Levelling Up at Cezanne Connect 2025 in summary:
The Cezanne Connect Customer Event returned this year, and it was our biggest and best yet! With a packed agenda filled with new product sneak peaks, live demonstrations, lively debates and coveted awards, it was a day enjoyed by all. Here, we run down the key events of the day – enjoy!
November 18th saw the return of our world-famous (sort of) customer event: Cezanne Connect… and it was, without doubt, our best one yet.
To match a show so grand in vision, we needed a venue equally as grand… and the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms certainly delivered. Nestled in the heart of London, just a short walk from Covent Garden, it offered the perfect blend of historic charm and “wow, this feels proper fancy” energy. Sweeping staircases, high ceilings, glamorous chandeliers, an air of leather-bound books and rich mahogany… it was a truly elegant backdrop that made even grabbing a coffee feel like an occasion.
For over 300 invited customers of Cezanne, it proved to be a full-on day of big ideas, practical takeaways, and proper face-to-face conversations – the kind you just can’t get over Zoom or MS Teams.
So, if you couldn’t make it this year, or perhaps you’re just curious to know what goes on, here are the highlights of our brilliant Cezanne Connect 2025 event.
Kicking things off with our vision
Connect 2025 opened with a keynote from our CEO, Simon Noble, and he didn’t waste time easing us in gently! Instead, he took everyone on a whistle-stop tour of just how far Cezanne has come in the last 12 months: the product enhancements, the growing community, and the slightly mind-boggling pace at which the platform has evolved. More importantly, he laid out where we’re heading next – mainly, our mission to become the most loved and trusted HR and Payroll platform on the market.
To bring that vision to life, Simon shared the three core objectives driving Cezanne into 2026 and beyond:
- Create beautiful, simple-to-use software (because HR tech should make people smile, not swear).
- Enable a frictionless customer experience from sales to support with one joined-up journey.
- Provide the most complete solution to meet our customers’ needs today… and whatever tomorrow throws at them.
He also talked about the company values and culture that keep those ambitions anchored in reality: the stuff that shapes how we build, support and evolve the platform every day. From there, he moved into our strategic drivers for the year ahead, before giving the audience a teaser of our fast-growing ‘Plus’ strategy. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to that juicy bit later.)
All in all, it was an energetic, optimistic, genuinely lovely start, and it set the perfect tone for the day.
The big Cezanne product review
Next up was a look at the features and enhancements that were made over the course of 2025… and boy, there were plenty! 2025 was one of our busiest years yet from a product development perspective. In fact, over the course of the past 12 months, there’ve been a staggering 178 feature releases, and 10 core product updates!
As well as a whistle-stop tour of Cezanne’s development over the past year, Our Senior Product Manager Rob Cafferty and Product Manager Callum Mackey also looked in detail at all the shiny new features coming to the platform – including sophisticated AI-driven functionality. Callum and Rob guided the audience through how these new functions – from recruitment to payroll – have been designed to level up all aspect of people operations, and banish much of the tiring, repetitive admin that many HR teams have to deal with every day.
It’s a session that certainly went down well with our invited guests, and gave a fantastic overview of how far Cezanne has come as a product in such a short space of time.
Panel session: Maximising Your Tech Investment
After a short break (during which an impressive number of free pastries and coffees mysteriously disappeared) we jumped straight into our panel discussion. Featuring Helen Armstrong (Founder and CEO of Silver Cloud), Caroline Bixby (CPO of Christie Group PLC), and our very own Simon Noble, the session dug into how organisations and their people teams can get the most from their tech investments — especially when it comes to HR technology.
The panellists unpacked many of the challenges HR teams are grappling with today: boosting engagement and advocacy, setting realistic expectations with vendors, and making the case to senior stakeholders that HR and payroll tech genuinely delivers value.
It was a lively, well-attended discussion with Helen, Caroline and Simon each offering sharp insights, practical tips and plenty of real-world experience. We’ll be sharing the full recording of the session with you soon, so keep an eye on our social channels!
Customer Success Update
Whilst we love to wax lyrical about the Cezanne platform and how pretty damned fine it is, it’s nothing without the support behind it. This is where our Customer Teams come in, and after our panel session, our Director of Customer Peter Hall looked at what we’re doing to ensure our customer continue to receive a stellar user experience.
As our customer base has grown, so has our support team; in fact, it’s expanded by over 150% in the past year. And it’s not just about having more bums on seats. A bigger team means smaller portfolios for each Account Manager, deeper product and customer knowledge, and faster response times – all the things which make our customer service some of the best in the industry.
Ultimately, every customer now gets a dedicated point of contact who genuinely understands their challenges, knows where targeted support is needed, and can jump in quickly when help’s required. The result? A more personal, responsive service that gives customers real confidence in the support they’re getting.
However, expanding our Success team wasn’t the only thing Peter talked about. He also had a big new service reveal: Service +.
Launching in 2026, Service + will add an additional layer of bespoke support for clients; including boosted SLAs, quarterly ticket reviews, consultant training and much, much more – all on top of the service that’s already loved and trusted by so many. If you’d like to know more about Service +, just follow this link.
Sneaking a peak at new products coming to Cezanne in 2026
Following a rather delicious lunch (the chili being a particular favourite), Rob and Callum were back to discuss the 2026 product roadmap alongside our Payroll Product Manager Paul Meagh.
The trio gave a grand tour of all the new features which made their debuts in 2025, and an overview of what’s coming to the Cezanne HR platform in 2026. These included major refinements to the system’s UX, improvements to our mobile app, and enhancements across payroll. But the real showstoppers were three (yes, 3!) big products we’ve been quietly building in the background.
No spoilers here… but let’s just say 2026 is shaping up very nicely. Keep your eyes peeled – more details will be on the way…
To learn more about any of our new features, just click here.
The Second Annual Cezanne Client Awards
Rounding up the day was the return of the second annual Cezanne Client Awards, which celebrated the people and organisations levelling up HR and Payroll excellence – and this year, we had some superb entries!
For this year’s awards, we crowned four deserving winners, all of whom have taken HR and payroll excellence to a whole new level this year. They were:
– Aztec Events
Aztec’s payroll team won our Payroll Excellence Award thanks to transforming their processes with Cezanne and enjoying:
- Cutting monthly processing time by 40%
- Improving accuracy across every pay cycle.
You can read more about Aztec’s successes with Cezanne here.
– CrimeStoppers
The venerable UK charity won our much sought-after Employee Experience Awards because:
- Before Cezanne, sickness absence was hard to manage due to scattered data and no single source of truth.
- Monthly reports now highlight patterns, enabling proactive support and reducing repeat absences.
- This has improved colleague wellbeing, strengthened culture, and increased staff retention
– MHF (Mental Health Foundation)
MHF took home the Community Advocate Award thanks to championing Cezanne beyond their own business; sharing stories, reviews, and insights that inspired the wider HR community. Plus, their payroll team had also cut their monthly processing time by 40%, and improved accuracy across every pay cycle.
– BJF Group
And finally, BJF Group won the Level Up Award, and with good reason! They’ve supported their organisation’s growth from 283 to more than 350 employees by centralising HR data and automating key processes. Along the way, they introduced tailored onboarding journeys, implemented automated workflows, and upgraded to Cezanne Payroll and Recruitment. The impact has been clear: stronger retention, smoother onboarding, far less admin, and far more reliable payroll and recruitment operations.
We were inundated with nominations this year, and alongside our worthy winners, all our nominees showed real commitment, creativity and impact in the way they’re using Cezanne to support their people and organisations. We’re already counting down the days until next year’s awards!
Glamming up for the 2025 Personnel Today Awards
Cezanne Connect will go down as our best customer event yet… but the day wasn’t over for some of us!
With our show over with and our guests all enjoying a celebratory glass of fizz or two, a team from Cezanne headed over to even more glamorous surroundings of the Great Room at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane for the Personnel Today Awards – and what a night it was!
Cezanne had received its first-ever nomination for the HR Tech Provider of the Year Award – a true measure of how far the product and business have come over the past 24 months. And, whilst we didn’t win on the night, we are hugely proud of being recognised by our peers as one of the best HR tech solutions on the market today. Here’s to next year’s entry!
Well, that brings to an end our roundup of Cezanne Connect 2025. What will 2026 bring? Well, you’ll have to wait and see – but we can pretty much guarantee we’ll make it bigger, better – and more fun – than ever before.
Paul Bauer
Paul Bauer is the Head of Content at Cezanne. Based in the Utopia of Milton Keynes (his words, not ours!) he’s worked within the employee benefits, engagement and HR sectors for over six years. He’s also earned multiple industry awards for his work – including a coveted Roses Creative Award.
