The business began as an off-shoot of PA Consulting and originally used PA's infrastructure to manage everything from Finance, and HR, l to IT and phone systems. , However, as a growing SAAS business, it became apparent that Procserve's IT needs were different to that of a large global consultancy and so the company shifted to new IT set-up and migrated many of its systems earlier this year. HR processes are the latest to be transferred to a more SME-friendly solution.

"Our main criteria was that the new HR System needed to be easy to use, easy to set up and above all had an element of self service," said Head of People & Business Administration, Alex Morley. "We are a lean organisation with only a small HR team, so the employee self-service module was a must for us. We have a great team of people at Procserve and being able to manage their own personal details and vacation requests makes life easier for them."

Procserve currently employs 70 staff across three bases in London and the South East. After establishing a firm foothold in the public sector, it is now beginning to expand the private sector side of the business. "As our business grows and we bring in more customers, we will need to scale up our resources accordingly, so having a system that was flexible enough to grow alongside us was also a priority," said Alex.

The company has signed up for the HR, absence and performance management modules of Cezanne OnDemand and is currently in the process of transferring all of its employee data across. The Cezanne OnDemand team are supporting the migration process, which involves transferring seven year's worth of records across from the previous system.

Alex anticipates that following an imminent training session, she will be able to get the system up and running by early October, with full roll out across the business scheduled for the beginning of December. "The system seems very intuitive and I think it is going to be easy for me to start using it quickly," she said. She will also be able to upload information from the company's existing performance management data into Cezanne OnDemand with only a few minor changes. "We currently have a manual system but the beauty of Cezanne OnDemand is that I will be able to put the information that comes out of performance reviews onto the system so that it sits on the individual's record rather than on a file on my computer," says Alex.

She believes the absence management module will also be valuable in helping line managers see at a glance who in their team is off sick or scheduled to be on annual leave at any given time. "We have to make all our processes as efficient as possible so that teams can focus on the stuff that's really important for the business, like delivering great service for our customers," she said.

Looking further ahead, Procserve also hope to start using the social portal that comes as an integral part of Cezanne OnDemand to house key documents and support communication with staff. They are also looking forward to being able to extract data and produce management reports with a few clicks of a mouse instead of having to generate information manually for the leadership team.

Cezanne OnDemand are also proving to be nice people to do business with. "There are some good people there," says Alex. "They are very helpful and one of the biggest bonuses for me was that they were not at all hard sell during the procurement process. They showed us how the system worked and talked us through the benefits and then just left us to make the decision without any further hassling."

About Cezanne HR

Cezanne HR provides small and medium-sized businesses with powerful, secure and easy to manage online HR software that helps them reduce costs, streamline HR processes and enable employees to work together more effectively.

Cezanne's HR software is delivered in the Cloud on a Software-as-a-Service basis. This means it is hosted and delivered online via a secure server, with updates automatically provided to clients as they are released as part of the subscription fee. There's no need for SMEs to continually invest in their own hardware or software, or in installing updates. They simply log on via the Internet and have immediate access to the latest version of the system from wherever they are.

The online system is the first HR software solution to be offered on a pay-as-you-go basis, with monthly fees being adjusted up - or down - to reflect the average number of employees being managed each month. It is also the first to include, at no extra cost, an innovative employee portal that enables HR to easily share company information and documents and includes social features that allow employees to work together more productively. Pricing is just GBP2 per employee per month for companies of between 50 and 500 employees for HR and absence management, with performance management costing an extra GBP1. Special discounts are available to registered charities and not-for-profits.

Since releasing Cezanne OnDemand in the summer of 2011, the company has acquired an impressive customer base, many of whom are international. Recent customers include Think Jam, Ward Williams, Evolving, Intelliflo, Invitation Digital, Core Technology Systems, Viking River Cruises, SiteMinder and NOW:Pensions. The company has offices and partners supporting customers in mainland Europe and elsewhere.