Scale up control when expanding into new countries
April 7, 2022 | 5 Mins
David Daly
Last week, we ran our third webinar of 2022-the topic was around effective ways in which to achieve scale up control when you are attempting to deliver and manage multicountry payroll inside a rapidly growing organization. You can view a recording here.
Being able to select your own local country providers and work with a standardized global payroll process that is scalable now and in the future is key to success. Mary Holland (CPP), CCO chaired this fireside chat webinar and was joined by Travis Saville, HR and Systems Lead, from our client Wave.
We’re going to take a brief look at some key takeaways and learnings from an informative webinar and review some of the insights from Travis and Mary about Wave and Payslip’s journey towards scale-up control, ICP management and becoming growth ready with global payroll.
Growth requires a vendor management strategy
Wave were experiencing a period of hyper growth when they connected with Payslip while searching for a technology driven solution that would allow them to apply some structure, discipline and control to their payroll delivery and management processes.
They were growing rapidly and found that their existing process was no longer sufficient to give them the level of operational control and clear visibility that they needed to stay in control of their multicounty payroll.
“We were trying to solve our payroll delivery as kind of two companies with one common holding group. And we had identified how Payslip would help solve that in a cost-effective manner”
Travis Saville, HR and Systems Lead, Wave
Wave’s focus was on the African market, so they really needed to engage with some local country expertise, likely several local vendors were going to be required, and then find a way to manage them all with speed and efficiency. They were very keen to hit the ground running and avoid the common complexities around visibility and control associated with setting up new vendors in new countries.
Wave needed a global first approach to their data and processes- standardizing the data would be key to laying a foundation for future growth. The Payslip approach is a global first data methodology which involves pulling all of the data from all of their different countries and categorizing& standardizing it on a global level. This process, once completed, creates a global playbook for them to follow and copy as they move into even more new countries.
Once onboarded onto the Payslip global payroll control platform– Wave were then in a position to bring in the data from their growing network of local country vendors and have it flow into a single platform for visibility and analysis. This helped them see what was happening across all of their countries and develop a single way of working with standardized data and processes. The result is vendor management and data standardization best practice approach that set them up for future growth.
“12 additional countries have been brought into the Payslip architecture- just really expansive growth and launching countries- we knew exactly what we needed to do”
Travis Saville, HR and Systems Lead, Wave
Becoming scalable
Wave’s journey with Payslip was all about becoming scalable and achieving growth efficiency-being able to turn on new countries in days instead of weeks and months and creating a process that left them in a state of growth readiness.
A technology driven solution that leverages innovative digital tools specifically designed to improve payroll will always be needed in cases like this. Rapidly growing companies who are mandated to move quickly into new countries and territories face the following challenges:
- sourcing and vetting a reliable local country vendor
- assessing if their current payroll process has the bandwidth for growth and scaling
- visibility and control around what is happening across all of their payroll countries
- lack of technology to assist global payroll professionals with handling the new work volumes as a result of scaling activity
- reporting for bigger picture insights and analysis
- compliance, local regulation and data security
- an over reliance on manual processes which quickly become unsustainable as you grow
Many global companies going through a period of growth experience these challenges and are actively seeking a technology driven solution from the market to help them manage it all. Some find that they are even growing too quickly, and their payroll methodology is not able to keep pace with company ambitions- then global payroll becomes a chokepoint or blocker to progress instead of the enabler that it needs to be.
“When you have a standardization and an implementation playbook that you can follow, this enables you to add new countries quickly and seize opportunities fast- the early groundwork really pays off as you grow with speed”
Mary Holland (CPP), CCO, Payslip
Choosing and managing vendors
Travis talked about how vendor management is really about relationships-and it all starts right from the very first conversation. He recommends asking around and speaking to a number of local country providers to get an insight not their working methodologies and technology capabilities to assess if they are right for your business.
In particular, you should bring up a number of previous challenges you encountered with other local country vendors in the past and ask the new prospect how they would deal with a similar situation-the answers to these questions can really help you make a decision.
After that it’s about building relationships for the long term-as you grow, you are likely to recruit more people in the region and that increases the payroll volume-you really don’t want to have to go out and look for an additional vendor, you want the ones you have built up close relationships with to be able to scale in line with you. So, those early interview questions and getting an understand of how they work is really important, especially if you have some insight from your leadership team around scaling and growth plans for the future years.
“We really have to make sure that we have trusted partners, and then of course, we have to have a technology platform that really lets us know what's actually happening”
Travis Saville, HR and Systems Lead, Wave
A platform for growth
Wave refer to Payslip these days as a partner for growth, instead of a payroll technology solution. They started by managing a small number of employees on our platform, but these figures climbed very rapidly as Wave went through a period of explosive growth.
It became clear that they needed to manage this growth on a global payroll control platform that could scale in line with their ambitions- the Payslip platform leverages the global first data methodology along with automation features to ensure that the technology does the heavy lifting. Wave were then able to scale the platform and the process instead of the man hours-they did not need to go out and hire a bunch of new global payroll professionals- they scaled our platform as they grew, onboarding more and more local country providers and paying more and more employees as their recruitment drive took shape.
They found that the global playbook for implementations that they developed in partnership with Payslip during the initial onboarding process could easily be duplicated across their new countries-they had a set of best practices and standards to refer to as they grew, and a technology platform capable of handling additional volume when needed.
This enabled Wave to scale at any dimension and feel confident that they have a technology and a process that can keep pace with the strategic ambitions of their leadership team. This is scale up control and growth efficiency in action- if your company is going through a period of growth, and you require a global payroll process and technology platform to help you manage this growth with speed, agility and efficiency- talk to our team today who can tell you more about our global payroll control platform.
For information on the Payslip Platform contact us today.
Subscribe to our Blog
