Bas Eggelaar, SuccessDay: “We bridge the gap between HR and technology”

Text: Ester Schop | Photo: Anko Stoffels | Illustration: Studio van Laar

“The best thing about entrepreneurship? Coming up with something and then seeing it catch on,” says Bas Eggelaar, Managing Director of SuccessDay. As an entrepreneur, he says, you have to be a little crazy. “We always assume we have the holy grail in our hands, otherwise we wouldn’t have quit our jobs. But it remains a gamble regardless. When you see where we are now, I can only be incredibly proud.”

Because we are independent, we can ensure that customer interests are safeguarded objectively. So we make sure that the customer gets a realistic schedule that looks beyond just getting a system live. Customers can never implement those modules simultaneously, they struggle absorbing all the changes all at once. As a result, customers are left feeling very unsatisfied. We figured: we can do better!

Personal approach

SuccessDay wants to help organizations avoid the HRIT-implementation pitfalls and acts as a spokesman towards suppliers and system implementers. These are not consultants in three-piece suits who close the door after giving a chic PowerPoint presentation or offering support at a huge rate, which is often performed by juniors.

Instead, it’s a pragmatic company with a personal approach, providing organizations with a helping hand while unburdening them. We take clients along step by step and tell them honestly what is ahead of them, what they have to consider beforehand for such an implementation, and what the price tag is. And if there is not enough manpower or expertise in-house, we can take care of this—our consultants will become part of your team. We don’t work for but with organizations.

As a result, the implementation is on budget and without delay, leading to satisfied customers. These are often medium to large companies that operate internationally, are growing rapidly, and are facing a complex HRIT transformation. Companies such as BasicFit, Rituals, Vanderlande, DEME, and Novamedia, known for the National Postcode Lottery.

Going the extra mile

Bas: “Customer satisfaction is very important to us. I had a potential new supplier on the line yesterday and when I wanted to call them back in five minutes they said, ‘It will be 5 p.m. by then and we will be closed. Can we do it tomorrow?’ At which point I think: forget it! If you had stayed at your job for ten minutes longer, you would have had a new customer.”

He expects employees to go that extra mile. This must be balanced. “Giving a little extra sometimes when the pressure in a project is high is inherent to the consulting profession, but when that’s done you must also be able to say, ‘Hey, the sun is shining, it’s 2 p.m., I’m going for a nice bike ride or do something fun with my kids.’ Getting and taking enough time for relaxation is essential. That’s why with us you get unlimited vacation days.”

Staff gets unlimited access to an external coach

In addition, SuccessDay puts a lot of effort into fitness, both physical and mental. For example, staff can work out with a personal trainer two to three times a week at the company’s expense, and are given unlimited access to an external coach. It doesn’t matter whether you want to talk about your marriage or your work.

“It’s about our employees being comfortable in their own skin, having fun and enjoying working together. And this is not just charity, but also out of commercial interest: good health leads to good performance. We pay a lot of attention to a good work-life balance and we implement this in the management of the company, from top to bottom,” Bas says.

Bridge between HR and technology

SuccessDay helps organizations improve the employee experience and relieves organizations before, during, and after their HR transformation and HRIT implementation. For example, it helps customers with vendor selection, prepares them for what is to come, performs a Phase 0 to standardize data and processes internationally, and fulfills various roles in HRIT implementations on the customer side.

In addition, in two years time, it has become the Benelux’s largest provider of after go-live support for Workday. It is also increasingly offering Application Managed Services (AMS) for other platforms, such as Ceridian, Talentsoft, and Oracle. SuccessDay also offers training with the first HRIT traineeship in the Netherlands.

We bridge the gap between HR and technology

According to Bas, SuccessDay has disrupted the market. “We want to be the Coolblue of what we do. For us it’s all about customer contact and satisfaction. In after go-live support, for example, solving a problem is the least you can do. We go the extra mile by helping that customer by thinking alongside them. That’s how you make a difference.”

“An implementation partner in HRIT implementations brings the system live and it usually works. It’s just far from being satisfactory for the people who have to work with it. We bridge the gap between HR and technology.”

Proven methodologies

This often involves a lot of change management, as well as: what will the end-to-end processes look like in future? The quality is assured with proven methodologies. Every month we discuss with the customer how the process is going and what could be improved. For AMS, we also hire an external party to test customer satisfaction.

We are the only one in the world doing that for the AMS practice. To measure employee satisfaction, we do review-preview, where all consultants indicate what is going well and what could be improved.

Recruit where the talent is

The company is growing fast and recruiting and operating in more and more countries. Not only in the Benelux, but also beyond, such as the Nordics, Canada, the US and the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). It employs people in the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, the Philippines and soon in Portugal.

We recruit wherever we find talent. Covid has shown us that much of our work can be done remotely. This also allows us to keep our rates realistically low. Our rates are about 40 percent below that of the big four at at least the same quality and with a personal touch.

In the coming years, the company wants to expand its brand awareness even further and help more customers with successful HRIT transformations. In doing so, SuccessDay is setting its sights primarily on the DACH region and the Nordics. Currently, 20 percent of sales have been realized in the DACH region.

According to Bas, however, the focus continues to be on helping customers move forward while having fun. “We are less interested in how much turnover we make. Turnover and profit are a consequence and not a goal in themselves. Sure, we are not a non-profit institution, so there is an EBIT target, but above all we want to add value for customers and be able to offer an interesting job to our employees.”