HR, uninterrupted: a start-up’s journey to success and safety

Two sides of a success story

PayFit, a rising software-as-a-service company is in the business of, simply put, making work fun. Or at least less of a hassle when it comes to managing everyday payroll and HR tasks. “We are based in France but also offer services to clients in Spain, Germany and the UK,” Guillaume Gohin, PayFit’s head of security says. The company’s four-year old story is nothing short of a start-up fairy tale. Founded in 2015, PayFit was born from an ambitious idea: to digitise labour regulations in France and incorporate them into a powerful HR management tool. Then move onto the next country and repeat the process. The company’s engineers have developed a whole new programming language, JetLang, specifically to manage the complexity of the task at hand.

Their efforts have certainly paid off. Today, some 3,000 small and medium-sized European enterprises from all industries rely on PayFit to take care of the full spectrum of their HR operations, from onboarding through leave management to business expenses. The start-up’s 300-strong staff works in offices in Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and London. Just this June, the company raised a new €70 million funding round from Eurazeo and Bpifrance and pledged to continue developing its software, open more offices across Europe and boost its workforce to 600 in 2020 and to 1,000 in 2021. As successful as PayFit’s solution is, making sure that it ticked all the boxes for security has not been without challenges.

A demanding work environment

“The data that we store about our clients is, by definition, highly confidential. Think payroll data, identity documents, health information and so on. We’re constantly working on making our tools and procedures more secure,” Guillaume explains. He continues: “What made us think about looking for a solution like Tresorit is that when we onboard a new client, we have to set up a secure environment for their data. Plus, we also needed a tool for sharing that data in and outside of the organisation.” They first used G Suite to bridge that need. When they were about to enter the German market, however, local colleagues immediately flagged serious security concerns. Their timing could not have been better.

“It was actually a good opportunity for us to check what other solutions are available on the market that are more secure but just as easy to use as G Suite or Dropbox,” Guillaume says. His team put together an in-depth analysis of the key market players and eventually settled on giving Tresorit a go. “In the end, it all came down to security. We wanted to make sure our data is safe at every step of the chain. Tresorit’s end-to-end encryption guarantees just that,” the security expert points out. A small German team was quickly assembled from a handful of people from all walks of business to test the new collaboration software. Soon it was being used in all the company’s file sharing operations.

Safer file sharing and collaboration in and outside of the office

“There are three key use cases. When we onboard new clients, we ask them to send us their information via Tresorit. So, the first is secure data transfer. The second is collaboration within the company. People share folders with each other where they can upload files and work on them together. And finally, we use Tresorit to back up sensitive data. Most of our colleagues use laptops. If they get lost or stolen, all the data on the device remains safe and can be easily synced to a new laptop, thanks to Tresorit,” IT Manager Thierry Dang explains. And he makes sure that PayFit employees are aware of these uses cases and follow them to the letter.

“We’ve been working very hard to raise awareness about data security among our colleagues. When we onboard a new employee, we invite them to use our business account and give them a short demo on how to create share links, how to upload files and how to sync them,” he explains. Using Tresorit has become part of PayFit’s everyday operations. Even more so now that the company has implemented a new internal policy that prohibits the transfer of confidential and personal information via email, Slack or other unsecured channels. “But we generally encourage everyone to use Tresorit links, no matter what type of data they share,” Thierry adds.

And their colleagues seem to listen. “Just recently, someone from our finance team lost their laptop at the airport. Now, members of the finance team receive the most thorough data protection training as they handle the most sensitive information. She contacted me right away and as all important documents were safely backed up in Tresorit we could quickly erase them from the computer remotely,” he recalls. When asked about the biggest benefit that Tresorit has brought to their organisation, both experts point to ease-of-use and safety. “Tresorit offers a high level of security without disrupting the work process. It’s not easy to find such a solution on the market.”

Interested in learning more about the benefits of Tresorit's sync and sharing service? Check out the following material:

• Tresorit security
• Secure file sharing inside and outside your company
• Enterprise solutions