It should have been no surprise to see that answering an employee's question about their payslip was one of the examples given for the new AI assistant announced at Workday Rising last week. HR teams often struggle with sourcing information about payroll, and the latest AI innovations could prove to be a huge help here. But AI won't help without better access to payroll data, which was the main focus of last month's announcement of a new integration solution called Global Payroll Connect. It's all part of a quest to end the historic separation between HCM and payroll and provide end-to-end capabilities. Cristina Goldt, GM of Workforce and Pay at Workday, tells diginomica:
The ultimate contract between employer and employee is getting paid. When you think about the overall experience that you are trying to create, you really need to think about the end-to-end, where you're bringing them on, you're managing talent, you're developing and growing them, but you are also rewarding them as part of that. That is payroll.
It is all the data that you have in your human capital systems that you need for payroll. That's where you have your leave, your pay policies, all of that, where they live, where they work, all of that information is in in that system. So it does need to be connected, so that it is a seamless experience, rather than, I have it in one place, and then now I need to take that information and put it elsewhere.
See AlsoShishir Jain on LinkedIn: #workday #workdayhcm #workdayquicktips #wdtipsbyshishirjainSteve Hudson on LinkedIn: Workday Financials roles are heating up!! Workday FINS PSA Analyst Remote…Collaborative Solutions, LLC hiring Workday Payroll Senior Principal Consultant in United States | LinkedInSteve Hudson on LinkedIn: Do I have any Workday Partner Certified Payroll Leads looking for a…
The AI announcements range from the AI-powered Workday Assistant, which will understand free-form questions and provide informative answers, making it much more likely an employee get their payroll questions answered without having to raise a helpdesk ticket, to detecting anomalies in payroll data. Previously called payroll insights, the anamoly detection will be able to do things such as identify a spike in overtime spend and suggest adjustments to hiring plans as a possible solution.
But first, HR teams need to consolidate their payroll data, which is often spread across multiple payroll systems in different countries, and connect it into the HCM platform where the AI resides. This was the purpose of last month's integration announcements, which also introduced a new dashboard, the Global Payroll Processing Hub, which gives a consolidated view of payroll across a global enterprise. Goldt comments:
If I have a native Workday payroll and third party payrolls, I can see and manage all of that in the Global Payroll Processing Hub. That is a huge leap from what we had before.
Streamlining integration
Previously, integration of third-party payroll data into Workday was only possible via a flat-file import, using a tool called Cloud Connect for Third Party Payroll (CCTTP), which required customization for each separate integration. The new offering connects via configurable APIs, which allows for dynamic, near real-time connection that runs in both directions, so data can be updated more easily. It also has the flexibility to bring in additonal payroll data without requiring specialized configuration. One big advantage of the API-based integration is that it's so much easier to add payroll in a new country. She says:
With [CCTTP], to add another country, for example, is a significant amount of work. I think we look at something like 200 hours to add a country, where now it is just a checkbox to actually add a country for a payroll.
As well as having a better view of payroll data, the other driver for streamlining integration is that employees are much better able to self-serve when they have a payroll question, rather than needing to go through a helpdesk. Goldt says:
People need to get paid, but I also need to then bring that information back so that they can access their payslips, documents, all of that, in the place where they generally go to enter time off, etc. For the employee, it makes that much more seamless.
And then, because the data is all back in Workday, then we can use it actually with AI... It benefits the employees, because everything is all in one place, that makes their experience better. But then it benefits the business, as they think about labor costs and optimization in that regard.
In the future, the vision is to make data readily available to payroll teams for analysis and planning. Alex Freeman, Product Manager at Workday, paints this picture in a session at Rising on the impact of AI:
Imagine a world where payroll data is at your fingertips. What was our most expensive cost center? How much did we pay out in bonuses last quarter? Break down the pay groups by highest paid to lowest paid, people with the most overtime. Today... it can take hours and hours to sometimes answer questions about data. Payroll people should not have to spend their time finding the data. You should be able to spend your time and expertise actioning on that data.
Pushing the right buttons
One customer that has had a foretaste of these benefits is Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). Many of its 45,000 global employees are located in Canada, but the company also has a sizeable presence in the US, UK and eight other countries. It has recently moved seven of those eight countries from various third-party providers to now have their payroll operated by Workday partner Strada — which until recently was part of Alight, and is the first partner to roll out the new connected payroll offering. Heather Wagner, Associate VP, HR Service Delivery at CIBC, spoke about its experience in a session at Rising last week. She emphasized the value of at last having a consolidated view of global payroll:
When you're configuring payroll in a country, whether there's one or whether there's 1,000, it's the same amount of work. Lots of people say, 'Well, there's only ten people, don't worry about it.' Well, all of those ten people need to be paid properly, all of the remittances need to be done, all of the tax filings need to be done.
We were in a situation where, but for Canada [and the] US, we had disparate and different... third-party providers that were providing the service. And my most anxious moment — or anticipated anxious moment — was when I was going to be asked, 'What's our total global payroll, Heather?' Because I couldn't tell you what that was. I didn't even have responsibility outside of North America and the UK at the time, because, again, 'Who cares about ten people's payroll in Japan? It can't be that big, right?' I wasn't really comfortable with not being able to answer that question...
Workday ended up being the answer to our prayers, because at that time, we could actually, through integrations, ... all of that now comes into Workday. So I can, at the push of any number of buttons, figure out exactly what's going on in any one of our countries from a payroll perspective. We're really looking forward to an environmental change now, from where Strada uses third party suppliers and acts as the integrator, and getting rid of those third-party suppliers and providing those services directly powered by Workday and Strada Pay.
The example illustrates the quandary for many customers. They don't want to change payroll if they don't have to, but consolidation has many benefits. Goldt comments:
Payroll is complex. Managing payroll across the globe, particularly where you have multiple countries that you have to manage, there's compliance, there's regional specifics, et cetera... Yes, they don't want to change if they already have a payroll, but they are looking at, 'I don't want 50 vendors. I would like to simplify to as few as possible.' That's why, when we look at Strada, ADP and other [payroll partners], they provide multiple countries as one solution.
Strada is the first partner to roll out an offering based on Global Payroll Connect, and has a unique resale agreement with Workday for its solution. Other partners are expected to introduce their own offerings between now and the end of the year. Moving to an API-based approach is enabling these connected offerings in a way that the technology really wasn't capable of until recently. Goldt says:
We've leaned in to the partnerships, because the technology now allows us to do this in a way that it does create the right experience for our customers and allows them to do it now — where, 10 years ago, we absolutely would have had to build all these native payrolls to make it work. There's probably not enough time in our lifetime to build all the payrolls that we would like to operate in, because it is no small feat. Our native payrolls are great products, and they serve the markets that we have them in today, but we want to make sure that we are have a broader scope. And we do that with our partners.
My take
In the world of Frictionless Enterprise, it becomes necessary to connect all enterprise data into end-to-end processes — even payroll.
Check out diginomica's dedicated Workday Rising content hub here.
