Nevertheless, effective automation goes hand in hand with systems integration, which is still lacking in more than half of the organisations questioned. At a global level, integration with finance and accounting systems is most common (41%), however, the figures are lower for benefits and HR systems of record (both 39%), time and attendance (38%), leave and absence (37%), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems (35%). It’s an issue that nearly all respondents are keen to solve, with more than nine in 10 (94%) agreeing that they would like to see integration across all these systems either on a global level, or in all/
some countries.

Some global payroll providers offer integration with a variety of different business systems, but in many cases IT departments must configure their own. The consequence is that IT resources are getting pulled in to manage data flow
between payroll and HR or business systems, as well as managing data flows where an integration doesn’t exist. On average, respondents estimate that this amounts close to 22 hours per week, per country, which is a substantial amount of time that could be spent elsewhere. Based on these figures, it’s understandable that integration complexities were named as one of the biggest barriers to
implementing a global payroll model (41% compared to 35% last year).