The future of payroll
Payslip recently surveyed hundreds of global payroll professionals in an extensive survey to get some insight into some of the current issues occupying their minds as we approach the end of a busy global payroll year.
Like a lot of surveys, it drew up some understandable results but as always there were a few genuinely surprising results in there too. We like to run a couple of surveys every year to find out what we can learn and see how any key takeaways can help us improve our global payroll control platform.
We are in the business of helping global payroll professionals achieve execution excellence with payroll processing and managing multi-country payroll, so we always need to be fully aware of the challenges they face on a daily basis.
We talk to our clients all the time, but it is always important to get some external insight into the any payroll software challenges and complexities facing the global payroll profession. In this article, we will examine the headline statistic above and talk about its implications for global payroll delivery in the coming years.
It’s simply the future
Managing a payroll solution on a single platform with an informative overview dashboard is simply where all global payroll managers and professionals want to be. They have made it clear via surveys, general discussion and feedback, that this is how they want to run payroll.
This is the future because the alternative is no longer manageable, or sustainable-it is too complex and time consuming to attempt to manage multicounty payroll delivery via several different and disparate payroll systems. The result all too often is confusion, lack of clarity and deeply unsatisfying levels of operational control.
Modern, multicounty global payroll has too many moving parts and there has been a strong need for several years now for a global payroll control platform to connect and unify all of these moving parts into a cohesive and manageable whole. There is a strong desire in the payroll community to consign disconnected data flows and multiple interfaces to the past. Global payroll professionals deserve, more than most, to move with the times and run payroll from a single unifying platform that makes the delivery and management of day-to-day global payroll, much smoother, easier and controllable. A platform with automation, self-service and real-time reporting- something that helps them with employee management while making full-service payroll and benefits administration considerably easier.
A unified work model
Global payroll is a business-critical service delivery that has never really operated in isolation- payroll management has always required data inputs from human resources, finance & accounting software and in particular, local country payroll providers.
The delivery and collection of this data from these various departments, although necessary for the delivery of global payroll, has nearly always been manual. It is not hard to see the kind of problems that this would lead to-slow data delivery and real potential for human error and inaccuracies. This was never really sustainable but somehow, global payroll managed to get passed by, when it came to budget approval for digital transformation projects and investment in the best payroll software. The global payroll department is badly in need of digital transformation at many organizations today, so this much requested unified work model is rarely a reality, despite the urgent need and obvious business case.
So, what would this unified work model look like in practice? Well, it would be a series of connected data points flowing into a single, user-friendly SaaS platform. This means automated and standardized data flows between global payroll, hr software and finance applications. Next, the necessary payroll information data flows from the local country payroll providers would flow into the same single platform. This would give global payroll managers a unified view of everything they need to know about multicounty global payroll.
The data would be standardized in the same format, and delivery would be automated. In this case, a global payroll manager would be able to view, access and control all of the important touch points of multi country global payroll management-this person would then have the level of visibility and control they urgently need to achieve execution excellence and overall operational efficiency of this business-critical service delivery.
Multivendor management needs payroll software
A common feature of global payroll today is the utilization of multiple local country vendors to deliver payroll- this is sometimes simply a necessity as the nature of global payroll means that every country is different and therefore needs to account for local country nuances and pay elements specific to that country or region. Global employers therefore have no choice but to engage with local country providers or accountancy firms to ensure they are compliant with local labor laws.
On other occasions, it is simply a choice-a global employer may have established a strong working relationship with a local country provider and wishes to continue using this provider on a long-term basis. Often, they find that technology platforms are not compatible with this new provider systems or service delivery models like the aggregator model forced them to surrender this relationship because their provider of choice does not operate within the aggregator’s network-both of these are unsatisfactory situations which global employers are keen to avoid in the future, and they are actively looking for technology platforms that allowed them to continue relationships with preferred providers while also being able to manage global payroll on one individual platform.
Ecosystem power
All of the above are strong reasons why multinational employers are looking to the market for a technology solution, payroll system or digital platform that enables them to manage their online payroll services and payroll information from a single platform.
It is also about the bigger picture for them and that is achieving connectivity and ecosystem power with in separate, yet interconnected business units like HR and global payroll.
They're creating a business case for digital transformation and investment in a global payroll solution that prepares them for growth efficiency in the long term. They want to scale and grow on their terms and have big ambitions-but they need to ensure their current systems and processes for global payroll delivery do not become a blocker or choke point for this growth efficiency. They want a digital platform that facilitates growth and enables them to move with speed and agility into new countries and regions-ecosystem power is needed for this to happen- i.e., HR and global payroll need to be able to share data in an automated fashion utilizing standardized processes.
The technology used by these departments needs to be compatible, the systems need to talk to each other, the data needs to flow seamlessly in an automated fashion while also facilitating the kind of payroll reports needed for bigger picture insights and analysis. When a global employer can say they have all of this and are able to run it from a single platform-then they have operational efficiency, execution excellence, bigger picture analysis and ecosystem power all in one place.
This is something that positions them for future growth and helps them seize opportunities and revenue streams in new countries quickly by setting up global payroll capabilities in a structured and organized way. Managing global payroll on a single platform enables them to move away from manual processes and legacy systems, over to a global operation model featuring standardized, digitized processes and workflows. Here, they will operate global payroll the way they have always wanted to do so, from a single manageable platform that provides much improved operational efficiencies while also ensuring they have a stable base for growth.
For information on the Payslip Platform contact us today.