September 18, 2024
Marketeer
September 18, 2024
It is September 2024. Summer is coming to an end and autumn is beginning officially. The seasons change throughout the year, the weather conditions make you not know what clothes to put on, and it’s the most unpredictable transformations possible. And that’s the key word of this blog, “transformations. It is how we help organizations prepare themselves for tomorrow’s world and demands.
As Consultday ourselves, we have also recently undergone a transformation. A new website, additional services in our skill set, and a growing team full of colleagues with their own talents and backgrounds. So that kind of transformation. Time to ask our founders Pim van den Brule and Ton Groot to give a renewed introduction and look back on the past 8 years.
Pim: “Ton and I know each other from KPN, where I was employed and Ton worked as a freelancer. We supervised the largest HR BPO transformation in the Netherlands up to that point together and it left us wanting more. Both the collaboration and this kind of project in itself. I knew that couldn’t happen with KPN, because you don’t go through a transformation like that every year. That’s how Ton and I started talking.”
“By supervising a project together, we knew we could work well together. By having conversations, you soon notice that visions and ideas align as well. The idea that that kind of implementation could be easier, both in terms of approach and process. When you know what you’re talking about and what the project is about, it’s not all that complicated and it shouldn’t be,” Ton adds.
We’ve gone through the archives for this interview and found this vision from 2017: ‘We make HR IT simple. Consultday helps organizations in simplifying and standardizing HR processes and the HR IT landscape, so HR can focus on the real added value: helping employees in the company excel.’ Is that the initial vision for Consultday?
Pim: “Definitely! Our vision is and was that with our approach you can make the world of HR IT and HR Services simpler, that these kinds of change processes can and should be easier. That our approach really moves organizations forward. We have seen that in recent years. We also see that the (HR) world is changing and that automation is playing an increasing role.”
“We still supervise large HR BPO transitions, but as Consultday we do so much more now. This is partly due to automation as Pim just mentioned, which standardizes and simplifies actions and processes. “Our portfolio of services is different from the early years as well, more extensive. We are still business consultants who do market consultation and help choose a vendor and work with models and scans. But we also offer implementation management in all its facets, have a brand-new suite of data and insight capabilities, and fulfill roles on an interim basis.”
Pim: “For that reason, for that change, our vision as Consultday has also been rewritten recently. Have new core values been added to our DNA. This also allows us to reflect who we are and what we do.”
You’re making us curious now. What is that vision?
Ton: “This mission comes from the tightening of processes and the advent of automation, as we just mentioned. What we do now is an evolution of what we once started with. The level of automation that characterizes our approach has been sharpened and improved, our services have expanded, and we offer a full package so we are seeing changes at all levels. You can also see this with the arrival of our Data & Analytics team, which is its own specialism within the revamped Consultday.
Sometimes our work is about setting up organizations differently, creating new work processes, and always with an eye on people, because their role is also changing. That has grown over the years, though.”
With a new mission surely comes a new vision too. Pim, what is that vision?
“Being Consultday, we help organizations automate and standardize processes. Repetitive processes where possible, have robots, performed by software. That allows HR teams to focus on the more challenging and one-of-a-kind parts of their work.
You also see the two parts of our way of working reflected: eye for man and process, the human and the robot. That’s Consultday, both to clients and to our own team.”
This interview is almost at an end, time to wrap things up nicely. As founders of and project managers within Consultday, can you describe in 3 words what Consultday is to you?
Pim: “Quality, practicality, and courage”
Ton: “Passion, knowledge, and hands-on”
Let us add a few more: our four core values, our promises to all clients and to all HR employees.
We are Consultday. Who are you?
