August 26, 2023 • 20 mins
Wondering how you can revolutionize the HR processes in your small to mid-sized business? We have the answer to your problems with our special guest, Jordi Romero, the CEO and one of the founders of Factorial. This episode is all about exploring the fascinating world of HR automation, showcasing how Factorial is making a real difference for businesses worldwide. Jordi shares how Factorial's innovative solutions can take the pressure off understaffed HR teams and automate everything from hiring to payroll, and everything in between. Plus, we dive into the importance of avoiding bad hires and their costly implications.
Are you ready to embrace the future of HR? We delve into the reasons why some might resist this change and the factors influencing the adoption of new technology like Factorial. Change management can present hurdles, but Jordi enlightens us about Factorial's modular design that makes it easier to transition, offering a sense of ownership with its customizable features to meet a company's unique needs. Our conversation also focuses on their journey in creating Factorial, the platform designed to support small businesses. We highlight the common challenges of integrating new technology but also emphasize the advantages of Factorial's modern approach. So join us for this insightful conversation and gain an understanding of how HR automation with Factorial can transform your business operations!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Recruiting Daily's Use Case Podcast, a
show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology.
Each episode is designed toinspire new ways and ideas to
make your business better as wespeak with the brightest minds
in recruitment and HR tech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, williamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is William Tincup and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have Jordy on fromFactorial and we'll be learning
about the business case or theuse case for wise prospects, and
customers picked Factorial.
So, jordy, would you do us afavor and introduce both
yourself and Factorial?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Sure.
Thank you for the invitation,William Sure.
My name is Jordy.
I'm one of the founders and CEOat Factorial Factorial.
Basically what it does is ithelps small and mid-sized
companies all over the world toautomate all of their HR
processes.
The goal is very simple HRteams are usually understaffed
and they don't have enoughresources, so what they end up
(01:04):
doing is a lot of manual workthemselves.
So we help HR admins automate alot of the processes by
actually offloading a lot of thework to their employees, to the
managers and employees in acompany Everything from hiding
to onboarding employees,managing the payroll process,
evaluating employee performanceand even beyond the typical HR
processes in expense management,for example.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Jordy, what are you displacing?
Do they have nothing?
Do they have some proprietary?
Is it Microsoft Word or Excel?
What do you find that Factorialis displacing?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Unfortunately, most of the companies we talk to
don't use any software or anydedicated software for these
processes.
They're doing a lot of ad hocprocesses with random tools such
as Dropbox, microsoft Word andsome cloud providers.
That are general but they'renot specific to HR.
We see that mid-sized and largecompanies tend to have HCM like
human capital managementsolutions, and that's a
(02:01):
completely different world inthe SME, which is where we
operate.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Right, and this is the SME, or SMB in the States.
So is there any particular kindof group of SMBs that you work
on, like certain types ofindustries, or is it?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I guess we are based in Spain, yeah, yeah, so the
company is based in Spain and weoperate all over Europe and
most of America.
And actually funny, you askbecause one of the things that
make us special is because wedon't come from Silicon Valley,
like many other softwarecompanies.
We never pay too much attentionto tech companies or startups
because there's not that manytech companies or startups
(02:38):
outside of the Bay Area.
So we started working with whatI call real businesses in
manufacturing, in hospitality,in retail and we focus a lot on
these type of companies that aretypically abandoned by the
early adopters of the companies.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I love it on so many levels.
So let's take the audience intosome of these processes that
need to be automated.
So when your team first workswith a company, they obviously
have identified that they have aproblem, but maybe they don't
know exactly where to getstarted, etc.
So what are some of theprocesses that we both take on
(03:14):
and then automate?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So I think one of the biggest eye-openers when we
start talking to a prospect isjust asking questions about
their own business.
How many employees do you have?
Easy enough, how much do theymake?
It gets tricky Nobody has thisinformation centralized and they
sometimes need to go outside oftheir organization and ask
their payroll provider.
Then you ask who's workingtoday?
How many hours extra hours didthey accrue this month already?
(03:41):
Very simple questions we startasking and they realize they
have no way of answering in themoment.
They need to go ask somebody orlook at a bunch of documents or
ask the managers throughout theorganization.
So basically, these are thetype of questions that people
realize they should be able toanswer in real time and that we
help with the software.
So very simple use case isrunning your payroll cycle Right
(04:03):
?
So we need to pay youremployees.
There are a lot of questionsthat need to be answered Hours
did my team work?
Did I change somebody's salary?
Did I hire somebody new?
Did somebody leave the company?
Has somebody been sick?
Or did they get a payrolladvance or something that needs
to be taken into account when Icalculate the payroll?
All of these questions are notsolved by the traditional
payroll providers and it'sbasically a lot of time wasted
(04:25):
and a lot of errors, becausemany times the answer that the
payroll provider gets is thewrong one and we need to redo
the work and maybe creatingproblems for the employee or for
the company.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And a couple other processes.
I love that example, by the way, anything else that comes to
mind you mentioned hiring andonboarding, but any processes
where you find, okay isn't theprocess or it's so busted or
broken that you really have toredo the process.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's all over the place, but I think hiding is a
very good one, where everybodyhires once in a while employees,
and again, large companies tendto standardize processes, but
small companies don't hireenough people to invest the time
and resources in standardizingthe process and they end up
doing completely manual, whichleads to bad hires.
And bad hires are extremelyexpensive, both for the person
(05:15):
that you hire as well as for theorganization and the rest of
the team.
So a typical process would bethere is a set of steps in the
interview process.
Usually there are multiplepeople that will evaluate a
person and there are sets ofpredefined questions that
everybody involved in theprocess needs to answer.
So, in a very easy way, out ofthe box tool allows you to quote
(05:36):
unquote standardize a processthat only large corporations can
afford, but for any company,from 10, 50, 70 employees all
the way up to 1000.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I love it.
So I say who owns factorial?
What I mean by that is insidethe organization.
Who's most in factorial?
What type of position is that?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
So the person that brings factorial into an
organization is almost always HRmanagers chief HR officer if
the company is fancy, but it'susually like an HR administrator
or a personal administrator,but if we're successful,
actually it's the managers thatspend most time using the
platform, because one of thethings that HR people realize is
that they can offload a lot oftheir day-to-day tasks to the
(06:18):
managers if they have oneplatform that everybody is using
and that all the data getscentralized, while the processes
and the work gets decentralized.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Does anything else?
Have you found working withSMEs, fsmbs that other things
need to be integrated intofactorial or data from factorial
needs to be pushed somewhereelse?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, that's definitely a challenge for SMEs
because they don't usually havedata warehouses, fbi business
intelligence solutions where allthe data from all the platforms
are centralized, so ourresponsibility as a vendor is to
aggregate as much data as wecan.
There is one touch point thatis very important, which is
finance.
There is usually some sort ofERP or software that manages all
(07:01):
of the expenses and all of therevenues of a business, and then
we need to integrate with thatfor both the payroll process as
well as to be able to answercomprehensive questions.
That it's not just a verticalpiece of data that needs to
integrate multiple pieces ofdata.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So AI?
Is that something now that thefactorial is using in the
background to help out, or doyou see it more in the future?
What's your stance on?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
AI?
Absolutely.
Actually, we started thecompany seven years ago and it's
funny because we had thisblurry roadmap and now, with the
new technology available in thearea of AI, it's accelerating
so much a roadmap.
So we started by saying, firstlet's understand what the HR
team usually does and then let'sgive a system so that they can
distribute this work and justconduct the information in the
(07:48):
workflows forward.
Now the second step has alwaysbeen now let's automate this
work Not that they delegate it,but it gets automated completely
by technology.
And there are some workflowsthat are easy to automate, like
calculations, but there areothers that are harder to
automate, like analysis.
And, for example, some of thethings that we're doing now is
when you're screening candidatesfor a recruitment process or
when you're doing a company-wideperformance evaluation, for
(08:10):
example.
We are using already today AI tofind common trends and patterns
and highlight areas of theorganization that are going to
be most important.
For example, for me, as a CEOof a company with more than
1,000 employees, I cannot read1,000 performance reviews, but
I'm very interested in what itsays.
So what I do now is I go to ourAI tool and I ask what's most
(08:32):
important?
What are the changes in thecontent of these reviews.
What team should I focus on?
And this is massive.
In just a few months, we'veintroduced a couple of very
powerful tools one aroundrecruitment and the other one
around performance but we'reworking on many other
essentially all the areas of theproduct.
We introduce AI to basicallyautomate creative work that HR
(08:53):
teams can do, so that they cando it faster and they can focus
on taking care of the people anddeveloping them or finding more
talent, without wasting time ontasks that can be automated by
software.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Dumb question, lauren .
Why do people say no?
Like when your team goes in andtalks about factorial, shows
them the demo, etc.
Shows them a new world.
Basically, why would anyone sayno?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I would say, people rarely say no.
What they might say is nottoday because they don't think
they're ready or, most mostfrustratingly, they might think
they don't deserve it.
I think there is a mindset ofS&E where they're not supposed
to use fancy technology to beable to compete with large
enterprises.
They accept that the role is todo things manually, in an
(09:39):
artisanal way, and I think thereis a responsibility that we
have in educating the market, inshowing you also deserves great
technology, and somebody needsto make it affordable and easy
to understand and easy to adopt,because I think that's the most
frustrating reason why somebodywouldn't adopt or would say not
today because they think I needto be bigger, I need to have
more money to be able to affordit or to deserve it.
(10:00):
And it's not true.
It's very accessible.
Any company from five employees, 10 employees, can be
benefiting from technology likeours.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
You can also see some of the change, whether or not
they say it or it's just hiddenthat maybe the change management
piece of this is what we'vebeen doing it for 10 years,
versus doing it in a moreeloquent data-driven way.
I could see some folks at leastbeing scared.
Maybe you can get over thatpretty easily, but I could see
(10:29):
some people hiding behind changemanagement as well.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Totally, and one of the biggest opportunities that
we see is when there is changein the management.
So, for example, when a new HRmanager comes into an
organization, they will be veryopen to explore what technology
is being used and what could beused.
And this also happens insmaller companies.
When the ownership of abusiness is transferred, for
example, generationally, theyounger generation will come in
(10:53):
and say OK, there is no reasonwhy we keep doing things the
same way we did 50 years ago, 40years ago when the other
generation started this business.
Unfortunately, this is lowreplacement, but it's happening
and a competitive force ispushing companies to do it
sooner rather than later.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
That's right.
That's right.
You mentioned doing work allover Europe.
I want to not assume that thetechnology is multilingual, so
if not, do you get asked aboutit.
But basically the question isabout factorial and you also
approach to being multilingual.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, so one look.
We were born in Spain, bothpersonally and as a business,
and Spain is a relatively smallcountry compared to the global
economy, and that was actually ahuge advantage for us because
it forced us, from the veryearly days, to be multinational.
And then we started localizingthe product, both in language
but also in compliance.
There's different laws anddifferent concepts in different
(11:47):
countries.
Even inside the same country,different areas, like in the
States, for example say by state, there are big changes in how
we charge into the process.
So, because we come from arelatively small country, we
started making a platform thatwas very modular and
customizable to different locallaws, regulations and, obviously
, language as well, and today weoffer a solution that leads
(12:07):
local to a lot of differentlocations.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Okay, let me ask you a couple of buy side questions.
Your favorite part of the demo.
So when you get to, on theoccasion that you get to show
factorial to somebody that neverseen it before, what's your
favorite part of that demo orthat experience for them?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
My favorite part is when I show an HR manager what
the managers or the individualcontributors in their company
will be able to accessthemselves.
They immediately think of allthe questions they will not need
to answer because people willanswer those questions on their
own.
You see immediately the reliefof thinking all of these people
(12:52):
coming to me every day, everyweek, every month with this
exact same questions willsuddenly be self-serve, and that
is a huge impact.
The other one is when we show amore complex workflow, for
example, a process that involvesdifferent stakeholders, like
filing an expense report.
When an employee needs to filethe report and then a manager
needs to approve it, then thepayroll team or the HR team
(13:13):
needs to take it intoconsideration for the payroll
process, as well as the financeteam which needs to account for
the expense.
Then you show a software thathas the exact same piece of data
, but in different versions,visualized differently.
For the difference.
They call this and peoplerealize immediately.
They click and they say, wow,this is so much time saved.
This is incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I love it.
What's interesting is, at thatpoint they can see themselves in
it.
Wait a minute, there's the oldway.
Once you know, once you suckanything else, once you've seen
something, it's like how can yougo back to the way you were
doing it, correct?
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Actually to your question, you said the demo.
Right, I think the demo is themost important.
Once they see with their eyessuch as theory, they visualize
it.
If we have the time toconfigure a personalized demo,
they see their own logos, maybethey see their own face in the
org chart and they understandhow these workforce are going to
work with their exact company.
They immediately think whathave I been doing?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
How have I been doing it wrong for so long?
Totally, also, they seethemselves in it.
That's always the way it's.
Like anything else, wheneveryou see new technology, you
automatically like how can Ibelieve that I've been doing it
the wrong way this whole time?
But at the same time it'senlightening because it's like,
yeah, I can't go backwards Now.
(14:34):
I just got to figure out how topay for it.
Done Check For folks that thisis one of their first HR
technology purchases.
If you could script thequestions for your sales team,
what would you like prospects toask your sales team?
What are the questions that youwould feel like, okay, we're in
(14:54):
a good place because they'reasking the right questions?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
So when they start asking about time-related
processes for example, how manyhours did the team work?
What do I do when they need toomany hours or not enough hours?
How do I process this?
Do I compensate it with money?
Do I compensate it with a poolof hours that they can use in
the future?
We start seeing that theyunderstood the pain of managing
(15:19):
the employees' time and that isa sign that we're going to be
able to help them a lot and thatthey will start seeing the
value really quickly.
We like to focus on one problem.
So, for example, when a clienthas all the problems in the
world, it's hard to prioritize.
So the best is if theyidentified one clear, acute
problem and then progressivelywe onboard them with that part
(15:42):
of our product, because ourproduct is very horizontal, and
then we'll start showing themother parts of the product as
they grow and progress insidethe factorial, not necessarily
on the moment of buying.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Jordy, that's the first time I've heard someone
say that and I really like that,because you identify out of the
mountain of problems what's thenumber one, what's the biggest
problem or the top problem, etc.
Let's go solve that.
And then, once they see successand again so using the
technology, they're beingtrained and all that stuff then
it's a matter of going okay, nowlet's go to the second thing.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, absolutely Once , every time.
Prioritizing is one of thehardest things in business, so
we do it ourselves and we try tohelp our prospects do it
themselves as well.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
You'd be amazed at how rare that really is, because
a lot of people they want toboil the ocean, so it's all
giving you all your problems.
Okay, we got all the problemsin it.
It's a bit overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
But the truth, William, it's really hard to
prioritize.
I acknowledge that it'sactually one of the most
difficult things to do, sothat's why people avoid it
sometimes.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, first of all, I just love the approach.
I think it's good for clients.
I also think it's good for yourinternal team, whoever's
managing CX, because then theycan say, okay, this is the
problem, we all focus on thatproblem, get that done.
Everyone feels good about that.
Check Great.
Second problem it's helpful foreverybody involved.
The last thing I wanted to talkwith you about is success
(17:06):
stories, and these withoutbrands or company names or any
of that type of stuff, but justyou where maybe someone was
skeptical or cynical about thechange to factorial and all of a
sudden they can't imagine doingbusiness without factorial.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, I think that happens.
Obviously.
Some people are afraid, manypeople are afraid of change, and
I would say, for example, someof our success stories in the
hospitality business there is acentralized buyer and then
there's going to be a lot oflocations right, if it's a large
chain, for example, ofrestaurants or something like
that Usually at the local level,at the store level, they will
(17:43):
be friction.
And one of the things that wefocus on the most when we do
this, onboarding, is okay, hr,we got you, you signed the
contract.
Now please let me spend timewith a few of your most
challenging stores and we'llmake sure we solve their problem
.
And it's important when we dothat to set up the account in a
way that each store has relativeindependence where they can
manage their universe and at thesame time, because everybody's
(18:06):
using the same platform,headquarters has a centralized
view of everything that's goingon and they can run reports
where they can see comparativeperformance and comparative
working hours and costs andeverything that they're working
on with factorial.
But everybody feels like theyhave their own solution and that
is configured just for them,and I think in the case of
hospitality and retail, whichare too big industries for us it
(18:28):
has been very successful, butit's not always easy to get
started with this changemanagement at the store level.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I can see that.
I can see that.
Let me ask you about growthreal quick.
Obviously, you've been buildingthe business for a while.
You're all over Europe.
I believe you've either got aheadquarters, co-headquarters,
or come into the United States,et cetera.
Yeah, we are going to be inMiami.
Yeah, we're having this call ayear from now.
What's success in terms ofgrowth?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
So our business has been tripling for the last three
and a half years four yearsactually and we want to keep
tripling the organization andwe're tripling the number of
customers, the revenue and theteam.
We're right now a little bitmore than 1,000 people in the
organization and we were justunder 100 years ago.
So if you can see howcompounding triple year-on-year
(19:19):
works, that's fantastic, Jordy,this has been.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
first of all, I just love what you built for the
industries, that you built forthe small business, small
enterprise.
I think it's just great becauseit's a hard place to start.
Everyone rushes up market, goesto the enterprise or
multinational, but I just lovewhat you built.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Thank you so much, william.
I'm obviously passionate aboutwhat we're doing and I'm very
glad that you invited us to comehere and share it with your
audience 100% and thankseveryone for listening.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Until next time.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You've been listening to Recruiting Daly's Use Case
Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite platform and hit us up
at RecruitingDalycom.
Welcome to Recruiting Daily's Use Case Podcast, a
show dedicated to thestorytelling that happens or
should happen when practitionerspurchase technology.
Each episode is designed toinspire new ways and ideas to
make your business better as wespeak with the brightest minds
in recruitment and HR tech.
That's what we do.
Here's your host, williamTincup.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is William Tincup and you're listening to
the Use Case Podcast.
Today we have Jordy on fromFactorial and we'll be learning
about the business case or theuse case for wise prospects, and
customers picked Factorial.
So, jordy, would you do us afavor and introduce both
yourself and Factorial?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Sure.
Thank you for the invitation,William Sure.
My name is Jordy.
I'm one of the founders and CEOat Factorial Factorial.
Basically what it does is ithelps small and mid-sized
companies all over the world toautomate all of their HR
processes.
The goal is very simple HRteams are usually understaffed
and they don't have enoughresources, so what they end up
(01:04):
doing is a lot of manual workthemselves.
So we help HR admins automate alot of the processes by
actually offloading a lot of thework to their employees, to the
managers and employees in acompany Everything from hiding
to onboarding employees,managing the payroll process,
evaluating employee performanceand even beyond the typical HR
processes in expense management,for example.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Jordy, what are you displacing?
Do they have nothing?
Do they have some proprietary?
Is it Microsoft Word or Excel?
What do you find that Factorialis displacing?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Unfortunately, most of the companies we talk to
don't use any software or anydedicated software for these
processes.
They're doing a lot of ad hocprocesses with random tools such
as Dropbox, microsoft Word andsome cloud providers.
That are general but they'renot specific to HR.
We see that mid-sized and largecompanies tend to have HCM like
human capital managementsolutions, and that's a
(02:01):
completely different world inthe SME, which is where we
operate.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Right, and this is the SME, or SMB in the States.
So is there any particular kindof group of SMBs that you work
on, like certain types ofindustries, or is it?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
I guess we are based in Spain, yeah, yeah, so the
company is based in Spain and weoperate all over Europe and
most of America.
And actually funny, you askbecause one of the things that
make us special is because wedon't come from Silicon Valley,
like many other softwarecompanies.
We never pay too much attentionto tech companies or startups
because there's not that manytech companies or startups
(02:38):
outside of the Bay Area.
So we started working with whatI call real businesses in
manufacturing, in hospitality,in retail and we focus a lot on
these type of companies that aretypically abandoned by the
early adopters of the companies.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
I love it on so many levels.
So let's take the audience intosome of these processes that
need to be automated.
So when your team first workswith a company, they obviously
have identified that they have aproblem, but maybe they don't
know exactly where to getstarted, etc.
So what are some of theprocesses that we both take on
(03:14):
and then automate?
Speaker 3 (03:17):
So I think one of the biggest eye-openers when we
start talking to a prospect isjust asking questions about
their own business.
How many employees do you have?
Easy enough, how much do theymake?
It gets tricky Nobody has thisinformation centralized and they
sometimes need to go outside oftheir organization and ask
their payroll provider.
Then you ask who's workingtoday?
How many hours extra hours didthey accrue this month already?
(03:41):
Very simple questions we startasking and they realize they
have no way of answering in themoment.
They need to go ask somebody orlook at a bunch of documents or
ask the managers throughout theorganization.
So basically, these are thetype of questions that people
realize they should be able toanswer in real time and that we
help with the software.
So very simple use case isrunning your payroll cycle Right
(04:03):
?
So we need to pay youremployees.
There are a lot of questionsthat need to be answered Hours
did my team work?
Did I change somebody's salary?
Did I hire somebody new?
Did somebody leave the company?
Has somebody been sick?
Or did they get a payrolladvance or something that needs
to be taken into account when Icalculate the payroll?
All of these questions are notsolved by the traditional
payroll providers and it'sbasically a lot of time wasted
(04:25):
and a lot of errors, becausemany times the answer that the
payroll provider gets is thewrong one and we need to redo
the work and maybe creatingproblems for the employee or for
the company.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And a couple other processes.
I love that example, by the way, anything else that comes to
mind you mentioned hiring andonboarding, but any processes
where you find, okay isn't theprocess or it's so busted or
broken that you really have toredo the process.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's all over the place, but I think hiding is a
very good one, where everybodyhires once in a while employees,
and again, large companies tendto standardize processes, but
small companies don't hireenough people to invest the time
and resources in standardizingthe process and they end up
doing completely manual, whichleads to bad hires.
And bad hires are extremelyexpensive, both for the person
(05:15):
that you hire as well as for theorganization and the rest of
the team.
So a typical process would bethere is a set of steps in the
interview process.
Usually there are multiplepeople that will evaluate a
person and there are sets ofpredefined questions that
everybody involved in theprocess needs to answer.
So, in a very easy way, out ofthe box tool allows you to quote
(05:36):
unquote standardize a processthat only large corporations can
afford, but for any company,from 10, 50, 70 employees all
the way up to 1000.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I love it.
So I say who owns factorial?
What I mean by that is insidethe organization.
Who's most in factorial?
What type of position is that?
Speaker 3 (05:56):
So the person that brings factorial into an
organization is almost always HRmanagers chief HR officer if
the company is fancy, but it'susually like an HR administrator
or a personal administrator,but if we're successful,
actually it's the managers thatspend most time using the
platform, because one of thethings that HR people realize is
that they can offload a lot oftheir day-to-day tasks to the
(06:18):
managers if they have oneplatform that everybody is using
and that all the data getscentralized, while the processes
and the work gets decentralized.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Does anything else?
Have you found working withSMEs, fsmbs that other things
need to be integrated intofactorial or data from factorial
needs to be pushed somewhereelse?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, that's definitely a challenge for SMEs
because they don't usually havedata warehouses, fbi business
intelligence solutions where allthe data from all the platforms
are centralized, so ourresponsibility as a vendor is to
aggregate as much data as wecan.
There is one touch point thatis very important, which is
finance.
There is usually some sort ofERP or software that manages all
(07:01):
of the expenses and all of therevenues of a business, and then
we need to integrate with thatfor both the payroll process as
well as to be able to answercomprehensive questions.
That it's not just a verticalpiece of data that needs to
integrate multiple pieces ofdata.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
So AI?
Is that something now that thefactorial is using in the
background to help out, or doyou see it more in the future?
What's your stance on?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
AI?
Absolutely.
Actually, we started thecompany seven years ago and it's
funny because we had thisblurry roadmap and now, with the
new technology available in thearea of AI, it's accelerating
so much a roadmap.
So we started by saying, firstlet's understand what the HR
team usually does and then let'sgive a system so that they can
distribute this work and justconduct the information in the
(07:48):
workflows forward.
Now the second step has alwaysbeen now let's automate this
work Not that they delegate it,but it gets automated completely
by technology.
And there are some workflowsthat are easy to automate, like
calculations, but there areothers that are harder to
automate, like analysis.
And, for example, some of thethings that we're doing now is
when you're screening candidatesfor a recruitment process or
when you're doing a company-wideperformance evaluation, for
(08:10):
example.
We are using already today AI tofind common trends and patterns
and highlight areas of theorganization that are going to
be most important.
For example, for me, as a CEOof a company with more than
1,000 employees, I cannot read1,000 performance reviews, but
I'm very interested in what itsays.
So what I do now is I go to ourAI tool and I ask what's most
(08:32):
important?
What are the changes in thecontent of these reviews.
What team should I focus on?
And this is massive.
In just a few months, we'veintroduced a couple of very
powerful tools one aroundrecruitment and the other one
around performance but we'reworking on many other
essentially all the areas of theproduct.
We introduce AI to basicallyautomate creative work that HR
(08:53):
teams can do, so that they cando it faster and they can focus
on taking care of the people anddeveloping them or finding more
talent, without wasting time ontasks that can be automated by
software.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Dumb question, lauren .
Why do people say no?
Like when your team goes in andtalks about factorial, shows
them the demo, etc.
Shows them a new world.
Basically, why would anyone sayno?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I would say, people rarely say no.
What they might say is nottoday because they don't think
they're ready or, most mostfrustratingly, they might think
they don't deserve it.
I think there is a mindset ofS&E where they're not supposed
to use fancy technology to beable to compete with large
enterprises.
They accept that the role is todo things manually, in an
(09:39):
artisanal way, and I think thereis a responsibility that we
have in educating the market, inshowing you also deserves great
technology, and somebody needsto make it affordable and easy
to understand and easy to adopt,because I think that's the most
frustrating reason why somebodywouldn't adopt or would say not
today because they think I needto be bigger, I need to have
more money to be able to affordit or to deserve it.
(10:00):
And it's not true.
It's very accessible.
Any company from five employees, 10 employees, can be
benefiting from technology likeours.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
You can also see some of the change, whether or not
they say it or it's just hiddenthat maybe the change management
piece of this is what we'vebeen doing it for 10 years,
versus doing it in a moreeloquent data-driven way.
I could see some folks at leastbeing scared.
Maybe you can get over thatpretty easily, but I could see
(10:29):
some people hiding behind changemanagement as well.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Totally, and one of the biggest opportunities that
we see is when there is changein the management.
So, for example, when a new HRmanager comes into an
organization, they will be veryopen to explore what technology
is being used and what could beused.
And this also happens insmaller companies.
When the ownership of abusiness is transferred, for
example, generationally, theyounger generation will come in
(10:53):
and say OK, there is no reasonwhy we keep doing things the
same way we did 50 years ago, 40years ago when the other
generation started this business.
Unfortunately, this is lowreplacement, but it's happening
and a competitive force ispushing companies to do it
sooner rather than later.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
That's right.
That's right.
You mentioned doing work allover Europe.
I want to not assume that thetechnology is multilingual, so
if not, do you get asked aboutit.
But basically the question isabout factorial and you also
approach to being multilingual.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, so one look.
We were born in Spain, bothpersonally and as a business,
and Spain is a relatively smallcountry compared to the global
economy, and that was actually ahuge advantage for us because
it forced us, from the veryearly days, to be multinational.
And then we started localizingthe product, both in language
but also in compliance.
There's different laws anddifferent concepts in different
(11:47):
countries.
Even inside the same country,different areas, like in the
States, for example say by state, there are big changes in how
we charge into the process.
So, because we come from arelatively small country, we
started making a platform thatwas very modular and
customizable to different locallaws, regulations and, obviously
, language as well, and today weoffer a solution that leads
(12:07):
local to a lot of differentlocations.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Okay, let me ask you a couple of buy side questions.
Your favorite part of the demo.
So when you get to, on theoccasion that you get to show
factorial to somebody that neverseen it before, what's your
favorite part of that demo orthat experience for them?
Speaker 3 (12:28):
My favorite part is when I show an HR manager what
the managers or the individualcontributors in their company
will be able to accessthemselves.
They immediately think of allthe questions they will not need
to answer because people willanswer those questions on their
own.
You see immediately the reliefof thinking all of these people
(12:52):
coming to me every day, everyweek, every month with this
exact same questions willsuddenly be self-serve, and that
is a huge impact.
The other one is when we show amore complex workflow, for
example, a process that involvesdifferent stakeholders, like
filing an expense report.
When an employee needs to filethe report and then a manager
needs to approve it, then thepayroll team or the HR team
(13:13):
needs to take it intoconsideration for the payroll
process, as well as the financeteam which needs to account for
the expense.
Then you show a software thathas the exact same piece of data
, but in different versions,visualized differently.
For the difference.
They call this and peoplerealize immediately.
They click and they say, wow,this is so much time saved.
This is incredible.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I love it.
What's interesting is, at thatpoint they can see themselves in
it.
Wait a minute, there's the oldway.
Once you know, once you suckanything else, once you've seen
something, it's like how can yougo back to the way you were
doing it, correct?
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Actually to your question, you said the demo.
Right, I think the demo is themost important.
Once they see with their eyessuch as theory, they visualize
it.
If we have the time toconfigure a personalized demo,
they see their own logos, maybethey see their own face in the
org chart and they understandhow these workforce are going to
work with their exact company.
They immediately think whathave I been doing?
Speaker 2 (14:14):
How have I been doing it wrong for so long?
Totally, also, they seethemselves in it.
That's always the way it's.
Like anything else, wheneveryou see new technology, you
automatically like how can Ibelieve that I've been doing it
the wrong way this whole time?
But at the same time it'senlightening because it's like,
yeah, I can't go backwards Now.
(14:34):
I just got to figure out how topay for it.
Done Check For folks that thisis one of their first HR
technology purchases.
If you could script thequestions for your sales team,
what would you like prospects toask your sales team?
What are the questions that youwould feel like, okay, we're in
(14:54):
a good place because they'reasking the right questions?
Speaker 3 (14:58):
So when they start asking about time-related
processes for example, how manyhours did the team work?
What do I do when they need toomany hours or not enough hours?
How do I process this?
Do I compensate it with money?
Do I compensate it with a poolof hours that they can use in
the future?
We start seeing that theyunderstood the pain of managing
(15:19):
the employees' time and that isa sign that we're going to be
able to help them a lot and thatthey will start seeing the
value really quickly.
We like to focus on one problem.
So, for example, when a clienthas all the problems in the
world, it's hard to prioritize.
So the best is if theyidentified one clear, acute
problem and then progressivelywe onboard them with that part
(15:42):
of our product, because ourproduct is very horizontal, and
then we'll start showing themother parts of the product as
they grow and progress insidethe factorial, not necessarily
on the moment of buying.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Jordy, that's the first time I've heard someone
say that and I really like that,because you identify out of the
mountain of problems what's thenumber one, what's the biggest
problem or the top problem, etc.
Let's go solve that.
And then, once they see successand again so using the
technology, they're beingtrained and all that stuff then
it's a matter of going okay, nowlet's go to the second thing.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, absolutely Once , every time.
Prioritizing is one of thehardest things in business, so
we do it ourselves and we try tohelp our prospects do it
themselves as well.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
You'd be amazed at how rare that really is, because
a lot of people they want toboil the ocean, so it's all
giving you all your problems.
Okay, we got all the problemsin it.
It's a bit overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
But the truth, William, it's really hard to
prioritize.
I acknowledge that it'sactually one of the most
difficult things to do, sothat's why people avoid it
sometimes.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, first of all, I just love the approach.
I think it's good for clients.
I also think it's good for yourinternal team, whoever's
managing CX, because then theycan say, okay, this is the
problem, we all focus on thatproblem, get that done.
Everyone feels good about that.
Check Great.
Second problem it's helpful foreverybody involved.
The last thing I wanted to talkwith you about is success
(17:06):
stories, and these withoutbrands or company names or any
of that type of stuff, but justyou where maybe someone was
skeptical or cynical about thechange to factorial and all of a
sudden they can't imagine doingbusiness without factorial.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, I think that happens.
Obviously.
Some people are afraid, manypeople are afraid of change, and
I would say, for example, someof our success stories in the
hospitality business there is acentralized buyer and then
there's going to be a lot oflocations right, if it's a large
chain, for example, ofrestaurants or something like
that Usually at the local level,at the store level, they will
(17:43):
be friction.
And one of the things that wefocus on the most when we do
this, onboarding, is okay, hr,we got you, you signed the
contract.
Now please let me spend timewith a few of your most
challenging stores and we'llmake sure we solve their problem
.
And it's important when we dothat to set up the account in a
way that each store has relativeindependence where they can
manage their universe and at thesame time, because everybody's
(18:06):
using the same platform,headquarters has a centralized
view of everything that's goingon and they can run reports
where they can see comparativeperformance and comparative
working hours and costs andeverything that they're working
on with factorial.
But everybody feels like theyhave their own solution and that
is configured just for them,and I think in the case of
hospitality and retail, whichare too big industries for us it
(18:28):
has been very successful, butit's not always easy to get
started with this changemanagement at the store level.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I can see that.
I can see that.
Let me ask you about growthreal quick.
Obviously, you've been buildingthe business for a while.
You're all over Europe.
I believe you've either got aheadquarters, co-headquarters,
or come into the United States,et cetera.
Yeah, we are going to be inMiami.
Yeah, we're having this call ayear from now.
What's success in terms ofgrowth?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
So our business has been tripling for the last three
and a half years four yearsactually and we want to keep
tripling the organization andwe're tripling the number of
customers, the revenue and theteam.
We're right now a little bitmore than 1,000 people in the
organization and we were justunder 100 years ago.
So if you can see howcompounding triple year-on-year
(19:19):
works, that's fantastic, Jordy,this has been.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
first of all, I just love what you built for the
industries, that you built forthe small business, small
enterprise.
I think it's just great becauseit's a hard place to start.
Everyone rushes up market, goesto the enterprise or
multinational, but I just lovewhat you built.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Thank you so much, william.
I'm obviously passionate aboutwhat we're doing and I'm very
glad that you invited us to comehere and share it with your
audience 100% and thankseveryone for listening.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Until next time.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You've been listening to Recruiting Daly's Use Case
Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe on yourfavorite platform and hit us up
at RecruitingDalycom.
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