoevry Workday Services

INTERESTED IN DIGITAL TOOLS AND DIGITALIZATION STRATEGIES FOR HR?

Join Digital HR Insights Community

Share on Facebook Tweet Share on LinkedIn