Global payroll at multinational companies today has evolved into a complex landscape filled with multiple vendors, internal technology stacks, and multiple global payroll teams operating in different countries and regions. Unsurprisingly, this level of complexity has resulted in a range of unserved needs where a technology solution is required to supply some much-needed organization and management to the overall process of delivering global payroll.
In this article, we are going to focus on four key unserved market needs, outline how they arose, the impact of these needs and how the Payslip platform is best suited to solving these needs in a sustainable, futureproofed manner.
1 Lack of standardization
Multinational companies are scaling at a faster rate than legacy technology and global payroll professionals can keep pace with. The business landscape of today, especially when it comes to high-tech digital native companies is defined by rapid growth as these companies have a mandate to increase market share and move into new territories as quickly as possible. They often have a technology driven process which is quite agile and flexible, allowing them to move quickly- however, this is not always the case with a global payroll function which often suffers from legacy technology and non-standard processes. The impact of all of this, is multiple global payroll professionals located in different countries operating with different processes and different data formats-this makes it very difficult to manage global payroll centrally or achieve visibility and control over what is happening in global payroll across a range of countries.
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The solution to this is to engage with Payslip, a global payroll technology partner capable of defining and introducing standardized processes and best practices for global payroll delivery. Payslip operate a global payroll platform that is designed to introduce standardization as part of a global payroll framework which also crucially, allows for local country nuance and flexibility. When standardization is introduced to the process in such a way ,a crucial need gets served -global payroll processes become streamlined across countries, professionals follow similar procedures and operate with standardized levels of data which enables them to understand quickly what is happening with their payroll.
The platform provides a basis for standardization and a predictable, repeatable process globally, allowing global payroll professionals across several different countries to operate from the same standard playbook. Once a user is familiar with the system, they will be able to process and manage payroll for new countries, thus increasing payroll staff capacity. Payslip helps scale the global payroll system, not the manhours.
2 Time consuming manual entry
Global payroll processes still rely heavily on manual inputs and checking invalidations. You would be forgiven for thinking that this has become a thing of the past when you consider the level of innovative technology out there, but for some reason, such innovation has not reached the global payroll department.
A lack of automated processes has resulted in global payroll professionals spending way too much time entering data via manual spreadsheets, searching for errors and anomalies as well as validating data they have previously entered. A lot of time is consumed by this process and it lacks efficiency and innovation - often leaving global payroll professionals a bit disillusioned. This lack of automation also means the risk of human error continues to be a part of the global payroll process-anyone can make a mistake, and a repetitive process that relies on people keying data will always have this kind of risk. Too much time is being spent in this area during the monthly pay run cycle.
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The solution is to engage the services of a global payroll technology partner like Payslip to introduce automation in the form of robotic process automation - this is where a technology configuration can automate the input and checking of repeat tasks like the data input of pay run elements. Huge benefits can be quickly realized when automation is introduced as this technology can upload, check and validate bulk data in a matter of seconds.
This technology can be applied to create structured and automated data flows across employer platforms, In-country Providers and post-payroll systems for general ledger reporting and other payroll related data feeds. Automated validations reduce errors and exception investigation requirement, especially post payroll as they are caught earlier before payroll is authorised, payments are executed, or general ledger reports are produced.
When you eliminate repeatable manual data handling and automate these recurring and predictable flows, your global payroll professionals are then free to use their expertise to deliver insights and improve the operational excellence, and so contribute more to the business growth.
3 Limited reporting and poor visibility
A lack of global payroll reporting has been a major problem in the industry, business leaders need access to comprehensive reporting on a global level in order to make strategic decisions that contribute to the overall growth of the business. Global payroll managers need to see, understand and manage their payroll on both central and local levels-key reporting is needed to make this happen. They especially need to produce country comparisons reports in order to help them establish where the key costs are and identify areas for process improvement.
Reporting, consolidated at global level, is also needed to ensure multi country compliance. Covid19 has revealed that the lack of reporting, visibility and analytics to many companies tends to result in operational difficulties and an unsatisfactory global payroll process, that is also unsustainable.
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The Payslip global reporter function- Payslip reporting suite provides real-time access to consolidated pay and cost data, delivering analytical insights on entity, country, payroll, or employee level. This is a flexible reporting tool, designed to ensure central governance and local country accountability and transparency.
Payroll data is transactional in operations, but can tell many stories if standardized, consolidated and released through Payslip’s smart reporting & analytics tools. Then it becomes a vital source of company expense information in relation to payroll costs across countries and regions. C-suite executive leadership teams benefit from access to reports that can be customized and filtered by entity, country, employee or pay element- this lets them drill down into the data and really understand what the global payroll figures are saying about where money is being spent and how resources are being deployed.
4 Isolated systems and data
Global payroll and the data associated with it needs to be linked to wider business units such as HR, finance, compliance and IT. It is no longer acceptable for business-critical functions to operate in isolation or work in silos where valuable information and data insight is not exchanged due to poor integrations, or a complete lack of systems integrations.
Multi-national employers are looking to unify disparate groups including payroll, HR, and IT to create a cohesive global eco-system. HR inputs are vital to the processing of global payroll but conversely, key data extracted from global payroll cost analysis can lead to very useful and actionable insight for the HR team. Integrated platforms are required to ensure the smooth flow of data between these business-critical functions.
Companies who are progressive and ambitious when it comes to their core business and support functions need integrations to empower their business unit professionals to work in smarter, more efficient ways, that help their departments add strategic value to the company.
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The Payslip Integrator, which is designed to integrate with any HCM, ERP or HR platforms as well as local payroll vendors around the world. Payslip Integrator can deliver post payroll reports and data flows to employer accounting and finance systems.
This enables global employers to link payroll with their wider HR and IT ecosystem. Employers also benefit from increased control, data protection and predictability on data flow and management.
Payslip software integrates smoothly and sits between the HCM and local payroll vendor systems. It then automates work flows and standardizes data feeds. This allows international employers to manage their payroll processes, people, data and reporting from one central platform. It also allows employers to retain any preferred and proven payroll providers and also easily add new ones as they grow organically or through acquisition.
The global payroll landscape is defined by complexity and we have highlighted just four ways in which our platform helps to meet unserved market needs. There are many other needs that can be solved by integrating with the Payslip platform. Talk to our team today to get started on your digital transformation journey.