The payroll industry is populated with a few key providers who all play important, but distinct roles in the very important payroll eco-system. These roles exists because companies have different needs outside of the obvious payroll function of ensuring their employees get paid accurately and on time.
To give you a picture of these needs, think of the very common scenario of a company looking to scale operations into a new country. This expansion can be driven by success, a search for new talent or a company merger or acquisition. A payroll department is faced with a new set of challenges very quickly: a larger workforce in a new country where they do not have a payroll provider and are unfamiliar with local laws and regulations. They need local expertise, a vendor they can trust and some form of system that allows them to access and manage the new country payroll. They also want payroll activity in this new country to be a part of their overall payroll reporting. This is payroll on a global level and to achieve it, employers have options.
Payslip and Aggregators operate in this space and, in this article, we tell you a little bit more about the services we provide as well as how we differ from the aggregators.
What is an aggregator?
Companies with employees spread across several countries like the appeal of outsourcing their payroll to an aggregator. This is a business that partners with multiple local (in-country) vendors or payroll providers in order to process payroll all payrolls for a global employer under a single contract.
The aggregator takes on the responsibility of managing the local payroll processing on behalf of the employer. They do this by subcontracting the processing of payroll to third party providers with local expertise.
The aggregator takes the payroll data from these third-party providers and links it (using exchange technology) to one central platform so the global employer can see what is happening. The aggregator collates payroll data from several systems used by their network of in-country specialists and then ‘aggregates’ the information.
The aggregator may be the contracted provider of the service, but they do not actually run the payrolls and pay the employees, this is done by the local vendors who operate within the aggregator’s network. Aggregators use their own network of providers (who will have local expertise) to deliver this service and the client is restricted to the providers in the aggregator network.
This model can be expensive and is commonly used when international employers have employees spread over a large number of countries. ADP Streamline, iiPay, CloudPay and Celergo are examples of the aggregator model.
Who is Payslip?
Payslip is an automation & integration technology platform designed specifically for global payroll management. It helps employers who want to introduce technology to create efficiencies in a few key areas:
- Standardized data- data coming from a lot of sources in different formats makes reporting difficult and time-consuming. Employers want it in a single format and delivered in real-time.
- Automation: Employers want software that automates the many repeatable payroll tasks faced by large companies and lets them manage the process.
- Select new partners or maintain existing relationships: Employers want control over who processes their payroll. They want to choose their own vendors. Or keep someone they like. The aggregator model does not offer this.
- Integrations: They want their payroll data to play a role in their wider eco-system. They want software that integrates payroll vendors with employer HCMs like Workday and Success Factors along with finance software.
Payroll is about a lot more than the calculations and multinational companies need help gathering data, managing vendors, creating reports, automating manual tasks, meeting compliance obligations and supplying business intelligence. The Payslip platform helps them do all of this and more. Times have changed-growing companies need a solution as scaling and international growth is happening so fast- in the past, global employers chose the outsourcing model and approached a large aggregator-who delivered a managed service as part of a traditional global payroll model. Many global employers need more today and are looking for alternatives.
What we do
We are an Automation & Integration technology partner that delivers standardized global payroll for multinational employers around the world. We integrate with Finance, HCM, and outsourced vendors on a single platform and our technology automates payroll processes and standardizes payroll data. This helps companies to centrally manage their global payroll operations with full visibility and control.
How Multinational employers benefit from Payslip
They get standardized data across all their payroll countries which helps them to quickly produce consolidated reporting. Manual repeat tasks get automated, so they are performed quicker and there is less room for error. They get high level visibility over their multi-country payroll processes, something that has been a struggle for them to achieve. They get to manage their entire global payroll operations centrally from one cloud platform.
They get to retain any valuable relationships created with in-country providers and have the flexibility to choose or change which vendors they wish to work with. Their employees can access their pay related information whenever they want using the Payslip self-service portal, and the experience is the same for employees across every country. They get multi-country reporting, KPIs, and real-time dashboard analytics. They get independent SLA and performance monitoring of vendors.
Key Differences
- Aggregator technology often does not offer consolidated, comprehensive and comparative multi country reporting- it tends to focus on high level reporting as opposed to detailed and comparative labour costs reporting.
- Aggregator technology was designed to simply process payroll and ensure employees get paid -it was not designed to manage all of the complexity associated with modern multi country payroll
- Aggregator models tend to come with long and inflexible contracts -Payslip contracts are more flexible
- Aggregator models were not designed to standardize the data and automate the processes- the Payslip platform was designed to do exactly this. Payroll can be complex and manual, standardization and automation solve these challenges.
- Payslip technology is innovative and designed to integrate with 3rd party management tools like HCMs such as SuccessFactors and Workday as well as external payroll providers- Aggregator technology was not designed to do this- it was designed to deliver payroll more than share data
- Aggregator models involve more rip and replace while Payslip allows employers to keep existing software infrastructure and vendor relationships in place
- Payslip data security is enhanced by authorized users and permissions functionality -with the aggregator model, it is difficult for the global employer to see who is interacting which sensitive payroll data and potentially changing it
- Payslip technology is built to scale and therefore helps global employers expand rapidly into new countries and territories -with the aggregator model, employers are restricted to the aggregator’s network reach -they may not have a relationship with a local vendor in the country the employer wants to move into- they are then forced to look at alternatives and this is an obstacle to their growth ambition
- Not all aggregators operate in a cloud deployed environment- Payslip does
- Not all aggregators offer an employee personal data self-service portal-Payslip does
A technology platform?
Yes, one that integrates into the broader IT eco-system in a company who have employees in several countries. The Payslip platform sits between employer’s HCM and payroll vendors and automates data flows. The payrun data files (calculated by the actual payroll providers) are prepared and updated via these data flows. Payslip technology brings together the whole payroll process end to end, from calculation input data right through to reporting out into last mile systems such as accounting.
The platform works on three levels from a global employer perspective; employer, payroll provider and employee. The employer gets to see and control the payroll process, manage the in-country providers and also provide employees in all countries with self-service access to their own data.
Payslip use automation and integration technology to help multinational employers around the world achieve full visibility and control over their global payroll operations. Our technology can quickly transform how you run international payroll. Start your free trial today.