As Director of Solution Architecture and Integration with Immedis, my team and I are responsible for creating robust and highly functional integrations for our customers – the HR, Payroll, and finance people in global organizations. People we think of as the unsung heroes in managing all aspects of an employee’s working life.
These teams usually use human capital management (HCM) and finance systems to help them achieve their goals. Payroll and HR rely heavily on these systems, whether it is Workday, SAPSuccessFactors, UltiPro, and Ceridian– or some other HCM to maintain and maximize employee engagement. These teams work hard to ensure compensation and rewards are managed correctly and employees are paid accurately and on time; the last thing they need is to share this same data with their payroll provider manually. For finance teams, it is often a matter of having to take the payroll results and wrestle with Excel spreadsheets under immense time pressure to report the total payroll cost correctly.
How Immedis enables customers to overcome payroll data challenges
Over the last ten years, we invested heavily in creating a cloud-based global payroll platform that seamlessly integrates with every leading HCM or finance system in the marketplace.
We call our design philosophy global first, which means it isn’t a domestic payroll platform that has been changed to support global payroll and the Immedis Platform has all the native capabilities expected right out of the box. For example, when we switch on an integration with an HCM like Workday, the first thing that is enabled is automation and repeatability. This feature set allows the payroll and HR teams to concentrate on managing the HCM and not worry about re-handling the payroll data again to feed the global payroll process.
What’s also hugely beneficial is that the Immedis Platform enriches and adds value to the HCM data shared for payroll purposes. This enables us to provide an unrivaled global analytics suite. The Immedis Platform becomes a powerful tool to assist the HR, payroll, and finance teams in managing the business investments in the organization’s employees.
When we switch on our finance system integration, we immediately deliver a fully automated General Ledger that can be imported seamlessly into global finance systems such as SAP, Oracle, and Netsuite. This gives the finance team the confidence that once the payroll results are approved, they never have to touch the financial data on the way into the system, thereby avoiding expensive manual processing. It also ensures strong data integrity and security.
Why integrations are critical
Global organizations already invest heavily in HCM software and processes. These tools offer the benefits of better employee engagement, tighter controls over employee data security and privacy, and ensure that strong HR practices are followed to align with equality, fairness, and transparency dealing with all aspects of their employee’s working life.
An Immedis integration with Workday or any HCM means that these companies now gain a strategic and indispensable benefit from this investment – an automated and integrated global payroll process. In my view, this is what the technology is precisely meant to do, automate, and add value so that people can make rapid decisions without any friction in the business process.
Why certification is essential
Certification represents more than simply a marketing tool, there are specific criteria that the provider must meet. As an example, Workday implements a strict managed process for all payroll providers who want to get globally certified. This can take up to six months for many organizations. And some organizations never make it. The procedure tests rigorously the provider’s capability in all aspects of the HCM integration and downstream payroll process. The final part of the certification requires documentation sets and proof from customers that the integration meets all the requirements. I am thrilled and proud to say that Immedis achieved Workday certification faster than any other provider in the marketplace.
The future of integrated global payroll is exciting
As we build on the strong foundations of our global platform, the next five years will bring a massive shift in expectations and business value to be derived from globally integrated payroll.
Immedis are working hard in partnership with the HCM and finance providers to drive cutting-edge innovations in the industry. Some aspects to watch out for in 2021 include:
- Event-driven integration to facilitate real-time employee registration
- Robotic process automation (RPA) enhancements to offer unrivaled data validation
- Augmented machine learning to drive insights from global payroll data
If you would like a demo of the Immedis Platform in action alongside one of the leading HCM platforms, get in touch today!
