04:05 INTERVIEW
GPA: What got you into this area of payroll and HR? Tell us a little bit about your professional journey. Anton van Heerden: I must start with my father. He was an engineer who became involved in the computer industry in the 1970s, and he and a colleague developed a payroll system in South Africa. In those days, this was revolutionary, showing payslips on a screen and all. They called it VIP Payroll. After I left school in the 1980s and became a CPA, I worked with Deloitte for a few years when my father asked me to join his payroll business, which was still fairly small. There were maybe three other payroll businesses in South Africa at
that time, all of equal size. In the early 1990s, we basically grew it to become the largest payroll business in South Africa. Although technology was at the core, we saw the opportunity to provide additional services. We had a very specific strategy to transform the company into a “services business” rather than a “technology business,” with a people-centric focus. We provided training courses and seminars and consulting, and that resulted in the phenomenal growth that we experienced over probably a decade. At our height, we had 2/3 of the payroll market in South Africa. Also, having that people-centric approach helped us to be awarded an employer of choice three years in a row in South Africa. In the early 2000s, we sold the company to Sage, and I became an executive vice president with that firm. Shortly after I left in 2017, some of my former colleagues and I started a payroll business and called it DNA. About five years ago, we moved into the employer of record business, focusing on providing
We had a very specific strategy to transform the company into a “services business” rather than a “technology business,” with a people-centric focus.
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 18
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