How Trenkwalder implemented the Salesforce based Bullhorn Connexys ATS in 14 countries

About Trenkwalder Group

Trenkwalder Group is a leading HR service provider in Central and Eastern Europe. They build on more than 30 years of experience and are currently active in fourteen countries. Thanks to their extensive knowledge of the market, they offer strategic and reliable solutions in staffing, HR services and business process outsourcing. “Bringing people and companies together successfully” is at the heart of everything they do. Since 2011, Trenkwalder is part of the Droege Group, which is an independent advisory and investment company. Peter Teplický, Managing Director at Trenkwalder IT Services, shares his story about the implementation of the Bullhorn Connexys Applicant Tracking System, the Bullhorn ATS built on Salesforce platform.

In 2015 the Trenkwalder Group decided to look for a new CRM solution. Their requirements? One system for the entire company that integrates all their data and easily shares data across different countries. As such, a cloud-based solution was the best way to go. What is more, they wanted a scalable and flexible system that could handle future growth. The Bullhorn Connexys ATS was the answer to their needs. Bullhorn Connexys is built on the Salesforce Platform which ensures a secure architecture. It’s highly customizable and allows users to manage the entire recruitment workflow.

Peter explains why they chose for Bullhorn: “For us, it was a combination of the product and the right people coming together. Both Trenkwalder and Bullhorn were very dedicated to make this partnership a success. There were also plenty of possibilities to make additional configurations based on our needs. The right people putting their heads together made the implementation very easy.”

In each country there are key users available who facilitate the implementation process. They are responsible for training all employees to get the most out of the Bullhorn solution. All the key users frequently come together to discuss potential improvements and the latest features. They also ensure that the software runs smoothly, check the data quality and run regular reports.

Looking back now at the implementation process, Peter laughs: “In hindsight, I was too stressed. Five years ago, I was still working very hard to implement Bullhorn Connexys. But right now everything is perfect. I should have had more faith in the process. So, my advice is to take a deep breath and sometimes wait ten seconds before saying something. Don’t change things too often, especially if you work with multiple countries. Stick to the path with a clear goal in mind and trust the process.”

In recent years, there has been a strong focus on automation and digitalization in the market and within the Trenkwalder Group. It helps streamline repetitive workflows, processes and communication throughout the entire recruiting cycle. And on top of that, the covid pandemic forced us to work online. Automation and digitalization accelerated at an unprecedented rate. The need for integrating multiple solutions has become ever more relevant. Due to the flexibility of the ATS built on the Salesforce platform, Trenkwalder didn’t run into any problems in switching to this new way of working whatsoever.
Peter shares his insights: “One of the reasons we chose a Salesforce based Applicant Tracking System is because of its flexibility. It’s possible to integrate other solutions to the Salesforce platform on which Bullhorn Connexys runs. If there are new things on the market, our integration team connects it to the Salesforce platform. We work with other partners as well, such as Mimir, Plauti and Textkernel, and it’s never been a problem to integrate multiple solutions. We also connected our global data hub to Bullhorn which means data is directly transferred to our Business Intelligence unit to enrich and combine the data we already have. We use it for elaborate reports. With just one click in the ATS you are redirected to our data hub where you can find all the information you need. The integration between different solutions really speeds up our business processes and makes life easier for us. For example, in one of the countries we integrated the Bullhorn Connexys ATS with publicly available state databases. This way, we can read available data about our clients directly in Bullhorn Connexys. Our sales managers don’t have to put the data in the system manually and have more time for other tasks.”
Trenkwalder also adjusted the application process to facilitate remote working. “Everything is moving to the online environment, such as candidate interviews. We try to make the application process less complicated, so it’s easier for candidates to apply. It’s the responsibility of the recruiter to get additional information from candidates to complete their profile. And with the help of new technologies, such as bots, it’s also possible to automate this process. It helps us save time and improve our data quality,” Peter says.

Standing still is not an option. How does Trenkwalder cope with a constant need for development? “We are constantly managing the balance between keeping what we have and integrating new tools. I always ask myself: if I implement this, will it help us? Will we work faster, be more productive, find more candidates or earn more money? Is it a nice to have or something that will really help us perform better? What are we trying to achieve with the change? If there’s valuable input, let’s go ahead. And in the meantime, we are relying on Bullhorn to continuously improve their products and come up with new releases,” Peter explains.

According to Peter it’s also very important to take into consideration what the desired outcome is. For example, due to automation the role of the recruiter might change. Peter thinks that automation is going to play a key role in future developments: “When I’m enjoying my pension sometime in the future, I think that many tasks will be taken over by AI and automated systems. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it allows recruiters to focus on their core tasks more. Their role will eventually change. The challenge will be to validate the profiles of the candidates. If there is no recruiter, the profiles and the data of candidates go unchecked. And without the right data, you will never make a good match. That is going to be the number one challenge for recruiters in the future.”

Peter smiles when he thinks about the last couple of years: “The world is constantly changing and you have to change with it. Over the last couple of years, we implemented an entire new system, the Bullhorn Connexys ATS, in 14 different countries. We started in 2015 and completed the process in 2019. Thanks to our partnership with Bullhorn, extensive stakeholder management and our implementation team we were able to make this a success.”