By Peter Holland – CEO, Global EMS
Over the past few years we have seen a number of developments in the marketplace necessitating the move to automation, a change from office to remote working and the unequivocal requirement for online capabilities. We have seen century old companies on the high street, slowly adjusting to online capabilities, to be bought up and switched off, almost overnight. Covid-19 has acted as a catalyst to this change and greatly increased the pace of that change. Businesses now need to respond strategically and immediately or risk ‘going under’.
In addition to Strategic needs, there are also a number of triggers for rapid implementation of change including: compliance, the lack of internal resource or simply the need to for better use of existing resources. All of these changes, done quickly, can create instant efficiencies.
There are also constraints to rapid implementation such as, waiting for ‘that new system’, lack of a broad technological capability and the right people.
These are all challenges which have been dealt with before, in isolation, but must now be answered using a single all-encompassing approach. Firstly, we need to analyse and simplify the issue; look at the overall integrative process and refine; then, make best use of the technology supporting this process and remove the barriers to change. Theoretically, straightforward enough, but practically more challenging when doing this for the first time.
Using global payroll as a ‘vehicle’, here is some of the reasoning and a selection of approaches:
- To ensure compliance is adhered to and cost savings are made swiftly, there must be a rapid implementation of the new process for Global Payroll, which also affects, HR, Mobility, Finance, IT and Tax.
- Dependency on 3rd parties must be minimised and specialists will be needed to drive these changes through.
- The use of proven templated systems and processes must be reconfigured to the Company’s new strategy.
- A Rapid Implementation Team/Group and supporting system must be identified; both highly adaptable and with broad capabilities. This includes people that can operate at different levels and functions within the company, and an immediately deployable and standalone system that can later be integrated fully with the new HCM system, as required.
- This is the perfect time to analyse the process and look at the costs of supporting strategic change, and how to concurrently, create value within the organisation to bring further advantage to the Company.
The People, Process and Flexible Technology
The need for change and rapid implementation is clear; as is the specialised team and agile technology, required. There must be an initially ‘standalone’ system that can be immediately integrated with what exists. Later this same system is used to fill in any gaps in any ‘new’ company systems/ERPs; often these big ERPs only have ~50% of the data required for payroll. At Global EMS, we have a team that does this Rapid Implementation and a standalone Payroll/HRIS that can ‘hit the ground running’; our own Rapid Reaction Force.
As all the systems, the processes and people needed are in-house, we can therefore avoid the long wait and lack of control seen where there are multiple 3rd parties involved. This prevents loss of control and delays in the process. Our cloud based application can be integrated immediately with existing systems or used by the Company as a HRIS, Payroll or ERP system, which then further integrates with other business functions, such as Finance, Tax and Mobility.
My next article will explain how this rapid change is achieved and, specifically, how we implement global payroll and measure the value created to the Companies in this process.
