Last week, we ran our first webinar of 2022-the topic was around bigger picture insights and how the road towards these insights begins with the data and how it is managed. You can view a recording here.
Get the data foundations right and the rest of it can fall into place a lot quicker than you might expect. Mary Holland (CPP), CCO chaired this fireside chat webinar, and we were delighted that our client Cloudera could attend, and they were represented by David Nugent, Senior Manager Global Payroll and Hannah Huneidi, CPP, Global Payroll professional.
We’re going to take a brief look at some key takeaways and learnings from an informative webinar and review some of the insights from David and Hannah about their journey towards consolidated multicounty global payroll reporting and bigger picture insights with Payslip.
25+ global locations create a bigger picture challenge!
David spoke how about a very common challenge that scaling organization face when it comes to getting a handle on their global payroll visibility and costs- Cloudera have been going through a period of hyper growth in recent years. High growth activity inevitably results in hiring new employees in new locations around the world. This usually means additional local country payroll providers and a lot more data to be managed- this data can be coming in non-standard formats from multiple systems and locations- bigger picture clarity can be a struggle, especially without a global payroll control platform to manage it all in a single location.
“Prior to Payslip, our data was mainly managed in countless spreadsheets. Every single vendor has a different format to deliver our Gross To Net calcs to us, it was quite a laborious task, and it took a lot of time.”
David Nugent
Cloudera
So, they were looking for a technology solution and discussed their needs with leadership-keeping hold of great local vendors was key and Cloudera were excited about the prospect of leveraging a technology platform with Payslip that would help them maintain control over their preferred vendors while also standardizing their data and processes so that it wasn't so complex to track and monitor what was happening across they're expanding range of countries.
Achieving standardization of data and process changes everything
31% of our webinar poll respondents stated that their data was not standardized across their countries
Hannah talked about the steps they took towards creating standardized data and processes in order to fully leverage a global payroll technology solution for advanced reporting and bigger picture insights. She spoke of the importance of having support from upper management and how giving them a clear view of how standardization can transform global payroll delivery is key to their understanding of the benefits.
Mapping and classifying pay elements (general pay elements, employee deductions and employer contributions) was one part of the process and then an integration between Workday and Payslip was the second, as this ensured smooth bi-directional data flows between Cloudera’s HCM and the Payslip global payroll control platform.
“Building out pay element codes helped build the infrastructure for global reporting and created a process for how we globally approach pay codes.”
Hannah Huneidi
Cloudera
This enabled Cloudera to have a unified approach to multi-country elements set up and data standardization for crucial general ledger account codes. The finance team at Cloudera now have clear visibility over which payroll data is flowing into specific general ledger codes.
All the data is moved into Payslip and now Cloudera can generate global payroll reporting across all of their countries in just a few clicks.
Supporting leaderships with a better payroll data experience
Global payroll professionals talk to us all the time about the increase in requests they are receiving from the C-Suite executive team and business leaders for payroll data and reporting. The pandemic has changed the way we work and has created an urgent need for bigger picture insights and clarity around data at many of the business-critical deliveries within a multinational company. Payroll is always one of the largest expenses, therefore a clear-cut view of labor costs, country comparisons and insightful data is very important.
“Our automation of general ledger on Payslip is such a huge win, it is super easy to just grab the automated GL and upload quickly and efficiently.”
Hannah Huneidi
Cloudera
“Payslip has a great Change Log report which shows us what pay elements have changed from one month to the next and it is very easy to get answers to questions with this report.”
David Nugent
Cloudera
Both Hannah and David mentioned the importance of the standardized look and feel of the Payslip platform. This really hits home when they need to swap a task between regions, sometimes to cover for a member of the team on sick leave-it is now perfectly achievable for a member of the EMEA team to cover payroll processing for an absent member of the LATAM team-this is very useful for payroll continuity and avoiding any service disruption and David mentioned how it is really a huge relief for payroll managers as covering staff absences had proved to be very challenging and disruptive before they moved onto the Payslip platform. From a reporting perspective, it helps the wider payroll team be agile and responsive to reporting requests because any member of the team can now generate a report on a self-service basis, regardless of their location or familiarity with the country specifically payroll process- this means there will be no delays in delivering reports to leadership teams when payroll team members are absent.
We ran another poll question during the webinar asking all attendees to specify what they wanted the most from there global payroll reporting. The options were
- Instant access to payroll costs across countries
- Ability to compare costs across countries in a single currency
- Real-time reporting with self-serve access
- Workforce management: costs and location
It was no great surprise to find that the vast majority of attendees selected the option ‘all of the above’! Reporting simply has to be extensive, broad ranging, comprehensive and detailed. Standardized data consolidated to a global level is necessary for this to happen.
Cloudera needed to supply a range of different stakeholders with detailed reporting on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis. This is something they can do now that they are on board the global payroll control platform at Payslip. They found that being able to access the data and generate the reports in real time along with a single currency view has really helped them respond to requests for reporting.
Reporting can also prove valuable when assessing ICP performance and managing the relationship with local country providers- on the Payslip platform, Cloudera are able to extract key metrics on SLA deliverables. If there is something in the local country payroll delivery process that needs to be changed or improved, reporting can really shine a light on it and catch it before it becomes a problem.
Cloudera are a fast-moving organization. Moving to a cloud environment that helped them to standardized data and processes across their country network while also introducing consolidated multi-country reporting has been a huge factor in their future growth readiness. They now operate with a global payroll delivery process that can support and facilitate growth efficiency.
Our team is ready and waiting to talk you through the list of reasons why you should be running your payroll on our platform. Get in touch today.
