By stage · Scaling EMEA

Seven vendors. One engagement.

You crossed the threshold. Ten people across four countries. A law firm in Frankfurt, an accountant in Lisbon, a benefits broker in Madrid, three separate payroll providers, and a Dropbox of scanned contracts nobody has read. Scaling EMEA is the stage where the vendor sprawl starts to cost more than the team does. We replace it — one platform, 27 member states, one monthly invoice.

The vendor sprawl problem

Before: seven bills. After: one.

At around 10 EU FTEs across four countries, most companies realise they're paying more in coordination overhead than in the work itself. Here's the before / after for a typical series-A team.

Before · Stitched together

Seven vendors, four time zones.

Freshfields · DE law firm Sage payroll · DE ADP payroll · FR Cuatrecasas · ES law firm PwC · filings, 4 countries Sanitas broker · ES benefits OneTrust · DSR / cookies
  • Seven separate invoices, four FX ratesAP nightmare
  • No unified view of team, spend, or deadlinesReporting gap
  • Four separate NDAs, MSAs, DPAs40+ pages
  • Each audit asks seven vendors for evidence2–3 weeks
  • Your ops lead spends 30% of the week coordinating0.3 FTE lost
Monthly vendor spend € 26,800 / mo
After · EU Presence

One platform, one invoice.

EU Presence
  • One MSA, one invoice, one SEPA direct debitIncluded
  • Unified dashboard · team, spend, compliance, filingsIncluded
  • Audit-ready archive, single export per auditor1 day
  • Dedicated setup lead + Slack channelIncluded
  • Ops lead focused on the company, not the vendors0.3 FTE back
Monthly platform spend € 18,300 / mo
The migration

From sprawl to consolidated, in one cycle.

Most EMEA consolidations land in a single payroll cycle with zero continuity gap for employees and no break in your compliance mandates. Here's how the handover runs.

Week 1
Audit + inventory

We map every active vendor, contract, filing cycle, and carrier across your EMEA stack.

Diligence
Week 2
MSA signed, mandates filed

One master service agreement covers every product and country. Compliance reps file in parallel.

Contracting
Week 3–4
Employees migrated

EOR contracts novated, tenure preserved, benefits carriers ported. Zero continuity gap.

EOR · handover
Week 5
First consolidated payroll run

Single monthly cycle. Tax withheld and filed to the right authority in each country.

Payroll · live
Week 6+
Legacy vendors off-boarded

Final invoices cleared. Audit evidence archived. One monthly check-in with your named lead.

Steady state

Weeks 1–2 are pure discovery. We inventory every vendor, every filing, every running compliance mandate. Nothing moves until we have a complete picture — so no deadline falls through the cracks during the switch.

Weeks 3–5 are execution. EOR contracts are novated (not re-signed) so tenure and accrued holiday stay intact. Benefits carriers are ported where possible. Compliance reps file their transfer with the lead DPA. Payroll cycles cut over at the natural boundary.

Week 6 onward is steady state. Your legacy vendors finish their last cycles and fall away. You get one Slack channel, one monthly summary, one invoice — and an archive auditors ask for exactly once.

Common questions

What scaling teams ask us first.

Can we migrate active employees without a break in employment?

Yes — this is the single most common migration we run. EOR contracts are novated at a natural boundary (typically month-end), tenure is preserved, accrued holiday carries, benefits carriers port where possible. Your hires see a one-line "your EU legal employer is changing" note and no change to their pay date.

What about our existing compliance mandates?

We file a switch of representative with each lead DPA / DSC / CSIRT, with a formal transfer date. Most authorities process the switch in under two weeks. There's no gap in coverage — the outgoing rep stays on record until our filing confirms.

We have a GDPR rep already. Do we have to migrate them?

No. You can keep the existing GDPR Representative and take everything else from us (EOR, payroll, benefits, DSA, DPO, etc.). About 20% of our scaling customers run this way. We'll flag any friction points — typically shared-address questions — on the discovery call.

How do you handle audit evidence at scale?

One export, per auditor, one file. Every compliance artifact (DPA filings, Art. 27 appointments, DSR history, sub-processor list, incident records, training attestations) is archived in a single audit bundle we generate on demand. Typical SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit evidence request: 1 business day.

Can we keep our existing benefits carriers?

Where possible, yes. If Sanitas is working for your Madrid team, we'll port the policy. If the existing relationship has gaps (common with low-employee count brokers that can't scale), we'll recommend an upgrade at cycle end.

When does it make sense to form an entity?

Usually when you cross ~15 FTE in a single country or when you hit an entity-requiring milestone: raising from a European investor who wants a local topco, receiving EU grants, winning enterprise contracts that require local incorporation, launching a regulated product. We cover that path in stage 04 — Entity-ready.

Consolidate EMEA. Keep shipping.

30-minute discovery call. We'll audit your current EMEA vendor stack and quote a consolidation plan — timeline, cost, migration sequence — in writing.