Market Direction For Payroll Technology Transformation

The world of 2023 is in a state of rapid flux. Globalizing trends, like hybrid work, clash with complications like geopolitical tension and climate change. Companies may find that their global footprint can grow while payroll processing becomes more complicated.

Global payroll services are changing across the board to accommodate global shifts in work. According to the 2022 Gartner report on multicountry payroll solutions, there are five main trends changing the market today:

• Certified integrations
• EOR for near-term agility
• Risk management and cybersecurity
• Growing overlap of software and service
• Concerns about high-risk countries

Immedis is working to ensure that its platform handles all of the important changes in the world of payroll. To that end, we offer the latest in security compliance and HR integration and are keeping up with global trends that may affect payroll. We strive to make the Immedis platform the best solution for global businesses in all corners of the globe.

Certified Integrations

The efficiency gains brought by global payroll transformation projects are sometimes canceled out by the cost of integration and duplicating data. Many organizations, calculating these costs, have opted to stay with the status quo for years on end, leading to over-reliance on outdated legacy systems for processing payroll. Functional elements, like organizational structure and positions, have to be synchronized with the HR record on a week-by-week basis.

Optimally, businesses should integrate payroll with HR, Finance, and other departments. The trend now is for application leaders to prioritize out-of-the-box APIs, and they are ready to connect certified integrations with existing workforce management or HCM suites. These certified integrations make configuration easier and reduce the strain on IT teams.

Global payroll administration companies are also investing in building partnerships with mainstream HCM and workforce management vendors. These integrations improve the quality of information involved in business process management and other workflows. Most payroll providers are also expanding their list of partners to include countries that they do not yet provide for.

EOR For Near-Term Talent Agility

Employer of Record (EOR) is a payroll operations model that lets a business operate in a country without setting up a legal business entity. Instead, an EOR is registered in the country, and it handles the payroll process, while its sponsor business manages and supervises the operations of the employees. This saves firms countless labor hours managing regulatory requirements and running payroll in foreign countries.

An EOR payroll provider is optimal for any business that only needs a few employees on the ground, or that wants to experiment with opening operations in multiple countries. In the latter case, the interim compliance an EOR provides makes perfect sense.

Hybrid work allows for time-sensitive operations involving niche skills from overseas talent. Using an EOR helps streamline these brief and often one-off engagements. This fact has led to the rise of “next-gen EOR”, which integrates broader BPO solutions to make more agile use of niche talent.

Next-gen EOR is driven primarily by short-term needs in specific verticals, such as technology, programming, writing, or graphic design.

Risk Management And Cybersecurity

Global payroll providers can centralize and streamline data by moving it onto the cloud. This implies a significant security responsibility, as payroll information is incredibly sensitive. Many countries have their own set of regulations as to how payroll teams must handle sensitive data like income, ID numbers, and addresses.

Most vendors adopt country-specific data privacy certifications in addition to ISO 27001 cybersecurity. But organizations may also conduct their own research into a vendor’s vulnerabilities before committing. Overall, such risk management is an increasingly important factor in evaluating payroll firms. Vendors with robust security protocols in place have a marketplace advantage over those taking less stringent measures.

The de facto cloud security standard is now shifting to the Federal Risk and Data Management Program (FedRAMP) certification, which since 2020 has been required to host any federal employee data. Global payroll firms headquartered or highly active in the United States often adopt this standard as a litmus test for security.

Growing Overlap Of Global Payroll Software And Service

Many application leaders are skeptical about outsourcing payroll to a payroll provider. They are naturally concerned with the increasing importance of visibility and compliance. However, many payroll software solutions are limited in their localization, leaving outsourcing as the only viable option. Meanwhile, in-house teams are often constrained and find it difficult to handle many post-processing tasks.

As a result, it is becoming increasingly common for global payroll-managed services and outsourcing providers to use their natively built platforms for processing. Global payroll software providers can delegate managed services as needed, while BPOs with native platforms can offer improved user experience and reporting compared with their competitors.

Most global payroll software vendors now also provide some managed services, while nearly half of BPO providers offer native platforms. There is thus a growing overlap between products and services, blurring the lines between the different types of payroll solutions.

Immedis is a great example of the blurring lines between payroll software and service. The Immedis system functions as both a BPO provider and as payroll aggregation software. This lets us provide a high amount of value with our services while maintaining a low payroll software cost.

Concerns About High-Risk Countries

In an increasingly unpredictable world, many vendors have discontinued support for specific geographies. In some cases, this caused organizations to stop their operations in those regions entirely. In other cases, they were able to find a suitable replacement in a short enough amount of time to continue operations.

Application leaders can benefit from auditing the risk to business continuity over their entire geographic footprint. They should be concerned about countries with high risk, and attempt to find a replacement solution before it becomes necessary. In high-risk countries, it may make more sense to operate through a local solution provider, instead of a global solution. Companies that operate in multiple countries should estimate the best way to process payroll in each locale.

Conclusion: Immedis Is Transforming With The Market

Immedis is part of the growing trend of overlap between software and service. Our platform is natively built, while we also offer a combination of Payroll BPO and Aggregation services. Additionally, we offer 100% compliant data security and direct HCM Payroll integration.

We serve clients in countries all over the world and ensure that they receive the most up-to-date software and services that can possibly be provided.

Interested in learning more? We’d love to chat!