Global payroll tech is a Must have, not a ‘nice to have’

We always find it a little surprising when some people view global payroll technology and digitising the overall process to fall into the category of ‘nice to have’. To be fair, this is something rarely said these days by people directly involved in the industry. Those people know better because they have experienced the variety of time-consuming challenges associated with global payroll delivery and management at multinational companies.

But for those with less insight, it can sometimes be viewed as simply a ‘nice to have’ instead of an urgent requirement for change. Failure to change represents a business risk-not only from a payroll error or data integrity viewpoint, but also from the perspective of roadblocks to business growth. Put simply, if you cannot quickly hire, on-board and pay people on the ground in new countries and territories, then as a business you will struggle to carve out new market share, revenue opportunities and expansion initiatives. In this article, we're going to list out a number of reasons why global payroll technology ?is a must have in 2024 and beyond

You must avoid payroll errors

Payroll is the essential contract between employee and employer-it cannot be allowed to fail and the process should be supported with a digital technology investment, the same as any other business critical service delivery. Payroll errors can be costly for businesses, resulting in compliance issues, financial penalties, and damage to the company's reputation. Payroll errors happen due to a process that relies on manual data entry and excel spreadsheets, where overburdened payroll professionals sometimes make mistakes. Payroll processing involves a lot of manual work, including data entry, tracking, and calculations. When mistakes happen and employees are not paid on time or not paid accurately, there is a business risk that they could seek employment elsewhere.

This level of risk is easily mitigated by automation technology ?which removes human error from the process, saves huge amounts of time and introduces operational efficiency. One of the primary benefits of global payroll technology is automation. With global payroll technology, these processes can be automated, reducing the risk of errors and saving time. This automation ensures that payroll is processed accurately and efficiently, freeing up time for HR and payroll teams to focus on other tasks.

Standardized Processes

Another benefit of global payroll technology is standardized processes. Payroll processes can vary significantly from country to country, making it challenging to manage payroll across multiple locations. Global payroll technology provides a standardized platform for managing payroll processes, ensuring consistency and compliance across all locations. When you deploy global payroll software to create standardised processes and data flows across all of your payroll countries, then you immediately increase visibility and control because you can actually see what is happening across all of your countries. Operational controls are strengthened, mistakes are far less likely and standardized data lends itself to a far more detailed level of analysis and reporting.

Payroll Reporting

Global payroll technology also provides robust reporting capabilities. Payroll reporting is essential for businesses to track payroll expenses, ensure compliance with local labor laws and tax codes, and identify areas for improvement. With global payroll technology, businesses can generate reports on a range of payroll-related metrics, including payroll expenses, employee salaries, and tax withholdings. These reports provide valuable insights into payroll processes, enabling businesses to identify areas for improvement and optimize their payroll operations.

Comprehensive multicountry reporting can unlock and release payroll data to tell a story about what is happening inside an organisation. It can also enable labour cost comparisons across countries, regions and continents. This provides very valuable insight to executive leadership teams who should be very interested to know how their largest business expense, payroll is being allocated across countries. In today's hugely competitive business environment, it is essential that business leaders operate with the digital tools that enable them to view and compare data & key trends on labor costs across countries for bigger picture insights into total workforce costs.

Data Security

Data security is a critical concern for businesses operating in multiple countries. Payroll data is highly sensitive and must be protected from unauthorized access. Global payroll technology can provide robust data security features , ensuring that payroll data is stored securely and can only be accessed by authorized personnel. It is simply not possible to approach data security with an attitude of ‘nice to have’- it is mandatory and non-negotiable-the consequences of a data breach can be very severe both in terms of financial penalties and serious reputational damage.

Connected to this are privacy and compliance, two more important factors in global payroll delivery and management. These are simply more reasons to move payroll into a digital platform cloud environment where it can be managed in a structured way with digital tools that support strict protocols around information security, compliance and privacy.

Essential Connections

Global payroll processing cannot exist in isolation, it requires essential data flows from human resources and the finance department. Therefore, it is hugely important that payroll software is connected to this wider ecosystem , especially HCMs and financial software applications.

Global payroll technology is needed to ensure automated bi-directional data flows between all three of these crucial technology stacks. It ensures major time saving and operational efficiency gains for all three departments. Payroll teams benefit from access to all of the data they need to process payroll, especially at the pre payroll data cleansing stage. HR teams ?benefit from a complete view of all of the data they need on the global workforce and the finance team gain access to crucial payroll related reporting as well as access to General Ledger reporting which is a major priority for them.

It is a must have to connect all of these essential systems via integrations as a service technology. Smooth integrations ensure unified payroll management and the ability to connects to all payroll data sources: ERP and finance applications, time & attendance software, benefits systems, stock & equity software, payroll calculation engines.

In conclusion, global payroll technology is a must-have for businesses operating in multiple countries. By automating processes, standardizing payroll processes, providing robust reporting capabilities, and ensuring data security, global payroll technology helps businesses optimize their payroll operations and avoid costly errors.

This article originally appeared on payslip.com