TAPS Conference Gives Insight to Company HCM / Payroll Solutions

Author: Daire O’Mochain, HCM (Human Capital Management) Line of Business Manager

Extend Technologies recently sponsored TAPS Compact Conference where we launched our certified SAP HCM Payroll solution to the attendees which included both SAP users as well as non-SAP customers.  The TAPS members were a very knowledgeable group and had a lot of information to share with us.  Some of the most interesting findings were:

• While many companies are quite satisfied with their current systems, large business payroll staff from many companies from 500 employees and up tended to report issues around compliance and functionality in the HR space (such as employee self service)
• A number of payroll systems in use in Australia do not appear to have a reliable support/help desk, with some members reporting a wait time of up to 6 months for requested changes to occur
• Some members had recently implemented a new payroll system due to growth. Interestingly, other companies had switched out of the very same payroll system for the same reason.  A number of members had in fact recently moved to SAP payroll
• In the smaller businesses, (<100 employees), members felt they were well served by their systems and had limited requirements beyond payroll, although there were a few notable exceptions.  As the size of the company increased, so did the tendency to have requirements for performance management, international payroll functionality (at least within APAC), and self service.
• Executive reporting was also a frequent requirement for those larger companies
• Many of the TAPS members we spoke with would love to have more time to look at opportunities for improving efficiencies in the business, based on the information they know they could get from the payroll numbers, given the right outputs and reports, however the time pressures of frequently manual data capture processes combined with a weekly pay cycle make that difficult.
• There is still a high proportion of companies who have separate payroll and HR systems, with all the usual redundancy of data and issues with accuracy.

Obviously, the implementation of a leading edge system such as SAP HCM Payroll addresses many of the points raised above and quite a few members were surprised to find out that this tier 1 system was a real option for them, even when compared in price with some of the more common tier 2 payroll systems, and added advantage of having a set of functionality across the full gamut of HCM as well as Australian and international payroll.  Even better, the organisation does not have to run the full SAP ERP to run SAP HCM Payroll.

For more information on our certified SAP HCM Payroll go to: http://www.extendtechnologies.com.au/hcm-solutions-and-services