2016 was a great year for me personally. My wife and I hosted a week long wedding celebration event for over 50 friends and family members at a large villa in Catalonia in northeastern Spain in order to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. We had married the year before on the top of a mountain Alaska surrounded by seven glaciers and two wonderful witnesses.
I was blessed to work with some long-time friends on an Employee Central project, both on the consulting and customer side. I’ve worked with Brandon Toombs on a few Employee Central projects now and it’s been very much a pleasure to witness his deep HR expertise and ever-growing knowledge in Employee Central. I also had the opportunity to work with two very large Employee Central customers, both with close to 100,000 employees and operating in multiple geographies.
One of the biggest moves I made was to start my own SAP SuccessFactors consulting firm, in conjunction with three brilliant minds of the SAP SuccessFactors ecosystem. iXerv was born as a global company in July with the formation of iXerv Americas, Inc., after getting up and running in May in EMEA. I was joined by Luc Bossaert, Olivier Poot, and Jeroen Wielens. All three have significant pedigree in starting and running SAP consulting firms, the cloud, core HR, payroll, program management, support, and working with large global customers.
I’ve always been a highly committed professional who has worked tirelessly for multiple consulting partners and added significant value to their businesses. I have also gained a lot of experience and expertise from working for different people and at different firms with different customers.
Naturally, the time came to branch out on my own and even though I have always given my all, the ballgame is different once you have your own company — even when owned with others. I now have a personal stake in the success of all of our customers, as well as my coworkers. The management of projects and customer expectations is more important than ever before.
And it’s by no means a walk in the park. Co-running a global company — especially when you are also responsible for setting up and establishing a US subsidiary — is hard work. However, there is nothing more fun than doing all of those things, especially with a group of smart, experienced, and like-minded individuals that understand the industry globally. Having support from SAP SuccessFactors leadership certainly makes a difference, especially as we seek to become the number 1 SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central powerhouse.
Employee Central is our focus. That’s the gap in the market that few partners have filled successfully. We can sure implement talent, but so can many other partners. What was missing in the market was a global consulting partner that truly understood all aspects of not only Employee Central, but also of core HR, payroll, and integration.
Within just a few short months’ iXerv have won several Employee Central customers, grown to a team of 15 employees, and helped one of the largest Employee Central/Employee Central Payroll customers go live with over 55,000 employees. We’ve got a lot more in the pipeline for 2017 and I look forward to sharing this with you all in the next 12 months’ time.
See you at SuccessConnect!
Luke Marson 