Zalaris presents at «Digital Winners» in Stockholm
Zalaris CEO and founder Hans-Petter Mellerud presented the company to investors at the “Digital Winners”-conference in Stockholm on 13 May, hosted by SvD Börsplus and FinWire.
Mellerud described the 18 years of uninterrupted revenue growth for Zalaris and the process of building one of Europe’s leading players within HR outsourcing, offering cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) and Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) for payroll, travel expenses, work absence, recruitment, employee evaluations and other HR tasks.
- Our customers can typically reduce costs by 20-30 percent by using our services, Mellerud said.
Today, Zalaris provides HR and payroll services to six of the top ten leading Nordic brands, including Equinor, Nordea, DNB, SAS, Telenor and Ericsson.
- We prefer to work with large, complex companies with cross-border operations, as this plays to our strengths with a fully integrated model, Mellerud pointed out.
Mellerud summarized Zalaris as an investment case:
- Diversified customer base of blue-chip clients
- Long-term customer relationships and recurring revenue share of 80%
- Regional leader in market with growth rates varying from 7-20%
- Experienced management team
- CEO with skin in the game, largest owner with 14.1%
Action plan
Mellerud also addressed the integration process after the 2017 acquisitions of ROC (UK) and sumarum (GER), which has negatively affected profitability in recent quarters.
- The integration has definitely been more costly and demanding than expected. I guess it’s in the nature of an entrepreneur to believe that things will work out easier than they actually end up. If it wasn’t like this, I don’t think many would have the stomach to become entrepreneurs, Mellerud said.
He described how Zalaris had to decide whether to operate the acquired companies as regional subsidiaries or build a fully integrated company, and chose the latter.
- We believe the value of Zalaris lies in being an integrated company with an integrated solution, operating as a franchise in our different markets and offering common systems and solutions. Now we are finally at that point, and we are starting to harvest the benefits from it, Mellerud said.
He also described the action plan announced in the Q1 report to reduce costs and improve efficiency, with the goal of reaching an EBIT-margin of 10% ultimo 2019.
Zalaris is certified as a SAP Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Partner and is a leading SAP Human Capital Management (HCM) and SuccessFactors consulting partner. Founded in 2000, Zalaris today operates in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland and Sweden, including local-language service centers with extensive expertise in HR-related laws and regulations.
