Broman Group

Broman Group is one of Finland's leading trading companies and has continued to grow rapidly in recent years: the group's net sales rose to almost 400 million euros in 2019 and their employees increased by more than 100 people. One of the key factors behind the organisation's success has been the support and development of their managers; Broman Group wants to ensure that every employee gets support from their supervisor. This has required determined development work, which has been greatly supported by their comprehensive HR system, Sympa HR.

A digital HR tool for managers

“Every employee has the right to a great manager. We have trained our managers a lot in recent years, with the main theme being management by coaching”, says Mira Prinz, HR Director at Broman Group. “The role of line managers has been expanding in the past years, and now they have the opportunity to actively use Sympa HR for recording development discussions, among other things”, Hannele Salonen, HRD expert at Broman Group continues.

Broman Group wants to develop their HR reporting and analytics systematically and Sympa has been a great help in the challenges of data collection. The shift from using different Excels to an increasingly centralized digital solution has made it possible for the necessary information to always be available to the right people.

“Previously we printed a lot of different documents. Now we centralize all the information in Sympa HR and we’re able to access all necessary background information. From a GDPR perspective, it is vital that people data is securely stored in one system”, Hannele continues. “Gathering all information in one place has also supported the development of our processes and freed up our managers’ time”, Mira sums up.

Integrations save money and minimize the amount of mistakes

Sympa HR operates as Broman Group’s HR Master Data system and has integrated with several systems over the past couple of years. The data flows automatically between all systems and the necessary personnel information can be found centrally in Sympa HR.

“The biggest financial benefits have definitely come from our integrations. A payroll system reform project is currently underway, in which the integration of the system into Sympa HR is an important part. Just last year we did an integration with the occupational health registry, which has saved a lot of time for our managers and ensured that the registry is always up-to-date. Another big success is also our AD integration, which allows the necessary information to flow to IT and other necessary places, such as the intranet”, says Hannele.

Electronic signature frees up time for core tasks

The introduction of electronic signature through Sympa HR has brought clear advantages to Broman Group with the electronic processing of contract data and employer branding, as well as savings regarding their managers’ time.

“When we were thinking about implementing the electronic signature function, we calculated the potential savings in terms of cost and time. We calculated that we save 1-1,5 hours of working time per employment contract with eSigning. This proved the benefit of introducing electronic signature to our organisation”, says Mira.

Broman Group has promoted the expansion of electronic signature not only in employment contracts, but also for onboarding and orientation. “We have already implemented an electronic signature in the orientation and it will be ready for use in all units as soon as we have piloted it first with a smaller team. We have received really good feedback regarding the use of eSigning. The process is easy and saves a lot of the time that usually goes into the process surrounding the signing of documents.”

Quick help through support portal and customer support

Sympa’s Support Service and the 24/7 customer support portal have served as great sources of information along the way, enabling Hannele to make changes to the system completely independently.

“Sympa’s customer support has always worked well and the answers have been quick. We have found the solution together with support each and every time, and nothing has been left hanging”, says Hannele. “The support portal instructions have also been really helpful. For example, with the help of the portal instructions, the implementation of electronic signature for orientations was successful within just five minutes.”

The cooperation with Sympa’s Customer Success Manager is also praised: “The cooperation has worked really well. Our Customer Success Manager Johanna listens to us carefully and enthusiastically embraces all development ideas. For example, regarding the integration with the occupational health register we were able to tackle all the challenges together and the project was completed perfectly”, Hannele adds.