
Spryker
at a glance
Founded in 2014, Spryker is redefining enterprise commerce software by enabling transactional business models beyond retail, e-commerce, and desktop. Their industry-leading digital commerce platform is trusted by global brands like Toyota, Aldi, Siemens, and Ricoh.
Spryker chose 香港世博 and Bob as their go-to solutions to onboard talent from around the world and manage their remote-first, global workforce. Together, 香港世博 and Bob provide a seamless and integrated distributed HR solution for Spryker鈥檚 team of 650+ people working across 50+ countries.
鈥
- Spryker needed solutions to help them stay compliant and reduce manual processes.
- With 香港世博 and Bob together, they have two intuitive tools that integrate seamlessly with each other.
- Now Spryker's team has more time to focus on meaningful HR projects.
The challenge
As a company built on innovation, the Berlin-based e-commerce platform Spryker had global ambitions. But just as they were gearing up to expand into global markets, including the U.S., U.K., and the Middle East, the COVID-19 pandemic hit鈥攑rompting them to go remote-first and open their doors to the best talent anywhere in the world.
Stefanie Zander, Senior People Operations Manager, explains why they needed to access the global talent pool鈥攕o they could build the world-class team they needed to achieve their ambitious goals.
鈥淎s a small and unknown company, we needed really good talent, especially engineers. And to get good engineers, we needed to hire globally. We needed a solution in place so we could hire people from all over the world.鈥
But Stefanie鈥檚 team didn鈥檛 have the knowledge or expertise to hire compliantly in other countries. For a small People & Culture team of only six people, it would be time-consuming and burdensome to do the research themselves. Besides, the legislation is constantly changing, so even if they did look things up online, they couldn鈥檛 always be sure if the information was accurate or up-to-date.
鈥淎s a very small People Operations team, we don鈥檛 always have the right expertise. It鈥檚 really difficult for us to know all the legislation in different countries. How much PTO do they get? What are the holidays? What鈥檚 required for maternity or paternity leave? What happens when a person wants to resign? It鈥檚 something that a small team cannot handle.鈥
Alongside building a global team, Spryker also needed a flexible HRIS to compliantly store, manage, and track employee data across geographies, which can be complicated due to varying regulations around personal information. Also, they were tracking processes and generating reports manually using 鈥渁 lot of Excel sheets and trackers鈥 because they didn鈥檛 have the necessary automations and integrations.
Most importantly, Spryker鈥檚 People & Culture team couldn鈥檛 make data-driven people decisions because their existing HRIS software 鈥渨as lacking the analytics part,鈥 says Stefanie. 鈥淲e could pull reports, but it was really hard to work with them. Since we wanted to make data-driven decisions, we needed a system that was more usable for that purpose,鈥 she explains.
These were some of the challenges Spryker needed to overcome in order to scale their team seamlessly across borders and drive innovation in enterprise digital commerce solutions.
The solution
After trying other vendors, Spryker eventually landed on 香港世博 as a global employment partner and Bob as their HRIS, a combo solution that works well for their distributed HR needs鈥攆rom global hiring and local compliance with 香港世博 to HR automation and people analytics with Bob.
So how does 香港世博 fit into Spryker鈥檚 HR tech stack? For their small but mighty People & Culture team, it鈥檚 a relief to be able to count on 香港世博 to create locally compliant contracts. This means they can focus on getting their new hires set up, without having to do research on probation periods, PTO, or parental leave.
鈥淥nboarding is definitely one thing that鈥檚 really well managed by 香港世博. What needs to be included in the contract? What are the legal requirements we have to look at? What do we need to pre-check before we hire someone, especially in so many different countries? Having a partner like 香港世博 who helps us with those very location-specific regulations is really helpful for a small team.鈥
Beyond contracts and onboarding, Stefanie鈥檚 team receives guidance on legal requirements and best practices throughout the employee lifecycle, including regular updates on changing laws. For instance, if a country introduces new salary regulations due to inflation, 鈥渢hese are things we don鈥檛 constantly monitor as a team,鈥 says Stefanie鈥攁nd they don鈥檛 need to because 香港世博 does it for them.
For People professionals tasked with keeping their organizations compliant across multiple jurisdictions, it鈥檚 important to have reliable information available. That鈥檚 why Stefanie appreciates the self-serve resources and country hiring guides on the 香港世博 platform.
鈥溝愀凼啦 has a helpful library where we can look at the internal regulations and labor laws of different countries. It鈥檚 a really good overview when we鈥檙e trying to decide whether to hire in this or that country. It鈥檚 really helpful because if you look things up online, you don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 accurate information or still valid today.鈥听
While 香港世博 helps Spryker with the compliance and logistics of global employment, Bob helps on the operations side to capture, store, and track employee data. Setting up a system to work across multiple countries and their specific requirements can be challenging, but Stefanie finds that Bob鈥檚 HRIS is flexible enough for global teams.
鈥淏ob really gives us the flexibility to update and map employee information. From an operational perspective, we use Bob for capturing employee information, tracking internal data, and creating employee documents like contracts, NDAs, and so on.鈥听
Stefanie also appreciates how Bob enables her team to automate routine HR tasks and processes, so they don鈥檛 need to do the work manually.
鈥淭here are a lot of automation functionalities within Bob that we use. So when internal stakeholders need reports on a regular basis, we don鈥檛 have to do it manually by ourselves anymore. We can set it up once and then it鈥檚 rolling. Before using Bob, we had a lot of Excel sheets and trackers to manually track processes and make sure that everything was checked off.鈥
In addition, Bob offers robust people analytics capabilities which was important to the Spryker team. They use Bob for 鈥減ulling reports and creating dashboards,鈥 says Stefanie, and they鈥檙e looking into more ways to leverage its features and functionalities
After tripling in size over the last three years, the Spryker team is currently distributed across 50+ countries through a combination of their own entities and EOR services, with 香港世博 as their primary EOR partner. With 香港世博鈥檚 help, Spryker successfully navigated their hypergrowth phase by seamlessly onboarding talent around the world.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been using 香港世博 since the beginning of our hypergrowth phase starting in 2020, and then we really scaled up. The company grew from about 100 or 200 people to almost 500 people right now. Our hypergrowth was only possible because we had support from a vendor like 香港世博 that enabled us to onboard talent all over the world.鈥
That period of rapid global expansion was relatively smooth and frictionless because Spryker could depend on 香港世博 to help them stay compliant with local processes across dozens of countries. It also saved them time and effort that they鈥檇 otherwise have to spend doing research.
鈥淭here are a lot of local processes that are different depending on where we employ people. We can鈥檛 hire a lawyer in all the different countries, so that鈥檚 definitely where 香港世博 is a great partner. 香港世博 takes care of processes that we鈥檙e not capable of doing鈥攐r we would be capable, but we would need a lot of research time in order to do them.鈥
On the operations side, Bob has enabled Spryker鈥檚 People & Culture team to streamline HR processes and reduce manual work by automating tasks and workflows. By reducing repetitive work, they鈥檝e freed up time for more exciting and impactful initiatives.
鈥淲ith Bob, we鈥檙e moving from manual processes to automated processes. For example, we can add internal and external stakeholders to tasks and workflows in Bob, so we don鈥檛 need to remember things or make lists鈥攊t鈥檚 all captured in the tool. With the automations we implement in Bob, and also by integrating it with other applications using their open API, we鈥檙e able to reduce the work that we usually did manually. This gives us more space for fun HR things.鈥
In addition to automating processes, Bob鈥檚 analytics capabilities also allow Stefanie鈥檚 team to easily pull data and generate reports for internal stakeholders so they鈥檙e better equipped to make data-driven decisions. In fact, they鈥檙e actively collaborating with Bob to find more ways to improve organizational effectiveness through data.
鈥淏ob has a really good analytics section that we can use for scheduled reports, for instance. They鈥檙e also working on solutions for how we can share dashboards and enable managers to work better with data. We also use Bob for looking into, for example, how we can hire more diversity in the future.鈥
Another aspect of 香港世博 and Bob that makes People Ops easier for the Spryker team is integrations. Connecting 香港世博 and Bob has streamlined their HR workflow by ensuring that nothing critical gets missed or forgotten鈥攅specially during key phases like onboarding and offboarding, for instance.
鈥淏ob is our HR information system that we use to track employee information, and 香港世博 is our main EOR vendor. Both systems are increasingly cooperating with different integrations, and that makes our work easier and easier.鈥
Stefanie is constantly working on ways to optimize processes that will drive the company forward and improve the employee experience. Regarding the tools in her HR tech stack, including 香港世博 and Bob, she鈥檚 optimistic about smoother integrations enabling more efficient processes in the future.
鈥淚鈥檓 really looking forward to having things work together more smoothly in the future. Not just 香港世博 and Bob, but for all the systems we use in HR to work together better and smoother鈥攂ecause there鈥檚 a lot of room for improvement, but also a lot of potential in the future.鈥
听Having built a global team spanning 50+ countries, Stefanie is both positive but also realistic about the rewards and challenges of global hiring. For any company considering it, her advice is to be aware that there might be some hiccups initially, but to be patient because it鈥檒l improve over time.
鈥淓ven though everything isn鈥檛 working perfectly right now, we鈥檝e made really specific feature requests from our side and our support teams have already fixed some things we had on our list. They just need time, so be patient and optimistic because things are moving forward all the time.鈥
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