Continuous support. From day one until today.
The Krapp Group is a family-owned company with now more than 700 employees and over 25 locations across Germany. Originally, Krapp was founded with the purpose of a goldsmith nearly 125 years ago.
700 Employees
25 Locations
Wholesale
About Krapp
Today, we focus on three business areas. Firstly, we are engaged in traditional trade, involving the buying and selling of a wide range of products, from work shoes to fence elements. Additionally, we are heavily involved in our second business area, construction projects, mainly focusing on gates and doors, from sales and distribution to installation and assembly.
Our third business area seamlessly complements the others: Service. Our technicians travel across Germany, covering tasks such as maintenance and repair of gates and doors, as well as heating, ventilation, air conditioning & plumbing services. Krapp, therefore, combines three very different but equally significant business areas.
Before HRlab, our HR department spent half a week just managing data, making corrections, and sending out reports.
The Challenge
Why did you look for an HR software?
On one hand, personnel-related data was collected in various places alongside DATEV and poorly maintained. This means we had many isolated solutions in use that could not be integrated with each other and were sometimes outdated.
For example, one program collected all phone numbers and email addresses of our employees, and additionally, there was a separate program with all information about our mechanics and technicians. On top of this, we used a sort of digital personnel file – very outdated and poorly maintained. So, just here, we already had three separate applications in use that we could replace with one digital personnel file.
We solved our time management quite traditionally with terminals. The main problem was that our employees did not have direct access to the system. Consequently, all insights into overtime, vacation, and corrections were handled through the HR department.
Did you try other solutions before turning to HRlab?
Apart from the aforementioned partial solutions, we relied on the classic combination of Excel and Outlook, along with physical file folders.
Why did you choose HRlab?
During our search for the right software provider, we came across HRlab. One convincing aspect was definitely the personal exchange and competent support. We felt well taken care of right from the beginning.
Furthermore, HRlab was able to flexibly accommodate our requirements, such as the diverse range of employees with very different job profiles. The HR software of our choosing had to meet many conditions since both office colleagues and field staff should have equal access to the system. HRlab met this requirement.
The ability to incorporate and apply our specific calculation logic, such as different break regulations, was also important to us. HRlab allows us to precisely tailor this through comprehensive time accounts and detailed permission management.
The Solution
How did the implementation process go?
Christian, HRlab’s managing director, has been with me every step of the way from selection to implementation and continues to be my consistent point of contact. At the beginning, we set the goal to implement HRlab within four months, factoring in a small buffer given the complex starting point situation. After just one month, the first individuals were already using the system, such as for payroll accounting. After the scheduled four months, HRlab was fully deployed throughout the entire company.
Did you face challenges? How were they resolved?
Our biggest challenge was certainly consolidating and completing the data from all isolated systems. It was a tremendous amount of effort, but it formed an essential foundation. Our recommendation is to approach this task with sufficient capacity - both time and colleagues - to ensure a smooth and thorough process.
Any feature you benefit from daily?
An incredible improvement is certainly the significantly reduced administrative effort. Thanks to an intuitive Employee Self Service, our managers can independently access contract changes or additions, among other things.
Employees can enter their working hours in the system themselves, and we only need to confirm them. Leave requests are submitted digitally, and statistics as well as remaining vacation days are easily accessible with just a click - without the need for involvement from the HR department. Approvals are done in no time.
Furthermore, we have implemented digital payroll with HRlab. Instead of traditional postal delivery, employees can now simply view and download their pay slips through the system.
And perhaps the biggest step we've taken with HRlab is the digitization of our HR processes with workflows. Instead of sending around Excel spreadsheets to have individual tasks checked off by the responsible parties, we have now implemented our processes in HRlab and trigger them from there. This means that automatic reminders are sent, and completing a task directly activates the subsequent task. It's much simpler and more transparent than before.
High flexibility
Employees enjoy independent access to their data
Digitization of pay slips & entire processes into workflows
Final Thoughts
We achieved quite a lot!
Everyone in the HR department is more than satisfied and greatly appreciate the tremendous ease of work. We can't imagine anymore how we managed without HRlab. Supervisors benefit daily from the transparency HRlab provides, allowing them to access contracts, salary developments, vacation statistics, and more with just a few clicks. And except for a few employees who struggle a bit with digital solutions in general, everyone here also sees the value of a suitable HR software.
I would choose to switch to HRlab as our comprehensive HR software anytime again. And the positive feedback from various parts of the company continuously reaffirms our decision for HRlab.