The Importance of Data Integration in Global Payroll

By Sarah Townsend | Updated February 27, 2020

Global Payroll Services

Zig Zigler once said, “Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the’gotta have it’ scale.” While money isn’t everything, people need their paychecks. One of the best reasons to make sure your payroll data integrates with your HCM/HRIS system is to ensure accurate, timely pay for your employees.

Payroll data integration is all about the collection and transfer of all payroll data to your payroll provider without having to manually input that data, ensuring accuracy and consistency across all of your data.

Your HCM/HRIS system:

You’ve invested in your HR system. You’ve decided to work with a global payroll provider. These are smart investments, but if you want to get your money’s worth, it’s important to work with a provider that can integrate your data from your HR system and provide that data back to you for meaningful reporting and analysis.

iiPay is the solution. We integrate your data into our propriety technology from your HR system, making it the system of record for all of your global payroll. This process:

  • Reduces risk
  • Minimizes human errors
  • Increases auditability of your processes
  • Saves time and effort
  • Enables visibility and accessibly of your data for real-time reporting

Other data:

As mentioned, iiPay’s proprietary technology is designed to take the structured output file from your HR system to ensure a repeatable validated approach is taken. However, iiPay recognizes this integration process does not typically cover all of the varieties of data that can be required to run a compliant payroll, e.g. bonus, absence management, medical care, and time & attendance information. While ensuring a system of record is achieved, iiPay also takes a feed from other variable data sources, in order to eliminate the need for manual intervention, and the manual consolidation of spreadsheets.

This repeatable validated process, irrespective of country, ensures your payroll professionals are reviewing instructions rather than manipulating data for the global provider.

iiPay’s simple process for integrating data typically includes:

  • HR data files produced by the HR system(s).
  • Variable data files produced by HR and other source systems
  • Files are loaded to the iiPay system via an automated data mapping technology
  • Change reports can then be generated to show the changes in the system
  • Data is held in the system in its most granular form for standard and configurable reporting

The complete picture:

iiPay’s team of payroll specialists have intrinsic knowledge of integration with HR systems, including Workday, SAP, Oracle, and others. To be sure we are able to give you a complete picture of your payroll data, our specialists are also proficient with integrating CSV, Excel, and Xml files into our technology. iiPay’s integration methodology is to bind fields and map data per file, with country level variations built in as required. The data mapping approach to integration allows our clients to have a single integration, taking into account local pay code names and placing them into corporate pay code names. This approach ensures there is no version maintenance while allowing for variable data items and core data changes from the HR system of record.

One process.

It is common for companies to use different processes and even different HR systems within their different entities or countries. Most often is due to historical processes (“this is how we’ve always done it”), but it could also be due to certain in-country requirements, cost assumptions, or prior contracts. It is important to understand your global landscape; knowing how each country stores data and how it is typically extracted. Being able to consolidate that information into one centralized place, with consistent information across jurisdictions will solve many of the headaches payroll managers see in global payroll. Utilizing a global payroll provider that can integrate all of your data achieves that goal.

Cost.

Many people think that it’s most cost effective to remain with the status quo when managing their global payroll, even if it includes disparate processes across various countries. That couldn’t be further from the truth.  Automating the integration process and making the process and outputs consistent can provide significant cost savings to your bottom line.

The integrated solution.

iiPay’s solution is a global offering allowing standardization across our clients’ global landscape. iiPay’s focus is to provide one way of working across all jurisdictions while maintaining governance and compliance. We recognize in order to have a truly global solution, the challenge is to provide a consistent way of managing all payroll data. iiPay is able to achieve this by focusing on key areas, two of which are:

  1. Providing a flexible technology layer to leverage the initial capital investment in systems/tools
  2. Applying a risk-free transition with a full change management plan to ensure boundaries of responsibility and visibility of all payroll data.

So what are you waiting for? Contact us today so we can demonstrate for you how iiPay can save you time, effort, and money while reducing your risk and ensuring your global payroll is compliant, timely, and accurate.

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