systematicHR

The intersection between HR strategy and HR technology

, , ,

HR Technology Conference 2014: Global Payroll

systematicHR Avatar

If you read this blog, you know I like order and simplicity.  I want everything in one place.  My scale at home weighs me and integrates to my calorie tracker.  my calorie tracker integrates with my fitness tracker.  I know how many calories I’ve eaten, how many I’ve expended, and if my weight trend is on target or not.  It’s all in one app even though all the data gets entered in separate places.  This is the world I want for global payrolls, but…

Seriously, global payroll is such a PITA.  It’s just too hard to figure out how to get all of your payroll vendors on a single platform or even a single vendor.  Local countries want their own autonomy, but corporate controls want centralized reporting and GL integrations.  Because if the very disparate local compliance issues, it’s incredibly difficult to normalize much of the global payroll environment.  Here are a couple of quick vendor thoughts that have been coming into focus and reality for a couple years:

  • ADP Streamline.  I don’t quite understand this service, but Streamline can basically take ADP global payrolls and consolidate much of the payroll data into one place.  This allows for generally centralized reporting and results.  The weakness of this model is that it’s not in the ADP HCM applications and can’t do reporting that has HCM data in it (afaik)
  • Ceridian Dayforce Payroll.  I don’t remember the name of their product, but Dayforce HCM is basically able to take Ceridian global payrolls and dump things into the Dayforce application, again providing consolidated reporting.  The weakness of this is that it’s in Dayforce HCM, and not everybody wants to run Dayforce HCM.
  • There are other great global payroll vendors that I like (Celergo comes to mind) but I didn’t visit them this particular HR Tech, so I won’t comment.

The idea of having a single payroll vendor doing all of the work in one place is fantastic, but it’s really pretty mythical.  Not one vendor can cover the entire globe, and most companies will have a gap somewhere, even with the big vendors like ADP and Ceridian.  Most organizations will try to get to 2-3 vendors to cover the globe, and some of them use outsourced BPO arrangements like AonHewitt or NorthgateArinso to coordinate these services.  Either way, single consolidated global payroll data is either on multiple vendors, or you spent millions of dollars and years of time consolidating on legacy HCM like SAP or PeopleSoft.

The other observation I’d make is that most global payroll organizations have to stack rank their companies for who is going onto a centralized platform and who is not.  For example, most companies decide on an employee count threshold to determine if it’s worth moving them to Streamline; under 100 employees and the cost of adding a Streamline country may not be worth the ROI.  These smaller countries are often left to their own devices and more manual integrations.

All in all, global consolidated payroll is still a bit mythical, but the last couple of years brought significant capabilities where the major vendors now have the ability to consolidate more than they had in the past.  As country footprints continue to increase, maybe a single global payroll provider is not such a distant future.

Tagged in :

systematicHR Avatar

4 responses to “HR Technology Conference 2014: Global Payroll”

  1. […] HR Technology Conference 2014: Global Payroll 1 day […]

  2. […] POSTS OCTOBER 14, 2014  |  SYSTEMATIC HR [2014, Conference] HR Technology Conference 2014: Global Payroll OCTOBER 9, 2014  |  SYSTEMATIC HR [2014, Conference] HR Technology Conference 2014: […]

  3. […] New Data Released at HR Tech Conference Andrew McAfee Paints Pic of the Future at HR Tech HR Technology Conference 2014: Global Payroll Predictive Analytics Dominates My First HR Tech Conference The Biggest Takeaways from the HR […]

  4. […] – Human Resources Strategy and Technology HR Technology Conference 2014: Global Payroll – If you read this blog, you know I like order and simplicity. I want everything in one place. My […]