Software group Anchr, headquartered in Mechelen, improves the bonus and merit process for 300 employees with Youbo. As a house of companies, Anchr brings together 8 software companies in Belgium and the Netherlands.
As a software expert, Anchr continued to invest in the digitalisation of its HR processes in 2025, with Youbo for the bonus and merit process. Youbo replaces a process built on Excel, individual meetings and mail merges in Word for the bonus letters.
2026 is an important year for Anchr. The office moved to Mechelen and the efforts to digitalise the HR processes are paying off. “For every process we now work with specialised solutions within an integrated HR ecosystem”, says Evi Van der Vliet, HR Business Partner. “Youbo saves us a lot of time.”
Anchr is the umbrella for 8 companies specialised in B2B software solutions, among others in retail, government and finance. “We are an IT company. So you quickly start building your own tools”, says Evi Van der Vliet, HR Business Partner at Anchr. “But at a certain point you end up with a lot of small tools side by side, whose data you have to piece together manually.”
The bonus and merit process at Anchr ran entirely on Excel. HR gathered data from various systems and bundled it into spreadsheets. Those were then reviewed with each manager, discussing the proposals for his or her employees.
It was largely manual work. From collecting the data to sending out the letters. Manual work opens the door to errors.
“The process also took a lot of time: not only creating the spreadsheets and the reward letters, but also those individual meetings with the managers.”
Anchr digitalised its HR processes in collaboration with SD Worx. That is how Anchr came across Youbo. Evi Van der Vliet: “SD Worx already handled our payroll. As part of our broader digitalisation programme, we chose to further digitalise our HR processes with solutions within the SD Worx portfolio. For performance management, Compass was a good fit. After a demo of Youbo, we decided to use the tool to digitalise our bonus and merit process.”
Today, 22 users work with Youbo: three HR colleagues and 19 managers. The tool was up and running in three months, after two workshops at the office and weekly online meetings. The first merit cycle was launched at the end of 2025.
Evi Van der Vliet: “For awarding bonuses, the targets per company are ready in Youbo. As soon as we record that a target has been achieved, Youbo automatically calculates the corresponding bonus for the employees involved.”
“For salary increases, Youbo calculates a proposal based on the performance score the managers assign. A positive score can result in a salary increase, which the manager confirms via Youbo. HR reviews the managers’ input in the tool and then sends out the bonus letters at the push of a button.”
Time savings for HR The HR team in particular saves a lot of time, according to Evi: “It used to take HR several days to prepare the Excel files. That is gone now, as are the 19 individual meetings with each manager, in which the performance of 300 employees was reviewed one by one. That mail merge easily took us a few days as well. Add it all up and it comes down to many working days that we save.”
More autonomy for managers Managers no longer have to discuss everything in a single meeting with HR. They make the awards independently, whenever it suits them best, and can make adjustments up until the deadline. Questions for which they previously had to wait for an answer from HR, they now answer themselves based on the data in Youbo.
A smoother process Deadlines are clear, so they are followed up better. “In the past, a manager would sometimes come back after such an Excel meeting with a request to change something. Now the deadline is clearly stated in Youbo. Until then they can change things themselves. After the deadline, HR closes the round and the letters are sent out.”
More insight “If Youbo were to disappear tomorrow, what we would miss most is the overview. In one click we see the annual cost and the total salary package of the employee. We would have to go and pull that information from different tools again.”
“Managers use Youbo far more often than we expected. They look at the annual cost of their team, gain insight into the salary position of their employees and can substantiate salary decisions better. As a result, they can have better-founded conversations when someone asks for a raise.”
How do you evaluate the collaboration?
“Very good. When we asked something, we got an answer immediately. Sometimes the Teal Partners team even adjusted something right away during the meetings. During our digitalisation programme we implemented several tools. That allowed us to compare the trajectories well. The implementation of Youbo was the smoothest and the fastest.”
The implementation coincided with a broader structural change within Anchr. The company evolved from a single entity into several companies. “That meant new email addresses, different Microsoft tenants and adjustments to the internal tools, among other things. Youbo also had to be aligned with that new structure with several companies. Among other things, single sign-on per company was set up. That all went without a hitch.”
How will Anchr proceed from here?
“We are going to link the tool even more closely to our renewed salary policy, which is now finalised. We have divided all functions into salary categories, with a minimum and maximum salary. We are now going to add that information to Youbo, so that we prepare further for the European rules on pay transparency.”
“An integration with payroll is on the wish list, so that data flows into Youbo automatically. That will be arranged from September onwards, when we pick up the thread for the next merit round.”
Anchr is a house of software companies headquartered in Mechelen. The group has more than 300 colleagues in 8 companies in Belgium and the Netherlands. The group is active in domains such as government, commerce, construction, finance, legal and Oracle. Within Anchr, the different companies retain their own identity and entrepreneurship, but share knowledge and expertise in a common ecosystem.