Light Bulb Moments!
Barry Matthews
Connecting payroll bureau managers everywhere to be the professional hub and leading voice for payroll bureau managers, driving excellence, innovation, and ethical standards while shaping the future of payroll services.
When do you get yours?
For me, it usually happens on days like today when I had a meeting with a long-standing contact of mine, Linda Burt. We were discussing the challenges which she and her colleagues face on a daily basis, generating about 5,000 payslips a month. And PING it happened!!! So, I’m dying to know if other payroll professionals, particularly those in a bureau environment, agree with my insight:
The task of a payroll professional is complicated by the number of different pieces of software they have to use to get the job done.
It occurred to me that payrollers will use some or all of these different pieces of software on a daily basis:
- The payroll software itself
- Auto enrolment middleware
- The BACS system A Workflow system
- Excel for data importing and reporting
- A data exchange platform for GDPR compliance
- A traditional email system
- And a secure email system
- A payslip portal
- A Billing system
- A Sales Ledger
- A multitude of websites (HMRC, CIPP, TPR etc)
- Several pension portals
- Can you suggest any more?
But, and this is the important question: do you agree that this multiplicity of different platforms is a hindrance, a formula for failure? It seems to me that, even working with 2 or 3 computer screens, you have too many different platforms to get your job done efficiently, accurately and with any degree of ease.
October’s payroll is done and dusted, so please give me your feedback!
Barry Matthews
Service Delivery Manager || Client Experience Manager || NPS || Stakeholder Management || Core Talent Operations || People Leader || Senior Manager || Onboarding Manager || Start-ups || Ed-tech || CIPP UK || Legal - LLB
4 年True...
Connecting payroll bureau managers everywhere to be the professional hub and leading voice for payroll bureau managers, driving excellence, innovation, and ethical standards while shaping the future of payroll services.
5 年I'm so pleased that this article has started to generate some interesting input, thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. I'm not sure that it's entirely valid to compare payroll processing with marketing @Laura Hughes, particularly in a bureau environment. But I agree that "best of breed" works where you can't find everything you need in fewer packages. There's no doubt that many legacy payroll systems are unable to provide a presentable payslip portal, hence the deserved success of your own platform.
As founder of Lite Consulting, I lead projects with a skilled team. With extensive HRIS project management experience, I oversee all phases from selection to optimisation, delivering tailored, results-driven solutions.
5 年And then you have all of the bespoke systems and spreadsheets that are used throughout companies that are required for timesheets, expenses, benefits, company cars etc...All which add to the overall complexity. Many organisations however are attached to these and trying to remove them is always a challenge!!!
Head of Business Relationships
5 年And the output to all these systems is net pay. This has to be accurate as it is audited by every employee. So in an ideal world, time should be saved from administration effort and used in a strategic capacity to check things. This would enhance the accuracy. There is software out there that enables you to do this, don't be wedded to inferior old hat technology.
Now is the time to focus on interesting and engaging projects - whether ours or lending experience to help others succeed with theirs.
5 年Couldn’t agree more Barry - and then you have the systems that clients are using in their back end such as timesheet management, clocking in/out, leave management, qualification management and HR in general. And a lot of that information has to feed into payroll - which either means an awful lot of data manipulation and CSV uploads back and forth or bite the bullet and switch to a minimal number of softwares - or software singular - so that a payroll bureau and the client is accessing the same cloud software to radically improve upon those inefficiencies.