PwC guides Duvel Moortgat’s Workday implementation

Founded in 1871, Belgium’s Duvel Moortgat brewery has a history of international acquisition and growth, including the Boulevard Brewing Company in Missouri (US) in 2014, Brouwerij ‘t IJ in the Netherlands in 2015 and Birrificio del Ducato in Italy the following year, alongside many acquisitions in its own country. The group has also invested in a brewery in China to enable it to produce beers locally, thereby significantly lowering its emissions from long-distance exporting, a crucial ambition for the company. As a result, the family-owned concern not only grew financially, but also in terms of headcount, with many people working in different locations around the world. Explains Ingrid Marcelis, Chief Human Resources Officer, Duvel Moortgat, “our growth through acquisition has added a layer of complexity to the organisation, complexity in terms of culture, ways of working, systems and processes, etc. We now see a greater need to make HR decisions based on HR data, but we simply didn’t have that HR data available in one place.” 

Realising that the company hadn’t invested in having one single source of data for its people worldwide that would help it maintain its company culture in all locations and provide for future growth, it sought to build a human resources (HR) strategy that would cater to the needs of its close to 2000 employees. In devising the HR roadmap, Duvel Moortgat identified their main challenges as “big rocks”, such as general talent processes, payroll integrations, general compensation reporting and more. 

With complex and non-standardised business processes across countries and a lot of information stored in disparate systems in different languages, Duvel Moortgat was looking for standardisation and a single source of organisational data (such as organisational charts, gender diversity, cultural diversity, age brackets and more). “We wanted data which would help us build our HR strategy, especially in terms of people development to make sure we have a consistent approach worldwide. We also needed a standardised approach to processes, which PwC helped us achieve. In December 2021, we also created a talent development function to provide us with a global focus on the topic,” Ingrid Marcelis recalls. It’s also important that the organisation understands what resources it needs around the world and is able to attract the right people now and as the business evolves.

Having had experience with other HR systems and vendors, Duvel Moortgat chose Workday. “We liked the look and feel of the system and how easy it was to use. Workday also offered what we need to be able to continue to build on our roadmap,” says Ingrid Marcelis. In terms of service provider, Duvel Moortgat opted for PwC. “The team proved to be extremely knowledgeable from the very beginning and we had a very good connection from the start. The team shares everything with us, the good and the bad, they especially alerted us to the need for availability of internal resources to make its introduction a success. They think alongside us, rather than just telling us what to do so that we’ve got a system that really fits our context. They’ve worked to understand the business and can advise us on what would work and what wouldn’t. We really were all in it together,” Ingrid Marcelis enthuses. The client kept PwC onboard following the implementation to help its people learn the system and get the best out of it.

“The PwC team also have a lot of experience and expertise, in particular in the area of payroll and how best to use Workday for it,” Ingrid Marcelis adds. And she goes on, “Given the current size of our organisation, the platform may be more extensive than we currently need, but it offers a scalable solution that can grow with us and support our future expansion. And it’s been configured by PwC to anticipate our needs. We can add modules, such as recruiting, advanced compensation and more payroll integrations in other countries, etc. as well as other entities as we acquire them. As such, we’ll continue to have one consistent source of HR data worldwide. Working with PwC has enabled us to progress much more quickly along our HR roadmap than we’d have been able to do alone.”