How vivenu centralised global payroll and built a single source of truth for People Ops

Pain Points

• Fragmented HR and payroll stack: requiring 3–4 systems (DATEV, TriNet, EORs, Kenjo, G-Drive) to run payroll.

• Spreadsheet-based HR management: with no single source of truth for headcount, leavers, or compensation changes.

• German payroll outsourcing concerns: due to subcontractor reliance, creating accountability, migration, and operational risks.

• Manual onboarding processes: managed in Notion, unable to scale with 5–15 monthly hires across a global workforce.

Intro

When Steffen Pyka joined Vivenu as VP Finance and Legal, the company had 60 employees across a handful of locations. Today, it has more than 200 — spread across Germany, the US, Switzerland, and beyond. In that time, Steffen's remit has grown just as fast: hired to build out Finance, he took on Legal and HR as well.

As headcount more than tripled and the company expanded into 50+ countries, the systems underneath its people and payroll processes began to strain. What had worked at 60 people was no longer fit for purpose, and the cracks were widening with every 10 new hires.

The Challenge

Vivenu's HR and payroll stack had been assembled tool by tool — each addition solving an immediate problem while quietly layering complexity underneath. For Steffen, the day-to-day reality made the problem impossible to ignore.

Running a single payroll cycle meant logging into three or four systems: DATEV through a German tax advisor, TriNet as a PEO in the US, separate Employer-of-Record providers for additional countries, plus Kenjo for vacation requests and G-Drive for documents. Every cycle, data was prepared in Excel, exported, and shipped between providers by email.

This created two problems. The first was time — hours per cycle vanished into manual data preparation alone. The second was more dangerous: compliance risk.

“Every time you send an Excel file back and forth, someone could change it. Suddenly a salary changes, and you might not catch it.”

German payroll introduced a further concern. Some providers in the market relied on subcontractors to deliver local services, and Steffen had seen firsthand in the past, how badly that could unravel when those partnerships broke down. Vivenu needed a platform that could run German and US payroll natively, automate HR workflows end-to-end, and serve as a true single source of truth for the company's people data.

The Solution

Vivenu chose Rippling to consolidate German and US payroll, HR, and IT workflows into a single platform. Native, in-house payroll — not subcontracted — was non-negotiable.

“Every connection between vendors creates friction. If a partnership ends, you’re facing a forced migration. Payroll is the one thing that has to work, people don’t forgive you if their money isn’t right or isn’t on time.”

At the time of evaluation, Rippling’s German payroll operation was newly built and had just secured the certifications required to run local payroll. That gave Vivenu pause, but after a deep-dive with the Rippling team, the roadmap and commitment to the German market were credible enough to move forward.

Six months on, that bet has paid off. The platform now runs German and US payroll natively in one system, with Vivenu’s lean People team in direct contact with Rippling’s in-house German specialists rather than third-party aggregators. And because Vivenu came on board early in Rippling's German launch, the team has been able to actively shape the product — feeding back requirements and watching them ship.

“We believed that if Rippling wants to gain ground in Germany, they have to invest in it. Six months later, that’s exactly what we’ve seen. The team is very responsive, the collaboration is strong, and the doubts we had have been resolved.”

Beyond payroll, Rippling replaced an entire patchwork of tools: onboarding workflows now trigger automatically the moment a new contract is signed — laptop requests, software licences, Slack notifications, task reminders — and a direct ERP integration pushes payroll data into Finance with every cycle, no manual upload required.

“You don’t want a system where you have to call a consultant for every little thing. The ERP integration, I built that myself. It was surprisingly easy.”

Vivenu's People team built the majority of the workflows themselves: onboarding, offboarding, anniversary and probation notifications, hours-approval flows for student employees — all running through Rippling's native Slack and email integrations. A one-time mapping now keeps payroll data flowing into Finance automatically, every cycle.

“We feel heard. Some of our feedback has already shipped, and as an early customer in the German market, we get to help shape where the product goes next.” 

By consolidating systems, automating workflows, and bringing German and US payroll in-house on a single platform, Vivenu has transformed its people operations from a manual, fragmented process into a scalable, audit-ready function.

For Steffen, the value goes beyond hours saved per cycle. It's about a lean People team keeping pace with a company that adds 5 to 15 new hires every month — and absorbing the next wave of growth without absorbing more risk.

"You need processes that are smooth, that run automatically — or at least trigger the right steps so everyone knows what to do. We didn't have that before. We do now, and that's what lets us grow with a very lean People team."

With a strong foundation in place, Vivenu's next chapter is about building on it: layering in deeper automations, unlocking new capabilities, and exploring how much more of the team's day-to-day can be handed off to Rippling AI.

The Impact

• ~2–3 hours saved per payroll cycle by eliminating manual data preparation across providers

• Consolidated 3–4 separate payroll and HR tools (DATEV, EOR providers, HR-Software, G-Drive) into one platform

• Compliance gaps closed: Excel-based transfers replaced with locked records, change tracking, and month-over-month diffs built in

• Onboarding and offboarding automated for 5–15 new joiners per month, with a native ERP integration eliminating manual payroll uploads into Finance