Together with SD Worx, Teal Partners made significant strides in international payroll with the Buddy project. Long-running client projects continued to grow steadily, and the first clients successfully started working with Youbo, the new in-house product. Founders Koen Denies and Jelle Huygen look back on an intense year.

What do the figures from the past year tell us?

Jelle Huygen: "We're closing with solid, stable growth figures. We ended up with a revenue of 11.7 million euros, a growth of approximately 17% compared to last year. Equally important: the result remained healthy. Our cost structure is stable and our efficiency remains high.

We have hardly any overhead, no management layers and a self-managing organization. That translates nicely into the figures. Almost 95% of the time, our employees work directly on projects. That's rare in our sector. Our EBITDA of 22% is therefore exceptionally high for consultancy firms, where 10 to 15% is already considered strong.

Over the past three years, revenue has almost doubled and we grew from 42 to 64 employees. The fact that we achieved nearly 1 million euros in monthly revenue in October underscores the maturity of our organization. It confirms that the current revenue of almost 12 million euros is supported by a stable project portfolio. We have evolved from pure growth to structurally performing at a high level."

In terms of headcount, Teal Partners grew slower than last year. A deliberate choice?

Koen Denies: "More of a logical consequence. In 2024, we invested heavily in recruitment to make large projects possible, especially around payroll and international projects in the staffing sector. Those people were largely on board by the end of 2024. In 2025, we saw the result: we could deliver our projects without any problems."

Jelle Huygen: "We've been hiring the same way since our start: only when we're certain about the projects we're going to do. It makes our growth figures less spectacular than companies that hire more aggressively, but it makes us more robust. It creates calm in the organization: we hire thoughtfully and in a controlled manner, ensuring job security."

What were the most important milestones of the past year?

Koen Denies: "Without a doubt, it was the launch of Buddy, the payroll and core HR solution we built for SD Worx. A configurable payroll engine that processes real-time payroll data and can be deployed in multiple countries was long considered unachievable. In Germany, Buddy is now operational, after approval by the German government. The auditors of the German regulator ITSG (Informationstechnische Servicestelle der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung) spoke of an unprecedented innovation for the sector.

On that same technical platform, we built a complete payroll solution for the Belgian market in twelve months, from capturing payroll input to salary calculations, declarations and payment flows for a white-collar population. From the beginning of 2026, this will be deployed in Belgium.

The core HR module of the Buddy software is meanwhile already active in Finland and Luxembourg, in combination with an existing payroll engine from SD Worx. We will soon add the UK to that."

Which other projects stand out?

Jelle Huygen: "The Flex Income Plan software now has 600 clients and is used by more than 150,000 employees. The same team, which has been working on the software for almost ten years, achieved that scaling. At Yara, we made great strides in planning and capacity management.

With bonus and merit tool Youbo, we launched another in-house product. We immediately signed eleven new clients. All implementations went smoothly. That's far from obvious with these kinds of processes. Meanwhile, the compensation cycle for 17,000 employees runs through our tool."

Koen Denies: "For Actief Interim, after Belgium, we've now also started an international trajectory. We're live in Germany with a brand-new platform for temporary workers and consultants. Through SD Worx Staffing & Career Solutions, we're also active in the Netherlands. And for our client TurboPayroll, we launched a payrolling platform for flexible workers."

Besides client assignments, Teal Partners invests in its own IP, like Youbo Merit. Will that strategy continue?

Jelle Huygen: "Absolutely, we strongly believe in that. It's also starting to pay off more and more. As a software company, we do projects for other companies, that remains the essence. But licenses are not unimportant. They currently only account for a tenth of revenue, but they significantly strengthen our margins and our autonomy. That financial health gives us the freedom to keep working the way we do."

You mentioned how Teal Partners' financial health is also linked to organizational principles. How do you explain that?

Jelle Huygen: "Self-management is sometimes dismissed as a gimmick, a 'soft' story that sounds good. But you can see in our figures that it works. The principles of self-management translate into a more efficient way of working, without intermediate layers or departments. It already worked well when we were still a small company, but now that we're 64, it proves its value even more. The entire team carries the company together.

Everyone is involved, takes responsibility and shows entrepreneurship. We achieve our set budgets with a deviation of less than two percent. That predictability is rare and comes from maturity: in planning, in onboarding, in collaboration. Because our vision is clear, we quickly find the right people and can onboard them smoothly. Because we plan our projects realistically, we deliver them on time and avoid unexpected costs, internally and for our clients.

Thanks to those strong results, we enjoy the trust of the SD Worx group to continue charting our own course. That uniqueness is essential to who we are."

What are the plans for 2026?

Jelle Huygen: "We expect a year of stable growth, with the further expansion of Youbo and growth on Buddy. At the same time, we're exploring new initiatives around benefits and payment solutions. We already have strong foundations with Flex Income Plan, where employees are already using their budgets flexibly on a large scale. In the service voucher sector, we see growing interest in digitalization, and we're looking at how we can add value with technology. More impressive innovations are coming, but those discussions are still ongoing."

Koen Denies: "The Buddy payroll engine that's already active in Germany is now also starting up in Belgium. After Germany, Luxembourg and Finland, we'll soon launch the core HR part of the software in the UK as well. With Actief Interim in Germany, we also went international in the staffing sector, and we're building on that. The past year brought everything together, and 2026 will be the year we build on our successes. Teal Partners will soon be ten years old. We certainly won't let that go unnoticed."