How Cryptio built a global HR operating system with Deel

Cryptio is a data transformation and ERP platform for digital assets, operating across nine jurisdictions with a workforce that nearly doubled to 140 people in under a year. When Fem Markslag joined as hire number 17, she built the people function from scratch.

For a while, she worked on a 6-tool HR stack: an HRIS, two separate payroll systems for the US and France, an EOR provider for the UK, a compensation tool, and an ATS. None of them worked together. Every payroll cycle meant reconciling spreadsheets across platforms. Career development lived in Google Docs and slide decks. There was no single source of truth for HR, and no clear picture of growth or employee expectations.

"Nothing really talked to each other. Employee information was basically everywhere across multiple platforms. Every month, we needed to manually consolidate and match different spreadsheets just to get numbers we could actually build on." — Fem Markslag, VP of People, Cryptio

Cryptio took a deliberate, tiered approach to the migration. HRIS, EOR, and Deel Payroll came first, getting the compliance and payments foundation right before adding anything else. Talent management with Engage came next.

Before Markslag's team ever touched Engage, she built the career framework: every employee assigned a path, a level, and a set of competencies. That framework became the connective tissue for everything that followed. Reviews reference it. Goals connect to it. Salary conversations start from it.

Learning lives there too. Cryptio built its internal training hub, directly inside Deel, by creating courses and programs and pulling in content via the OpenSesame integration. When someone moves into a new role, the relevant course is automatically assigned and pushed via Slack. Onboarding, annual compliance requirements, and product knowledge courses work the same way. It’s set up once and runs continuously.

"Implementing Engage took six weeks. We took our time and had training sessions with the Deel team before go-live—we wanted to get this right before releasing it to our workforce." — Fem Markslag, VP of People, Cryptio

Six platforms became one connected experience. Every Cryptio employee now has a career path, a level, and a defined set of competencies. Goals cascade from company strategy to individual targets. Review cycles run automatically. Managers can see where their people stand without routing requests through HR.

Adoption wasn't a hard sell. The value was immediately visible: employees could see their payslips, career paths, understand what growth looked like, and connect their work to what the company was building toward. Deel felt like part of how Cryptio already worked, not another tool to log into.