A common question we encounter when we talk to global payroll professionals or attend industry events on global payroll processing is the issue of how to manage everything that is involved with the delivery and management of multicountry global payroll today.
There are a lot of variables in play and a lot of moving parts in global payroll-this has led to increasing levels of complexity and payroll professionals are finding that many of the processes they are currently working with lack a structure and framework in which to manage everything on a global level for full visibility and control.
In this article, we are going to talk about the reasons why a technology solution is always needed regardless of which payroll model you choose to pursue or how many local country vendors you engage with. Simply put, you still need to manage it all at a global level. The good news is that there is a way to do it at multinational companies.
No global payroll silver bullet solution
A good starting point is not to spend any time or energy searching for a silver bullet solution-a single services provider who can manage all of your countries, all of your data and all of your in-country vendors effectively. This provider does not exist and searching for this type of payroll service solution will result in disappointment.
A far better scenario is to accept the fact that payroll is always local and unique to each country-therefore you will always have to engage with local expertise and local country vendors in the specific countries you need to process payroll in. So, once you choose a payroll model, go and source all of the local country expertise that you need, it then becomes a question of how to apply a management framework or structure so that all your countries can be managed globally.
Many companies we talk to have been convinced on sales call that the silver bullet solution does exist and that the key to all their problems is to reduce down the number of vendors that they interact with. This has been debunked and disproven, all of the major analysts last year have agreed that no such option really exists on a practical level.
What companies have found is that the vendor or provider promising this solution was only able to cover a select amount of their countries, and was not able to consolidate the data from all of the data sources in a manageable way that helped them understand what was happening with their payroll across all of their countries. The companies ended up being stuck with all of the complexity that they originally had, no line of sight or visibility into their payroll processes, limited or no reporting and lots of risk when it came to payroll data accuracy and compliance obligations.
Choose a global payroll solution that works for you
This is essentially about defining your needs and then going out and selecting the number of payroll service providers (e.g. payroll aggregators) and local country vendors required to meet your specific payroll management needs. It does not matter if this means multiple models and several different local country vendors/ payroll providers-it simply takes whatever it takes to deliver and manage payroll. And it can work as long as you have considered how best to manage it all.
This is where technology in the shape of a global payroll control platform comes in. Payslip’s platform does not care how many aggregators or service providers you engage with, nor does it matter how many local country vendors you have. All of your payroll data sources can be brought together on a single platform-with all of the data standardized and consolidated in this platform. Furthermore, the data flows from all of your multiple sources are automated into the platform so payroll becomes much faster, more efficient and accurate by default.
The platform also becomes your international payroll management plan-because you have all of the data from all of your payroll sources (HCM and human resources systems, aggregators or service providers, local country vendors, time and attendance software sources, and benefits providers) flowing into a single location.
This paves the way for detailed, comprehensive and consolidated reporting on either a global level or a country-by-country basis. This enables a truly global view-you can get global workforce payroll data figures by region and country for a high- level overview, while also being able to drill down into the micro pay element details that tell the real story behind the data. This is the visibility and control you have been looking for in a global payroll system -a way to view and manage what is happening across all of your different countries at a global level.
The global payroll control you need
With this approach, global payroll managers and their teams of professionals find themselves in full control of their multi country payroll. They have full visibility of what is happening across all of their countries thanks to the standardized data flows and standardize processes for payroll in each of their countries. They can now centrally manage all of their countries and payroll vendors from this single technology platform-the global payroll control platform.
All of the employe data from all of their payroll sources is flowing into a single location-they can view it anytime they want and run self-serve reporting to examine key trends or anomalies with payroll. This is the kind of payroll data and process control plus management capability that payroll managers have been searching for. They could not find this level of control in the other options because those options did not allow the data from all of their sources to flow into a single location, those options restricted them to the local country payroll vendors that were associated with their chosen aggregator, those options did not involve standardized data across countries or automated data flows for faster and more efficient payroll processing in their teams.
Now, thanks to Payslip, they can run global payroll operations on their own terms-they can choose a mix of in-house software, outsourced solutions or services aggregator models. Then can then go out and select the exact number of local country vendors required to deliver payroll. And now, they have the Global Management solution that they were seeking for their payroll model -a place for the payroll team to streamline and manage it all in a single location with full visibility and control over process, data, workforce management and reporting.
Now they can see what is happening in each of their countries and on a global level-they have the data and reporting to supply crucial payroll cost analysis information up the chain to the office of the CFO and even the C-Suite. And their global payroll professional teams are equipped with innovative digital tools within a global payroll system that help them work in a faster, smarter and better way.
All of this is available on the global payroll control platform. our team is ready and waiting to answer any questions you may have and take you on a platform tour-it is time you talked to Payslip about multi-country payroll.