Time and efficiency gains with one system at Scotch & Soda

Payroll Administrator Mandy Visser and HR Project Coordinator Lonneke Pelk of Scotch & Soda give us a glimpse inside the workings of the HR department of the famous fashion brand. With 150 shops and 8,000 points of sale, it is one of the largest brands in the Netherlands.

Mandy Visser has been working at Scotch & Soda since 2015, where she is responsible for all payroll matters for the employees of the company's European stores: "That's a total of about 1,200 shops.” Lonneke Pelk started as HR Executive at Scotch & Soda but wished to focus more on HR projects. "I wanted to contribute to the professionalisation of our digital HR processes. At Scotch & Soda, we want to radiate consistency. This applies to how we recruit staff and manage our employees, whether they work in a shop in Sweden, Poland or the Netherlands. I have previous experience with setting up personnel systems, so I was allowed to take on relevant IT projects at Scotch & Soda. That's how I encountered SD Worx."

Lonneke Pelk, HR Project Coordinator at Scotch & Soda

“This innovation has saved us an enormous amount of time.”
– Lonneke Pelk, HR Project Coordinator at Scotch & Soda

Everything in one system: enormous time savings!

For Scotch & Soda, SD Worx offers HR and payroll solutions and software in one. Mandy Visser: "We used to work with different systems. Thanks to Cobra HRM, we were able to work using a single system across the entire chain. Digital payslips, employee self-service (ESS) and leave are now all in one system. With this uniform system, we have created a 'single source of truth', which has saved us an enormous amount of time." Lonneke Pelk adds: "The Cobra HRM system not only looks good, it’s also intuitive to use. When you open the tool, you immediately see how to navigate."

Saving time also appears to be the most important reason to work with Cobra HRM in other areas. "Our finance department works with MS Dynamics AX. This means that the salary process is linked to our accounting system. With a single click, finance can now read and process all these files. This is how we create a continuous flow. Now, all the administration is completed within five days – this used to take a lot longer with our previous supplier – and we need far fewer corrections. The time saved has not necessarily resulted in less work. We are growing as an organisation, which means that more work needs to be done. Not that I mind!” Mandy Visser smiles.

Optimised workflow processes

Lonneke Pelk notes that Cobra HRM has not simply provided IT optimisation. "In addition to all the software, SD Worx has also helped us analyse and optimise our workflow processes. After a couple of fruitful talks with our permanent contact person at SD Worx, we discovered that we actually knew very little about our internal processes and the consequences of changing them. For example, what happens if someone who has to approve a correction is absent for a long period? You often only discover the answer when the situation arises. But if you take this into account in advance, it’s possible to avoid negative impacts."

Mandy Visser, Payroll Administrator at Scotch & Soda

“With this uniform system, we have created a single source of truth.”
– Mandy Visser, Payroll Administrator at Scotch & Soda

Customised version of Cobra

Lonneke Pelk: "After that, tailor-made solutions were also built, including a new version of Cobra. Test phases proved to be crucial to our workflow, because we had the chance to discover together what works and what doesn't in practice. It is essential for our close relationship that we continue to express our expectations and develop frameworks together. With SD Worx, we are now exploring how we can also optimise our processes on an international level. This is a great challenge that will hopefully provide us both with new insights in 2019."