Probi is a Swedish company at the forefront of probiotic research, developing and commercialising probiotic strains for use in functional foods, dietary supplements, and healthcare products. The company operates research facilities in Sweden and commercial operations across Europe and North America, with employees based in five countries working across functions including research and development, regulatory affairs, sales, and administration. Managing HR for an international workforce of this kind required a level of systematic coordination that the organisation's existing tools could not provide.
Before BambooHR, each of Probi's country operations managed HR with a degree of independence that created inconsistency and information gaps. Employee records were maintained locally rather than in a global system, making it difficult for HR leadership to have an accurate, comprehensive view of the total workforce at any given time. When questions arose about headcount composition, skills distribution, or compensation levels across countries, the answers required manual collation from multiple sources.
The payroll cycle was particularly affected by the absence of a unified HR system. Data needed to run payroll in each country was compiled manually, with information drawn from timekeeping records, leave approvals, and compensation changes that existed in different formats and locations. The risk of errors was significant, and the time required to produce a complete and accurate payroll each month was considerable.
Probi selected BambooHR to create a single global HR platform that could serve all five countries. The implementation was phased, beginning with the Swedish headquarters and extending to each international location in turn. Country-specific configurations were created to reflect the different employment law requirements, leave entitlements, and data fields applicable in each jurisdiction, while a common core structure ensured that global reporting remained straightforward.
The improvement in global reporting was transformative. For the first time, Probi's HR director could view the complete, current workforce across all five countries in a single dashboard. Headcount by country, department, and function was available in real time. Reports that had previously required several days of multi-country coordination could be generated in minutes, enabling more agile decision-making about hiring priorities and organisational design.
The payroll cycle became faster and more accurate as BambooHR's data quality improvements reduced the volume of manual work required to prepare payroll inputs. Payroll discrepancies fell significantly, and the time required to complete the monthly payroll process was halved. The finance and HR teams in each country reported a reduction in the stress associated with the payroll cycle, with confidence in the data replacing the anxiety that manual processes had previously generated.
