It is sometimes mistakenly considered that digital transformation and the digitization of legacy processes or services within a company is the exclusive domain of digitally savvy organizations. Tech startups, challenger companies or very digitally focused new companies are often viewed as being a natural fit for digitization initiatives- and while there is truth in this, the reality of the new world order is that digitization is for everybody.
Technology moves on and advances all the time- no global company can afford to sit still. The potential for digitization and innovative digital tools to improve operational efficiency in various business departments is really unlimited. There is no area that can't be improved with things like automation and digital transformation.
There are, of course reasons why it hasn't happened at some of the more mature international organizations, but logic would indicate that digital transformation is moving up the priority list, especially now as the work environment has changed dramatically due to the global pandemic.
In this article, we will look at some of the reasons why mature international companies should digitize their mission critical processes such as payroll delivery and management.
The risk of being left behind
Digitization is happening everywhere these days-digital transformation officers and digital project managers are being hired on a regular basis by lots of different companies for lots of different reasons.
It begs the question, what are the reasons why mature international companies are not yet digitizing and how long can business leaders leave a digitization project before it becomes a problem? How long before it costs them a new client or results in frustrated staff who know there is a better way to do things.
Global payroll professionals almost certainly know that there is a better way of doing things when it comes to payroll-many are still manually entering data into spreadsheets and sharing sensitive global payroll information via email transfers. They feel underserved by a lack of digital processes and innovative digital tools to help them do their jobs better- they look around their company and see their colleagues in marketing, sales and product leveraging advanced cloud based digital tools for their business processes that help them collaborate and work together better-they wonder why the same thing is not happening in payroll, one of the company's largest and most important expenses? It’s a valid question.
If other companies are rapidly digitizing their mission critical processes such as payroll delivery, regardless of whether their tech infrastructure setup facilitates this, the more mature organizations also need to be thinking about digitizing global payroll or risk being left behind.
Sometimes, the size and staff headcount at these companies means they are not in a position to be hugely agile when it comes to decision making- due to a large number of stakeholders involved or a project management process that does not lend itself to rapid decision making. This is something that clearly needs to be resolved, as other organizations are digitizing their payroll at a rapid rate-and the technology is out there in the market to facilitate a digital transformation of the global payroll department. A relevant question to ask would be, if not in 2022, then when?
Faster, safer, better global payroll
Digitizing global payroll would involve a move from legacy process and no longer fit for purpose technology systems over to a cloud-based environment featuring powerful digital technologies. This is the road to smarter, faster and better delivery of global payroll at multinational companies.
It is also a good deal safer and helps protect hugely sensitive payroll data in a much better way than a reliance on time-consuming manual processes such as emails and spreadsheets could ever do. It’s faster because cloud digital tools will likely involve automation, a scenario where thousands of employees data files could be bulked uploaded, then checked and validated in seconds. This would be a massive timesaver for frustrated global payroll professionals, and it would lead to huge operational gains in terms of speed and efficiency.
Integrations would also make things better- global payroll does not or never really has existed in isolation- it is hugely connected to HR, finance and the local country payroll providers relied upon to get people on the ground paid in all of the countries that a multinational company has employees.
Innovative, digital integrations would lead to smooth bidirectional data flows from the payroll system across to HR and finance software and out to local country providers who need to process the data. These same integrations would facilitate the flow of data back into the payroll software system for crucial last mile reporting- this is where the bigger picture insights for informed decision making come from. Leadership teams need to know how much payroll is costing them and in what ways it differs across countries.
Only cloud deployed digitized payroll processing can deliver the kind of speed, security and continuous improvement needed for payroll delivery and management in 2022. There really isn't any mature international company that would not benefit from a faster, safer and better payroll delivery process. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are also likely to be part of the digital future, so a roadmap for the introduction of new technologies and digital innovation makes sense for every company.
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Scale payroll with speed
It is a bit of a myth that only startups and new challenger companies in the market have a desire to scale rapidly and carve out competitive advantage. What about mature global companies who have been around for decades? Why would anybody think that they would not be interested in scaling and growing too?
Of course they would, they want to continue growing and maturing, they want to stay ahead of the competition, and they want to maximize their talent and resources the same as any other company would. The issue is a lack of digitization in their service delivery processes could end up holding them back.
Global payroll delivery and management is a good example of this-if they have not digitized at all in the last 10 years, can they honestly say that they have a global payroll process capable of keeping pace with any scaling ambitions mandated by the leadership team or the board? The answer to this is a firm no- if you want to hit the ground running in new countries and capture opportunities early and ahead of the competition, you need to quickly hire and embed new employees-this means paying them quickly and efficiently too. Only a digitized global payroll process delivered via a global payroll control platform that is purpose built for scaling and growth can make this happen.
Mature companies who have not yet gone digital will likely find themselves behind the curve if they ignore payroll process improvement- they may struggle to hire and quickly pay the talented people they need to help them take advantage of new opportunities in new countries and territories. A continued reliance on legacy systems and processes will mean the ability to scale with speed is not there-last opportunities tend to be a consequence of this. The solution is to digitize their global payroll delivery and management process in such a way that it makes vendor management and adding new vendors fast and easy-with a process like this in place, they can be agile and responsive and scale with speed.