How it all started
PwC’s industry-specific Scale programmes offer a range of supports and services to start-ups. The multiple benefits are well-illustrated by this recent story from the HR tech edition held in 2020, in which 11 European B2B tech companies participated.
One of those companies was Berlin-based start-up Matterway, offering a novel way to improve how employees actually perform their daily work on existing IT systems. Instead of changing the processes, Matterway adds a user-friendly layer to the existing software, which results in a productivity gain for the users.
Chaimaa Mourjane, product owner at Matterway, explains: “We’re a software company based in Berlin and we’ve developed a new way to optimise manual processes. It’s faster, cheaper, and it brings more joy to workers. We help our customers to accelerate their transformation and become more productive.”
PwC’s Scale programme helps start-ups like Matterway by opening up our internal network of PwC experts, sharing knowledge, and connecting them with industry experts and the decision-makers of potential clients and partners.
One such potential client is the PersoPoint Directorate-General (PersoPoint), a part of Belgium’s federal government department FOD Bosa. Geoffrey Dutranoit works at PersoPoint, which is charged with managing the personnel and salary administration of its client organisations.
“Our work is concerned with the administration of the people working for the federal government,” says Geoffrey. “This includes payments, but also giving legal advice to our clients and some reporting. I work for the project management office.”
"Matterway's mission is to help organisations optimise their processes faster and with more joy. With PwC Scale, we can literally scale our reach and accelerate our mission."
A fruitful collaboration
The relationship between Matterway and Perso started at a PwC Scale programme networking meeting, just one of the many ways in which PwC connects start-ups to clients and stimulates collaboration. Geoffrey says: “Our director chose a meeting with Matterway and she liked the value proposition so much, she wanted to give it a try.”
“It was the right moment for us to learn about Matterway’s solution,” says Geoffrey. “What Matterway offered was in line with the maturity of our company and matched with the type of automisation we needed.”
Chaimaa elaborates on Geoffrey’s comment: “PersoPoint came to us with a defined objective: to double the productivity of their caseworkers within the next four years. To showcase how we could help with that, we conducted a successful proof of concept on the new hire creation process.”
The impressive results speak for themselves. “Within just four weeks we were able to speed up the process by eight times and reduce the handling time from 47 minutes to five minutes,” says Chaimaa. This was an important outcome for PersoPoint. “We have more than one hundred processes. Of these, the process associated with hiring a new employee is the most difficult for us. It's very time-consuming. Matterway succeeded in tackling our most difficult process,” Geoffrey adds.
Chaimaa says: “The challenges that we're addressing are rooted in PersoPoint core systems: namely PeopleSoft and Servicenow which are not connected. This lack of integration creates a heavy and significant workload for the caseworkers. It not only impacts the service delivery but it also creates and causes frustration for caseworkers on a daily basis.”
“Instead of changing the underlying systems we have worked on optimising the workflows by using some sort of intelligent guidance and automation in real time. This way we don't have to make any changes and we can optimize any process five times faster with less effort and resources. We worked closely together with Geoffrey and with the key users. We analysed each step of the process and then we implemented the solution to optimise their workflows.”
Geoffrey comments: “The crucial term is guidance. It means that the HR agent [the user] can keep control of the process and has the possibility to take over the lead if necessary.”
"We were mainly curious and interested to find out what new young companies could offer, wanted to gain new ideas on how we could enhance our business and it worked eventually, because we found Matterway."
Mutual benefits
Multiple benefits have flowed from the collaboration – the most obvious being the defined goal of efficiency gain. “We were searching for efficiency,” says Geoffrey, “but we also got better quality data. A lot of copy-paste between different applications can lead to more errors.” Importantly, the users – in this case HR caseworkers – were also pleased with the new system, leading to higher employee satisfaction.
It was also evidently an enjoyable collaboration. “I don't know if it's the same for all the start-ups - but the commitment of Matterway was something exceptional. Working with them - you feel like the only client, the unique client, with real commitment from the entire team,” says Geoffrey.
And for Matterway, the collaboration has opened the door to new clients and new business. “It was a fruitful engagement from the beginning,” says Chaimaa. “We refined our value proposition thanks to this collaboration, we learned a lot about the HR services context, and we met a true pioneer in PersoPoint - and that will help us also grow further.”
PwC is proud to have brought these two organisations together, as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting start-ups. Chaimaa acknowledges: “If it wasn’t for the PwC Scale programme, we wouldn’t have considered the public sector as a potential market. Thanks to this successful collaboration with PersoPoint, we have entered a whole new market with a lot of growth potential. Also, we’ve laid the foundation with PwC to expand our collaboration and also to get to know more of your customers.”
"PwC Scale helped us to spread the word about Matterway and get in touch with different decision makers from various organisations. Public organisations were not our main focus and we are happy PwC helped to open that door to another industry for us."
PwC Scale programme aims to support start-ups by giving them access to sector-specific expertise and PwC’s client network. Corporates can meet with promising new players in their industry and challenge or validate their corporate venturing strategy. We facilitate matchmaking between both parties and focus on maximising the outcomes for both the start-ups and participating corporates.
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