It is a new year of global payroll delivery and management at multinational companies around the world. Many of the problems, difficulties and challenges faced by global payroll professionals last year still exist in 2023. They will continue to exist unless the global payroll department and process is prioritized and supported with investment in automation and integration technology that has the capability to transform how multicountry payroll is processed.

We know from talking to global clients and industry experts, that many organizations really want to change their payroll process in 2023. There is a strong desire to move away from manual and outdated payroll system processes and over to fully digitized, end to end multicountry payroll processing. They understand that this is what is needed to generate the level of visibility and control they require over all their payroll countries.

In this article we will take a look at a number of reasons why automation and integration payroll technology must be a top priority for smoother, better and more effective payroll processing in 2023.

Excel spreadsheets in 2023-really?

We never cease to be amazed by the number of modern and capable organizations who are still choosing to process their multicountry payroll via excel spreadsheets and manual processes.  We really feel such an approach should have been left behind over two decades ago, but we still see it in operation at many global companies today.  We also know that it is a source of tremendous frustration for all the diligent and hardworking global payroll professionals out there, who constantly feel that there must be a better way to do this.

The better way is to automate as many parts of the payroll delivery and management process as possible via payroll software. A massive help would be to start at the pre-payroll data cleansing stage as this is the point of payroll preparation that can be the most time-consuming and subject to error.

Automating pre-payroll data flows via a cloud-based global payroll control platform is the answer in 2023. This will massively speed up the process of pre-payroll data preparation and ensure that accurate payroll data and files are delivered at a much quicker speed to the relevant parties such as the local country payroll providers who calculate the payroll and process the payments in the local countries.

Automation: Faster, better and more accurate

When you automate the payroll workflows and leverage robotic process automation RPA and hyper automation technology-it can have a genuinely transformative effect on the payroll function. Bulk file uploads containing thousands of rows of payroll information can be checked and validated in seconds, then rapidly moved across to the local country vendors for processing. Huge time savings and massive efficiency gains naturally follow-payroll professionals and team members have much needed breathing space inside each and every payrun, allowing them to focus their considerable talents on priority work such as payroll reporting and analysis.

Automation technology can immediately detect errors and automatically notify action owners that there is an issue that needs to be fixed. Errors related to human input and manual entry are eliminated from the process, payroll becomes more accurate as well as faster and smoother. This is the way it should be in 2023.

Integrations with the wider global payroll ecosystem

Global payroll does not nor cannot exist in isolation-it is part of a wider ecosystem that involves the human resources department and their associated human Capital Management systems as well as the finance department and whatever financial and accounting software is in operation there.

Not all data related to global workforce payroll can be found in whatever payroll software is in use-payroll data is scattered throughout the organization, some of it in a HCM system like Workday, some of it in emails, some of it is with local country vendors, and some of it is held in the finance department.

So, what we are talking about here is a multi-source data environment where technology integrations are needed to ensure bi-directional data flows between payroll software and the wider ecosystem including HR, local country vendors and the finance department. Data is required to flow both ways to ensure that payroll calculations are fully accurate and compliant, and also to ensure that the HR and finance systems have the relevant payroll related data they need to carry out their duties eg the production of a General Ledger report in finance or an accurate joiners and leavers report in HR.

A global payroll control platform is required here- one that can take all of the data related to payroll calculations from all sources (HCM, finance and local vendors as well as benefit systems) and house it all in one place. This is the integration side of things- technology to ensure bi-directional data flows are in place. Next, the global payroll control platform ensures that these data flows resulting from the integrations are 100% automated. Payslip is the only payroll technology platform that can fully automate all of this data.

The result is massive time savings in payroll processing. Manual effort is reduced by as much as 98% in the pre-payroll data preparation stage. 

Purpose built integration functionality on the platform means out of the box, any point integrations configurable with all internal and external ecosystems. This is great news for global payroll departments that are struggling to manage payroll data arriving from multiple disparate systems in non-standardized formats. Payslip immediately solves this problem, saving them hours and even days with their multicountry global payroll.

How do you want your global payroll to look?

It’s an interesting question-it is highly unlikely that global payroll professionals want to continue operating in the same way with trapped payroll data in disparate systems, manual entry and checking in excel spreadsheets, and errors/duplicate data issues related to their HCM system.

There is a payroll solution, it’s called the global payroll control platform and it is the leading automation and integration technology for the delivery and management of global payroll at multinational companies around the world.  Now is the time to take action and book a platform tour with our team who can show you a range of different features in our digital cloud-based platform that has purpose built hyper automation and integration technology, designed to speed up and improve the way you deliver and manage global payroll. Talk to us today.