The vast majority of enterprise companies have embraced cloud technologies and cloud services on some level. But it is still the case at a lot of organizations that it has not yet been adopted in the global payroll department. This is a curious anomaly considering that global payroll is nearly always the single largest expense that any organization faces. Traditional methods, legacy technology and manual processes still seem commonplace despite notable advances in global payroll management technology platforms and payroll software.
It is a curious one, but it is also one that is beginning to change, especially as enterprise businesses come to grips with the new normal of a post pandemic working world. This has brought with it the new realization that payroll services are just like any other business critical service and need to be managed in a cloud payroll environment. In this article, we will look at a few reasons why it makes business sense for enterprises to operate payroll in the cloud to manage all of their payroll system needs.
Consolidated online payroll reporting
The payroll system at large enterprises is defined by multiple disparate tech stacks and huge amounts of disconnected data flows. There is a lot of data in global payroll, and it has a story to tell, but it is usually trapped within legacy systems, or service provider technology stacks or different payroll countries. So, how do business leaders get bigger picture insights and a clear understanding of what is happening with their payroll costs? How do they compare costs across countries in a single currency in a unified way?
The answer is that they cannot do this without consolidated real-time and self-service reporting. SaaS technology can bring all of their payroll data together into a single platform, consolidated at a global level and show costs in a single currency while also being able to drill down into the micro level details such as specific pay elements. This is crucial information for decision making, so payroll software needs to operate in the cloud with online payroll services to provide this level of comprehensive multi-country reporting to executive leadership teams.
Data security
Does anybody really believe that global payroll information and data is safe and secure when being transferred via email or an excel spreadsheet? Enterprises now prioritize data security and cyber security measures. It is very likely that if their global payroll is not delivered and managed in a cloud environment, then it is also not in any way aligning with company policy around data security and information protection - it might even be in breach of data laws such as GDPR.
Payroll data is hugely sensitive and important so it should be subject to the same data security control protocols and cyber security measures as other important data in the enterprise. Payroll involves a lot of employee data and employee information such as pay rates, retirement plans, health insurance, payroll tax and employee benefits information. The last thing that any enterprise wants is for this data to be leaked, which would be harmful for the employee as well as the organization. This could lead to the enterprise's public image being impacted negatively and could even lead to financial penalties. Cloud platforms come with built-in data security and information protection measures which are capable of meeting these security related business needs. This is simply another reason why full-service payroll should be delivered via cloud services at enterprise companies.
Payroll Software Innovation
Global payroll professionals and team members deserve to benefit from digital innovation as much as any other team within the enterprise. Digital innovation should not be the exclusive domain of sales, product and marketing, innovation is for everybody.
Global payroll professionals can benefit enormously from cloud digital tools such as digital dashboards, digital audit trails, in system messaging, alerts and compliance calendars. These tools can massively improve efficiency as well as their ability to share data and track tasks globally. It is this level of cloud innovation that will take global payroll out of the 1990s and into the modern era of digital innovation. It has the power to transform payroll, and the business case to move payroll into the cloud is clear.
Furthermore, by undergoing such an innovative digital transformation in payroll, then the workload of the payroll employees could be made easier to manage and give them more time to focus on priority tasks. New payroll software can also help with time tracking, benefits administration and it can also enable employee self-service access to pay stubs or paychecks.
Payroll Services Automation
Software solutions such as automation technology, machine learning and robotic process automation are being deployed at enterprise level around the world at global organizations. There is no reason not to use this technology in global payroll processing, especially in the pre-payroll steps leading up to the payroll runs which focus on data gathering and cleansing.
Introducing automation to replace repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks that are currently being carried out via excel spreadsheets can save huge amounts of time in every payroll cycle. It can also massively increase accuracy levels. Automated payroll leads to execution excellence in payroll operations, everything happens at a much faster pace with much greater efficiency. Payroll is ripe for digital transformation and automation technology; it is a data heavy process that relies on manual inputs. Automation was invented for exactly this kind of work. Now is the time to move global payroll delivery and management into a cloud based digital environment and introduce automation to improve delivery times, streamline processes and create operational excellence.
Visibility and control
Payroll at enterprise companies can span to dozens of different countries across several continents. This represents an immediate management challenge around visibility and control, how do you see exactly what is happening across all of your payroll countries? HR tools are needed to track the on-boarding of new hires while accounting software is also needed in payroll management for bookkeeping, tax filing and tax forms. So, human resources, payroll and finance are connected when it comes to payroll needs.
If you move payroll into the cloud and consolidate all of your data onto a single platform, then you can benefit from a single dashboard view of all countries and payroll providers (at Workday Rising it was revealed that the average number of payroll vendors in use is between 3 and 2) . Cloud technology also enables data standardization, so you could develop a single way of working across all of your payroll countries, then observe and scrutinize the data in one format for all countries. This immediately makes the data comparable and digestible and facilitates multi-country reporting.
Everything about payroll becomes clearer and more efficient. Employees and managers can understand the costs and the processes across countries. This is visibility and control in action and can really only happen in a cloud environment where digital tools can be deployed to create this level of visibility and control.
Running payroll in the cloud will only make the process more efficient and easier to manage for enterprises today. Cloud technology can offer payroll solutions which brings all the payroll data onto one platform in a standardized format. The cloud can also take the payroll process into the modern era of digital innovation and with automation technology, huge amounts of time can be saved throughout the entire payroll process. A single cloud platform can offer complete visibility of the payroll process by offering enterprises a single way of working across all of their payroll countries.
For more information about our Global Payroll Control Platform contact us today.