PATRICK GENTRY CEO & Co-Founder

SPROUT SOLUTIONS PHILIPPINES, INC.

Patrick Gentry, CEO and Cofounder of Sprout Solutions Philippines, Inc., has every reason to remain in the country. He has a young and growing family and a robust business that cares for everyone towards fulfilling a specific mission of making the tasks of human resources departments in the country, especially the small enterprises, become more efficient and productive.

With the use of Sprout software solutions, the often taken for granted payroll and HR functions of companies, can now be taken care of properly and become a critical factor in driving a company’s competitiveness.

The company

Sprout provides a cloud-based human resource and payroll software system for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers payroll, an online payroll solution for the business market in the Philippines, and HR, a cloud-based human resource information system that allows companies to manage their human resource, as well as provides analytics for decision-making. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in Taguig City.

The software company aims to create paradigm-changing solutions for the Philippines — an emerging market with a robust economy and a great need for localized software.

“Our goal is to help companies in the Philippines grow through our suite of backend solutions that address payroll and HR difficulties,” says Patrick.

Sprout’s HRHub and Payroll Pie are world-class payroll and HR software systems that are tailored specifically for companies in the Philippines.

“Sprout is transforming HR in emerging markets. We believe that the developing world deserves great software, too. We are committed to taking care of the dirty work so you and your employees can focus on growing your business. We want to build an HR platform that everyone will use every single day because it can literally change their lives. Your employees’ best interest is always our top priority,” says Patrick.

Sprout was born out of a difficulty encountered by Patrick’s first company in the country way back in 2009. At that time, they faced major problems with payroll and HR so they built a cloudbased solution enabling the company to further scale up with already 600 employees.

That gave him an idea of the local enterprises’ need for similar solutions that in 2015, he decided to put up his own company together with Filipina wife Alexandria under the corporate vehicle Sprout.

“As a company, we are young,” he adds. Initially, it was just him and his wife, who stopped working because she was having their second child that time already.

Now, Sprout has close to 150 clients using their software solutions, most of them small businesses. Some of these clients are already well-established industry players with thousands of employees.

“These companies need robust and complex solutions and excellent services,” he says. Other clients are in the BPO industry, food and beverage, and manufacturing. The company is also now giving focus on the logistics sector, another labor-intensive sector.

“We cater across the board actually,” he says adding, “We have lots of small businesses using the software for free.”

Amazing “Financially, we are doing great,” says Patrick.

Doing great means experiencing over 300 percent increase in revenues. The growth target just keeps moving because the amount of opportunities kept surprising them, too.

“It’s amazing, right now we are working on hundreds of deals literally and going the process of due diligence,” he adds.

“We’re growing exponentially. We have 14 available positions right now but I think the only thing hindering growth is our ability to hire because we have to get the best people that can help us with this mission and it takes time to do that,” he adds.

Hiring has become difficult because Sprout is very strict in who it will allow in.

“We want to find people with the right cultural fit, experience and ambition and just the process of finding those candidates and bringing them on board is a huge process,” he says. Sprout is a millennials team, including Patrick.

From the husband and wife team, the company grew to 12 and now they have 75 employees already.

“We have a large IT team as we leverage as a shared resource to create scale,” he adds.

“We do have a North Star where everybody in the company looks to really create an impact on the life of every Filipino by helping improve the ease of doing business in the Philippines,” he adds noting that the country ranked fairly low globally in the ease of doing business survey.

HR tasks Patrick has observed, too, that while local companies have already established their own marketing and sales department with great software tools, the HR has been left behind or the least robust in the organization.

Historically, companies do not automate their payroll and HR tasks but they are trying to change to cope with the digital age in the last few years.

“HR professionals are changing now as companies are also recognizing the value of investing in really elegant software solutions. By giving HR department adequate tools, they become more streamlined, efficient and give employees better experience,” he adds.

“They can even set the tools to develop a company culture because HR is where employees interact with the company and if the company can really take care of the HR department they can really help in employee satisfaction because if employees grow, productivity will also grow the huge way.”

The common understanding of HR professionals is to ensure that employees get paid. But being able to automate that task is already a huge deal especially for a growing company.

The HR task for companies in the Philippines is made more difficult with the various different pay rates. There are night differential, overtime, holidays and employees are paid according to very complex system that at times lead to payroll discrepancies and higher cost.

Typically, in the developed world, employees are paid by the hour but others get fix amount regardless of the number of hours rendered. But in developing world, which covers the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar from this region and Central America, there is a big space for improvement.

Companies also have different payroll file for government agencies. For instance, one company needs solution for the 201 file and another for data governance. There are other issues like how to get reports from government agencies correctly and another company was concerned on how to be able to comply with the Department of Labor and Employment requirements.

So, automating that process, tracking people’s attendance and control and number to give accuracy and correct discrepancies in payroll are huge opportunities for solutions provider like Sprout.

This is the reason that despite the huge opportunities overseas, Patrick said the focus at the moment is just the Philippines where there’s an expanding need for great payroll and HR solutions.

“It is incredible, there are opportunities in other countries but we have more than enough here,” he adds noting that its clients come all the way from Baguio to Davao.

Sprout offers customized solutions for client needs in general. These are out-of-the-box solutions with a good support team that will handhold the clients from the start to enable them to operate the software right away.

Most of the companies in the Philippines still operate on premise so they are challenged to migrate to cloud-based solutions, but Patrick said it is just a matter of educating these people.

“As opposed to just selling a software as a product, we are selling a solution we so we handhold our customers. It is a very fundamental on our part on how we approach customer relationships,” he says citing a very hands-on support they extend to clients.

He is proud of the service they offer to clients as they seriously consider even the very low-level problems faced by their customers “because we take customer success very seriously.”

Most of their competitors are foreigners and are big industry players, but most of the time also they are able to solve a customer’s problem better because they are a Filipino company and they know the nuances of being a Filipino.

Foreign firms sometimes encounter difficulties in solving a client’s problem because some of their solutions are part of their mother company abroad. But since Sprout is local, they can easily resolve the issue domestically.

“All of our solutions are homegrown, made in the Philippines and we solve the problem here,” says Patrick, a software engineer with vast experience in the management of software engineering projects in Silicon Valley.

“With our system, our team can solve these issues,” he adds. Thus, local and international companies using Sprout solutions are now far ahead with their peers.

“We are a mixture in software, we are young with greater usability. Other firms are using the old solutions which are hard to use,” he adds.

Patrick said that Sprout is unique because the founders and some of his partners come from Silicon Valley with experience in making modern solutions with greater usability and functionality.

Expansion The company’s growth is mainly organic. Even with its lean organization, Sprout has a good marketing team and a very powerful word of mouth from satisfied clients.

“Our clients are companies that are desperate to automate their HR functions. We also get a lot of referrals from clients who are happy with our solutions and there are lots of companies raising hands and asking to look at our products,” he adds.

That is why, the next growth area for Sprout is not in terms of location, but in another software solution that is closely related to HR.

Patrick is looking at recruitment solutions, which may be launched in the fourth quarter of this year.

Recruitment is strategic because it is also an HR function. This solution can be an addition to the existing payroll platform.

“There is a lack of good recruitment software solutions in the country so this is a big opportunity,” he says noting that HR is still using spreadsheets for their recruitment task.

Patrick vowed of a very good recruitment solution that companies, especially BPOs, can tap using Sprout as a platform and leverage these tools for their advantage.

“No one else yet has this kind of recruitment solution,” he adds noting the business potential of this solution is just as big as the payroll and HR solution.

Patrick is proud that their solutions have been developed but its local team. Excluding Patrick, an American, all their software developers are Filipinos.

“We believe the Philippines got good talents, I am the only expat in our company,” he says.

“I also believe this is the best opportunity for the Philippines in the ASEAN region if not the world because the growth is higher than everybody around us. We are a developing country so there are amazing opportunities to make progress here and for me the 6-7 percent GDP growth rate is irresistible,” he adds.

Backpacker Initially, Patrick did not come to the Philippines for work, but he had a friend who moved in here for work and asked him to come saying the place was awesome. He did come to the Philippines, but as a tourist in 2008.

During that time, Patrick backpacked to everywhere in the country for two months from Davao to Cagayan de Oro, up to Pagudpud in Luzon. He has been pretty much around the Visayas islands and Palawan.

“And I really enjoyed the country and the food,” he adds.

He fell in love with Alexandria, a Filipina, and the tourist decided to stay. They now have two kids. His wife’s role is chief product officer, making sure that the software is very user-friendly and robust.

“My wife’s family already migrated to the US but we’re quite happy here,” he adds.

Now, on his 9th year in the country, Patrick has embarked into the world of the vegetarian.

Patrick grew up in a farm in southern Oregon with plenty of meat. He grew up to be a meat eater. He has never been on a diet, but recently chose to track a healthier diet after he was diagnosed with elevated LDL cholesterol level despite his lean figure.

“For now, I am on a break from meat diet. Will see if I become a superman with this,” says Patrick making fun of his extreme vegetarian diet.

It looked difficult at first, but when he was actually into it, he found out that a vegetarian diet is not that hard as he thought. It taught him though to do more home cooking because as he said, “You cannot go in Manila on strict vegetarian diet.”

“Surprisingly, there is not much difference,” he adds recalling that when he first came into this country he started to appreciate the cholesterol filled but savory bagnet, lechon and pork liempo.

Used to having lots of vegetables around him at their farm in Oregon, Patrick is also now spending time for his garden in their house.

Strategy for success

As a compliment, Sprout is making its cloud-based payroll system solution available to small companies for free. All you have to do is link and sign up. There is no activation fee at all, just email confirmation and you are good to go. This is also one way of enticing small companies to upgrade to a paid account when they grow bigger.

Certainly, Sprout employees are paid well. But if there is one thing that makes Sprout successful, that is Patrick’s focus on getting the environment right so people can thrive.

“My vision is to really support the people working for me. There is a difference between pushing them from behind and pulling them from front,” he said. He would give feedback whether negative or positive so people can really grow with their strength.

He loves Filipinos for being hardworking and creative. Patrick is especially impressed with his staff’s work ethics even if how hard they endure going to work under a very stressful traffic situation.

“They commute two hours from house to work and commute another two hours going home and yet they come here the next day smiling. So, I am really impressed. This country is a place where vast majority are working to really improve their lives and the lives of their children,” he says.

Patrick, who spends most of his spare time with kids and family is also trying hard to learn the Filipino language in return. It is not only for himself, but because he wants his kids to learn Tagalog and be the example of patriotism.

Patrick is not just a hands-on manager at work, but also a hands-on dad. He drops off the kids from 6-7 in the morning as he works until 12 midnight to push growth of business further.

Even as he tries to influence his people to go for a healthier diet, this vegetarian and a triathlete boss is also trying to encourage Sprout employees to go big in fitness and healthy living. They have twice a week of Muay Thai or kickboxing, and weekly basketball and yoga because more than the financial support, Patrick pays attention to the physical state of their workers, that they take good care of their health.

“What is important about Sprout is from the founders, my wife and I, have the culture of caring for our people beyond just the work context so part of that is health and wellness and work life balance and just in general the ethics of caring personally,” he adds.

Aside from the free basic software to small entrepreneurs, the company has also put up a “Sprout Academy” where senior managers share their expertise with other companies in a once a month session. The goal is to move the Philippines to an environment where businesses help each other.

For instance, Sprout’s head of customer success division shares her stories and expertise in terms of customer support and best practices from what they’ve learned internationally. This is in line with its idea to get more sprouts and for businesses to prosper.

In fact, Patrick was inspired from his farming roots that he named his company Sprout, which symbolizes the sprout of a plant.

Patrick finds the name Sprout funny because it has nothing to do with payroll, but it befits the mission of a flourishing Philippine homegrown startup.