Why we built MILLY
Real operational experience, turned into software that keeps your business under control.
"I started in project management consultancy in 2002. After building and scaling a professional services business and running operations as COO in a multi-entity group, we built MILLY to solve the operational complexity we experienced every day."
Nico Marien
Founder of MILLY
We didn't start with software. We started with a problem.
Over the years, we built and scaled a professional services business, then ran operations as COO in a multi-entity group.
That's where we lived the real complexity of resource-based operations — and where the idea for MILLY was born.
The turning point
Recruitment was never the hard part. The hard part started right after.
Timesheets didn't match what we'd agreed. Invoicing took days because nobody fully trusted the numbers yet. Payroll had to run anyway, errors or not. Intercompany flows created friction every single month. Closing the books was chaos far more often than it should have been.
And every time, it was the same root cause: the recruitment software, the accounting package, the spreadsheets — none of them were built to talk to each other. Each one solved its own corner. Nobody owned the whole picture.
We kept looking for a platform that actually understood that. An ERP didn't. An ATS didn't. A PSA didn't. They're all built for a different starting point than ours.
Built by people who've lived it
Not a theory. Three decades of the exact operational chaos MILLY exists to solve.
Nico Marien
Co-founder, MILLY
Chief Operations Officer
Sisu Group · 2021 – 2023
Chief Executive Officer
Prosource · 2002 – 2023
Director
Deloitte · 1999 – 2001
Project Manager
EDS · 1991 – 1999
Marc De Krock
Co-founder, MILLY
Senior Project Manager / Coach / Risk Consultant — CHRO & COO
Prosource · 2006 – 2023
Director Operations — Project Improvement Coach
IMEC · 2005 – 2006
Technology Manager
Professional Interactive Media Center · 1997 – 2004
Manager, Development & Support
Philips Interactive Media Centre · 1993 – 1997
Between them, Nico and Marc spent three decades inside the exact fragmentation MILLY was built to fix — enterprise risk frameworks at Deloitte, technology systems at Philips and IMEC, and nearly two decades running Prosource themselves as a resource-driven business. They didn't read about the gaps between ATS, ERP, PSA and payroll. They closed them by hand, for years — and then built the platform that does it automatically.
Mission
We give every resource-driven business one system to run on — instead of five tools that don't talk to each other.
Every tool we used started from its own world. The ATS saw a candidate. The CRM saw a customer. The ERP saw administration. The PSA saw a project.
But a business that sells time and expertise doesn't run on candidates, or projects, or accounting entries.
It runs on resources.
The right people. In the right place. At the right moment. At the right rate. With the right margin.
That's the piece nothing else was built around. So that's where we started.
Vision
The standard operational platform for every business that sells time and expertise — from staffing and consultancy to engineering and professional services.
Fast implementation
Start from a resource-driven operating model, not a long ERP customization track.
Low total cost
One flow means fewer integrations, less admin, and fewer manual fixes to maintain.
Scalable by design
Add teams, entities and business lines without adding complexity.
A different kind of software
Most platforms ask you to adapt your business to fit the software.
We built MILLY to do the opposite.
Understand how your business actually works first.
Then let you configure it around that — not customize it, configure it.
Configure your business. Don't customize your software.
Where this is going
We're not trying to build "yet another ERP".
We want MILLY to become the standard operational platform for any business that sells time and expertise — consultancy, engineering, project management and professional services alike.
Most software manages modules. MILLY manages your business model.
How that actually works
Instead of writing custom code for every customer, we built the flexibility into the core itself — as configuration, not customization:
Our honest take
If we were pitching this to a partner, we wouldn't open with a demo. We'd open with one question:
"Why are there still so many Excel files sitting next to Bullhorn, Odoo, Teamleader and AFAS?"
The answer is almost always the same — no single system actually supports the full operational model of a business that sells time and expertise.
That gap is the reason MILLY exists.