We’re nearing the end of 2022 and it is still amazing to discover that many organizations which claim to be global, digital, and progressive still run a business-critical service in a non-cloud environment.
But this is the reality of payroll services delivery and management at many organizations around the world today. Not only are they not in the cloud, but they also lack basic levels of digitization. Many payroll software processes in multiple countries are still being run via excel spreadsheets and the manual duplication and transfer of global payroll data.
It may seem hard to believe but that is the reality. Payroll management these days really should be run in a cloud payroll system which leverages both data protection tools and innovative digital applications to make payroll processing faster and better. In this article, we will outline some of the reasons why payroll should be delivered in the cloud.
Faster and smarter
Cloud payroll software lends itself to smarter, faster, and more intuitive payroll delivery and management. It utilizes and leverages advanced digital tools such as robotic process automation, this immediately makes the complete payroll system faster as well as more accurate. RPA and machine learning technology are software solutions that have the capacity to radically alter the speed and efficiency with which payroll is delivered across several countries at the same time.
RPA for example can bulk upload thousands of rows of employee data, then check and validate it all in a matter of seconds, delivering an exception report highlighting any anomalies or errors. The global payroll professional then only has to dedicate their valuable time to studying this real-time report and making the necessary changes or amendments. By having the ability to fix such errors and have them brought forward by reliable technology, then it can also provide employers and employees with more peace of mind that their payroll process is thorough, and they don’t have to worry about any mistakes when they run payroll.
This is light years away from the time-consuming process of manually entering payroll information and data into row after row of excel spreadsheets, subjecting the whole process to human error, from a tired person who is forced to manually enter, check, and validate this data. Implementing more advanced technology that can support automatic data processing will allow employees to have more time to focus on other important tasks and reduce the risk of any errors being made when they process payroll. This could also contribute to improved morale among payroll professionals- if tedious manual tasks are processed by more advanced and new technology, then payroll professionals can spend their time focusing on higher priority work such as analysis and reporting.
Protect sensitive employee data
If you are not delivering payroll in the cloud, then the chances are you are using a lot of excel spreadsheets and also emailing this information around the world. E-mail is no longer a secure method of delivering sensitive data and there really are few levels of data that are more sensitive than global payroll which contains both salary and personal employee information.
Such data really needs to be managed in a secure environment where digital tools can restrict access to this sensitive information. Digital access controls and global payroll professional authorizations can be set up in the cloud to ensure that only people who need to view this data can access it, view it, or change it in any way. Digital audit trails can then confirm who interacted with the data, what they changed, when and why.
This is the level of digitization that sensitive global payroll data deserves, it deserves to be protected in line with the highest industry standards and employees deserve to know that their personal information is being processed in line with regulatory protocols, such as GDPR. They will also want to know that it is being protected by something more than a basic password protected spreadsheet.
Read Payslip’s data security product sheet
Ensuring employees that their information is going to be protected and kept in a secure cloud system, is something that could help human resources with employee retention and even the recruitment and onboarding of new hires. Assuring employees and potential new employees that the company values the security of their data and that it is a top priority for them could help establish a relationship of trust between the employee and the employer, contributing to the improvement of the employee experience and employee retention figures. This is 2022, data leaks are common and damaging, no global employee would be reassured to learn that their monthly payroll is processed via spreadsheets and emails.
Shared documents and workloads
Global payroll professionals are busy and diligent people, it is common for them to go the extra mile and deliver payroll under challenging circumstances. These are admirable characteristics that deserve to be supported via digital cloud tools that can help them do their jobs in a more efficient and faster way.
Sometimes global payroll professionals will need to access data while on the move, from a remote office or from their homes. In a post pandemic world, this is a commonplace need for many employees of any description. Global payroll professionals need to be able to access payroll procedure notes and information for specific countries as well as the actual employee data they need to do their jobs. They need to be able to access this from any location, in this new hybrid and remote working world. They also need to be able to access it from a mobile app with strong security measures. Only payroll processed in a cloud based digitally secure environment can deliver to them this level of flexibility that they need.
They could also benefit from digital tools and cloud-based applications that allow them to switch tasks or share information with their professional counterparts in other countries. This can be in the form of simple digital notes allowing them to update a file or ask specific queries, right up to swapping country pay runs over to employees in other countries. Innovative digital platforms and cloud-based tools are needed to make this a reality, but it is a reality that busy professionals deserve and it will serve to make payroll faster, more efficient, and more secure.
Transferring your basic payroll process over to a cloud-based system will only enhance the process and make it much more efficient for the entire organization. Implementing cloud technology will make payroll faster and smarter by eliminating the use of outdated legacy processes such as the use of excel spreadsheets which require manual data entry. A cloud environment is also much more secure when it comes to employee data, which could help with employee retention, as well as recruitment. Running payroll through the cloud is really the best payroll solution and something that should be prioritized that multinational companies today.
For more information about our Global Payroll Control Platform contact us today.