Bringing Order to Global Payroll Chaos

Like so many organizations, you manage employees around the globe, ranging from a handful of remote sales representatives in outlying countries to large concentrations of employees in factories, headquarters or other key locations. And likely your payroll systems and providers are all over the map as well. You know there must be ways to simplify and improve payroll, but what are these opportunities, and how can you tap into them? The broader your global workforce, the more daunting it may seem to make order out of chaos. Yet it is possible to organize and develop a global payroll strategy with just some basic information. 

While there is no such thing as a single “global payroll” system or provider in today’s market, that should not prevent you from formulating a global payroll strategy. Rather than seeking order by issuing global vendor RFPs or country-by-country enterprise resource planning (ERP) build-outs, more and more global companies are starting with a purposeful global payroll strategy and governance model. Visions of a single provider or system are replaced with a global framework that is designed to identify optimal payroll delivery models and the service providers best suited to your scale, complexity and regional footprint. Specific goals of this approach often include consolidated data and interfaces, harmonized processes, leveraged payroll relationships and reduced risk – all with greater corporate visibility and control.

If a deep-dive examination of payroll operations around the globe makes you queasy, this ISG white paper outlines an iterative approach that begins with high-level design and a principle-based structure to engage your own regional and country payroll leads. Global payroll strategy and governance should be used to engage in-house expertise while guiding payroll decisions at the global, regional and local levels.