From its humble beginnings 16 years ago, Cellulant has grown to become a leading Pan-African financial technology company providing a one-stop digital marketplace platform with offices in 18 countries that service 34 markets in Africa.
Cellulant was founded in 2004 by Ken Njoroge & Bolaji Akinboro with $3,000. The founders, currently Cellulant’s Co-CEOs saw an opportunity to build a world class business in Africa & to transform customers’ lives through mobile technology. Today, Cellulant runs a technology platform for marketplaces that matter to Africans. They also provide the underlying digital payment infrastructure that solves pertinent problems in Africa faced by businesses, retailers & consumers.
The Challenge
Cellulant has grown from a team of two to more than 450 staff seated across 18 countries. Cellulant recognized that to make this growth of people sustainable, a dynamic payment management system was essential for this.
“We are committed to growing our people, and investing in their growth. One of the fundamental, and possibly basic ways, is to make sure that at the end of the month, they can count on their pay reaching their bank account as we have promised,” Says Sam Kariuki, Chief People Officer at Cellulant. “As we grow in numbers we have increasingly needed to integrate our payroll systems and assure that all staff have a great experience in this particular area.”
Getting started on the Integration journey
Payroll processing was a manually driven part of the business, relying on monster-sized spreadsheets and largely reactive to anything HR related. Simple tasks were burning unnecessary hours each week due to the manual nature of the admin work involved.
Results that matter to the business
Chrispinus Odhiambo, Talent and Culture Operations at Cellulant states that with the integration of eHorizon HRMS in 8 countries, “this has contributed to the effectiveness of how we process payroll. This in turn has increased our productivity. The HRMS has brought simplicity, accuracy, and efficiency to the business.”
With the seamless integration of the payroll management system, processing has become much easier, faster and efficient. Instead of day-to-day admin tasks, the People Growth Team is concentrating on more strategic initiatives – and placing employee experiences at the heart of what they do. It hasn’t stopped there. Chrispinus is now exploring more features through eHorizon HRMS, meaning he can look outwards strategically, rather than inwards. He is tackling forward talent planning, managing resources more effectively and reducing time spent on simple tasks such as leave management and employee self-service.
“The reports tabulated provide insight and enable us to effectively and strategically plan for our company.” says Chrispinus.