The decision to outsource your payroll to a new system and provider has the potential to change your working life. If you make the right call - the rewards will be plentiful:
- Time efficiencies
- Powerful reporting capabilities
- Self- service
- Compliance
- Mobile solutions
However, failing to prepare properly and making the wrong call could lead to catastrophic consequences and have a long lasting negative impact on your business. It is essential to consider the following:
Planning: You need to ensure you understand the new system inside out as well as how long the project is going to take so that the right level of commitment and resource can be allocated to ensure a smooth delivery.
Communication: It’s important to keep key stakeholders to the implementation process up to date with what is happening. They have a vested interest to make the new process flourish and you should be open to questions they may have as well as training them on new software processes.
Research: There simply isn’t a ‘one size fits all off-the-shelf’ solution and we see plenty of occasions where complex payroll needs have historically been forced onto incompatible platforms. Take the time to understand what your business needs are and seek customisable options to ensure everything is the right fit for your business.
Data Integrity: There old phrase ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ holds credibility and automating already flawed processes doesn’t make them better – it will actually bury them in the system and make them harder to resolve. Data integrity and quality is paramount and an implementation project is the ideal time to check for inconsistencies and inaccuracies to ensure best practice is achieved.
Testing: You wouldn’t buy a house without looking inside first, so you should take the time to test and review any new payroll system to ensure you are completely satisfied.
If this fills you with dread and anxiety, then do not fear – our Dataplan payrolls are here! Our Payroll Projects Team has successfully delivered 1000’s of payroll implementations using our honed 5D approach to avoid those 5 common mistakes:
Discover: This is an in-depth exploration phase to gain a fundamental understanding of your business. We look at current issues and potential future issues before moving onto the next phase.
Define: Once we understand your business, we will work with you to map your current processes so we understand all the points of interaction between the organisation and Dataplan.
Develop: This is a crucial and hands on phase where we scope out what processes and tools we can employ to deliver the right payroll solution for your business needs.
Dummy Run: This is the testing phase where parallel runs are completed to ensure all aspects of the payroll system build are meeting expectations. Both sides need to be happy before moving on to our final phase.
Deploy: Once satisfied, we move to our final phase of ‘go live’. This doesn’t mean that we take a step back and release your new payroll process into the wilderness. We work with you for the first few months to ensure that everything is working as expected and we can make process changes if necessary before handing over to your ongoing payroll team.
