We spoke to the CEO of our partner ProLøn, Finn Conradsen, to learn more about ProLøn's history and profile, and what ProLøn thinks about the future of payroll systems.

What is your professional background and when did you become CEO of ProLøn?

I'm 57 years old and have been in the IT industry for 28 years - I have an IT background with a degree in German and Computer Science from Aarhus University. Previously, I have worked at Mærsk Data, IBM and KMD. I was hired in autumn 2014 as CEO of ProLøn as part of the acquisition and generational change that took place when Maj Invest Equity acquired the majority of shares in ProLøn.

How long has ProLøn been around and how many customers/users do you have?

ProLøn was first developed in the 1980s as a payroll system for Dronningborg Maskinfabrik in Randers. During the 90s, it actually became a payroll system that ran payroll for companies. Today, we have grown to run payroll for 11,000 companies with around 110,000 employees, where we run 14-15,000 payroll runs per month. In the market, we are among the four largest payroll providers.

How would you position ProLøn in relation to the other systems?

What we have done, unlike our competitors, is that we have created dedicated industry solutions. We have a basic payroll solution that can create payroll for any company in Denmark, but on top of this basic solution we have 22 industry solutions in relation to the given collective agreements. For example, a trade union and an employers' association have negotiated a special weekday holiday allowance. ProLøn has then developed an adaptation of the payroll system so that we handle the S/H supplement in accordance with the collective agreement. This is one of the reasons for ProLøn's success - close collaboration with trade associations that recommend ProLøn to their members.

Because we make industry adaptations in close co-operation with the trade associations, we also have employees who know the collective agreements. They can provide a broad service based on their general knowledge, but they also have specialised knowledge of selected collective agreements. So we are able, for example, when a baker, or a baker's accountant, calls, we are able to transfer to an employee who knows the special conditions for bakers. We can therefore deliver high-quality service where customers get to know the individual consultants. Our customers say that ProLøn does payroll with a human face.

So industry customisation and a highly competent payroll service/support is what characterises ProLøn, if you ask our customers.

Why did you choose Intempus as your partner?

Payroll is part of a larger context of how to run an efficient administration. In addition to our expertise in payroll, it's important that we have a number of partner integrations that allow data to flow between systems.

It is of great importance if you have an integration with, for example, a time registration system, because then you don't have to enter the same data multiple times. The more employees you have, the more time you save. You can simply enter the hours in the time registration system and the data is automatically transferred to the payroll system. This eliminates many errors - because it's the errors that take time. It doesn't take many minutes to run a simple payroll - but if you've run an incorrect payroll, it takes a lot of time to correct.

The more we can deliver beyond payroll services, such as integration to other systems, the more we can optimise our customers' administration. This is a key point in our strategy. We have analysed the ecology of a payroll system to assess the environment a payroll system is part of. We quickly spotted HR systems, scheduling systems, finance and accounting systems, and time tracking systems. We then started looking at possible candidates for partnerships.

The first thing we did was to create an integration to e-conomic, as it is a very common financial system. It was through this e-conomic integration that I became aware of Intempus. E-conomic spoke very nicely about Intempus, after which I met with Peter and Christophe. There was really good chemistry and I got an incredibly good picture of the vision that Peter and Christophe have for Intempus.

When I choose a partner, chemistry is very important. Of course, you have to have an IT system that I can see works, the fundamentals have to be in place, and I could see that Intempus had that. So I can recommend Intempus with peace of mind to our customers who are looking for a time tracking system. Over the past year, we have developed a really good relationship, also on a personal level, between ProLøn and Intempus' management and employees. It simply makes it a lot easier.

What are the next trends in payroll systems?

There are clear movements happening in the market. In the past year, the major payroll providers have been acquired by private equity funds. Bluegarden, Danløn, Lessor and ProLøn have all recently been acquired by private equity funds. And in the public sector, Silkeborg Data (regions) and KMD (municipalities) are also in private equity hands.

Capital has been injected all the way round, which means that a lot will happen in the market in terms of integrations and the development of more user-friendly solutions. I have no doubt that this will benefit our customers, as competition will increase. I'm not the type of person to be sad about that, because we'll just have to roll up our sleeves and become even better.

Thank you for your time and response - we at Intempus look forward to a great partnership.

Want to know more about ProLøn and Intempus?

Contact us here to learn more about Intempus and ProLøn's combined solution.