Illustration: Studio van Laar
This article appeared in CHRO Magazine (in Dutch)
The process of purchasing and implementing an HRIT system is substantial. How do you convince the organization of the need for such a new tool? Will the Board of Directors go along with this? What is involved in selecting the providers? Are there any pitfalls and, if so, how do you avoid them? Enza Zaden Beheer BV from Enkhuizen, assisted by SuccessDay, has gone through the process and is about to make the final choice.
Anke Schouten came to Enza Zaden in Enkhuizen over two and a half years ago. The Vice President of Human Resources had the following mission: to make HR ready for the future within the fast-growing international family business. Having done the same job at similar companies before, she knew very well what to expect, although each (family) business has its own dynamics and challenges.
“Enza is an 83-year-old family business, which began in 1938 as Enkhuizer Zaadwinkel, and is now an internationally operating vegetable breeding company, with its headquarters in West-Friesland,” she says. “Global market leader in vegetable-breeding, with all the characteristics of a family business as well. So full focus on the people, the employees. Over the past few decades, Enza Zaden’s growth has been accelerating, and with that came the realization a few years ago that the way of working had to adapt accordingly in order to remain successful in the future.”
Now Enza has between 2,000 and 3,000 – depending on the season – employees, with branches in Spain, the United States, Mexico, Tanzania, India, and Malaysia, among others. In addition, it is represented in twenty more countries on a smaller scale. That global expansion also meant that the way of working had to change. “Observing that is one thing, but the journey towards it is an evolutionary process over several years,” says Anke Schouten. “In which, above all, the strength and positive of that which is already there is emphasized.”
The expansion required a change in the way we work
Enza Zaden develops new vegetable varieties. The R&D employees do this for more than thirty vegetable varieties. These include lettuce, sweet pepper, tomato, cucumber, and onion. Their seeds are produced and sold worldwide. To illustrate: 20 billion heads of lettuce grow from their seeds every year. For three generations, the company has stood for entrepreneurship, long-term vision, focus on innovation, and differentiation.
Autonomy is the magic word at Enza Zaden; people cherish entrepreneurship. This is partly inspired by the fact that almost 50 percent of the employees are active in Research & Development. And within R&D, autonomy is a big thing. Nonetheless, Enza and its Board of Directors came to realize that the way of working needed to be upgraded due to its growth.
Focusing on people
“Look,” Anke Schouten explains, “that autonomy is also a big part of the success of this organization. But at the same time, being autonomous when there are so many people, and doing what you want for yourself, is quite difficult. We will have to coordinate this, to align, so to speak. So that all minds are on the same page. In Finance, in IT, in the Supply Chain and therefore also in Human Resources. If you don’t want to have to hire a new headcount for HR for every fifty new employees, you have to change the way you work.”
“That’s what our HR strategy is built on,” she continues. “To become more coordinated, more structured and more efficient. However, keeping that focus on people is something we absolutely want to maintain. Because if you talk about technology, structure, and processes at Enza Zaden you quickly get the response ‘Oh, then we will become bureaucratic, but we really don’t want that’. In practice, however, it’s about streamlining the operation, making it more efficient.”
On the one hand, Enza Zaden is an ultra-innovative company that delivers top technological performance with its R&D team, and is a pioneer in the sector, but it still needs to make efficiency gains in other areas. HR also needed this professionalization, this upgrade.
External partner
The Vice President of HR knew from the start that she needed an external partner to select, purchase and implement that new HRIT system. A system that would help and keep HR from becoming overwhelmed, so to speak, so that HR professionals could focus on important things like adding value and developing people – instead of those administrative tasks and answering recurring questions. But what do you really need? What systems can you use to accomplish that? What is the company’s HR strategy? What about culture?
Schouten was looking for an independent partner to get answers to those questions and then work together to select the right provider for that new HRIT system. She found SuccessDay, young and pragmatic. “You start by looking at what you need. We mapped that out together. SuccessDay helped to point out which systems could help us with that. They also looked at what kind of company we are. From that, a shortlist emerged.”
The starting point: where do you want to be in five years, what’s important?
Enza Zaden knew that a global HR system would be necessary. They had already done their homework. SuccessDay was consulted when selecting the package. Functional requirements were examined and made more concrete.
Bas Eggelaar of SuccessDay: “You can of course analyze and screen an entire organization in six months or so, making such a process really big. We, however, are very pragmatic; our starting point is always ‘what matters to an organization, where do they want to be in five years’ time?’ We look at the HR strategy. Then, together with the customer, we determine the main criteria with weighting factors, which we then fine-tune with the steering committee. We look at functionality, usability, strategy, and the total cost of ownership.”
SuccessDay subsequently adds the requirements from the customer. “These have to be supported business-wide and not just from HR,” explains Eggelaar. “It is therefore important that the business, IT and Finance are intensively involved. Gradually, we allow the customer to evaluate their wishes regarding the tenders; we supervise this process. In the end, the outcome is also the real Enza outcome. The result is a best fit and a runner up, two tenders that should be suitable. We do this in an average period of three months. At a manageable pace, to maintain focus and momentum.”
SuccessDay managed to place a project team at Enza that was ‘down to earth’. Enza Zaden is still considering the final choice between the two final candidates, a decision that can be made at any time. “Independence is one of SuccessDay’s strengths, allowing us to guide these processes optimally,” Eggelaar states. “That is our right to exist. We are not affiliated with any platform. We really want to be the organization’s extension, to temporarily add to the internal knowledge so that a well-founded choice can be made.”
Wanting to be the best
Schouten: “Besides our HR strategy, we also have a group strategy. Our ambition is further growth in seed breeding. We don’t necessarily want to be the biggest, but in those segments where we are active, we do want to be the best. For our customers. What matters is that internally our people want to be seen and recognized. Sometimes it looks as if LinkedIn knows more about our employees than we do ourselves. Hence the new HRIT tool. We once started as a small family business, where everyone knew each other. It’s not like that anymore.”
For Schouten, the mission at Enza Zaden is her third implementation of a new HRIT system. Which, she says, “is not my greatest hobby, but a rather a means to an end: seeing and finding our talents internally. The advantage of an R&D-oriented company like Enza Zaden is that there is respect for everyone’s specialism, including HR. This is the first time I have not had to fight hard for HR’s right to exist or prove its value. It is because Enza Zaden is people-oriented that it is understood. And the approach? You’re the expert, so they follow your advice. I’ve rarely experienced that.”
The preliminary end-result of the two parties to supply HRIT to Enza Zaden that are left also literally stems from the company’s strategy, says Eggelaar. “You have to choose something that you can continue to develop.”
We don’t want to become too corporate
Growing people and finding talent are challenges for Enza Zaden. Breeding to feed the World is Enza Zaden’s purpose beyond profit. Schouten: “‘Profit is a consequence of doing the right things in the right way’, we say. That really appeals to certain generations today. That you are doing something good, making a meaningful contribution to the world, providing people with good food. That’s what we’ve got going for us. In addition, the HRIT system helps with a talent acquisition module. What’s important is that people have a good and smooth experience at Enza.”
How do you avoid pitfalls? “I’ve done previous implementations, but that experience of avoiding risks hardly counts anymore, after all, the world changes so quickly,” says Schouten. “Hence the collaboration with SuccessDay. In terms of culture, Enza Zaden is special; a consultant really must ‘fit in’ very well there. SuccessDay is not corporate, which is a good fit.”
The new tool is going to bring about a big change at Enza Zaden, for all employees. Within her own team there is both enthusiasm and impatience, as well as anticipation, says the Vice President Human Resources. “The fact is that you don’t make such an investment every twelve months, because you’re talking about a few million euros for the first five years. We are currently looking at the next step, after the system has been selected. Then comes phase zero, where the necessary data is collected in all countries, and definitions are established regarding, for example, FTEs. And we start planning. What is the rollout strategy? Everything at once, the Big Bang? Or in phases? Geographically, by functionality phases, or that combination of both?”
