Why a global payroll providers future roadmap is important to consider when planning to change the footprint of your business

So, your business is operating in several countries around the world, building relationships with customers globally and gaining many of the benefits a geographically dispersed workforce can bring. But you can’t help but feel your global payroll provider (or multiple providers) are not listening or acting on the actions you need them to take to help your business get to the next level.

Whilst ensuring the ‘101 task’ of getting all your employees paid correctly in the right currency at the right time is paramount; the relationships created with your partners can largely be operationally focused on the pay run ahead. It’s important to give feedback via the operations teams at your partner. It is equally important however, that you also have engagements that show your partners future roadmap is aligned with the future of your business, as this can dramatically impact tomorrow’s experience and your ability to expand or adjust your global footprint.

Payroll partner considerations for a better future

Here's several payroll partner considerations that can help steer towards strong alignment years into the future.  

1. Does the partner proactively ask you to give them feedback on the experience you are having every payroll period, and work with you where there are opportunities to improve?
2. Does the partner actively seek input from you directly before making decisions on their future roadmap (for example: sharing cyclical outcome related surveys or customer community engagements)?
   
3. As the years of partnership progress, do you see evidence of alignment i.e. you were seeking improvements or enhancements in certain areas. Were these delivered (or even exceeded upon) annually?
4. When a partner shares their roadmap of future developments and solution extensions with you, do you see the themes that matter for your business in there (be it improvements to user/customer experience, evolved data integrations, greater visibility of payroll data insights or country tax insights, etc.)

Choosing the right partner

When working with a partner who engages with you to truly listen to your needs and bring solutions over time that benefit your organisation (and probably many customers of theirs), you progress towards shared goals.  When this is not the case however, you’ll tend to find over time that you are not able to point to evidence of improvements that support your organisations goals. You may then recognise a disconnect between your voice being heard and action being taken.

We recommend that you clarify with your partner the approach they will take to truly listen to your needs. We would also advise you ask a partner to provide evidence as to how this will positively impact your business with measurable improvements. If at first you don’t feel you are getting the answers you are seeking, we would recommend asking for an outline of their product roadmap. An understanding of their approach to their roadmap will give you several answers about your future alignment.

At activpayroll however, it's worth noting that we don’t call our roadmap a ‘product roadmap,’ and for good reason. Instead, we call it our Customer Experience Roadmap. The reason for this is that we are 100% focused on delivering outstanding global employer experiences through visibility, outcomes and trust.

Transparency and regular iterations

To build and regularly iterate our Customer Experience Roadmap to align with the goals of our customers, we take steps to listen and better understand our customers future needs:

1. We engage regularly with our customers through our innovative Customer Outcomes Survey
2. Our Product and Customer teams engage with customers regularly through 121 discussions and Customer Advisory Group sessions
3. We review and respond to ideas and suggestions customers have for future improvements through enhancement suggestions
4. Each payroll cycle we review all monthly payroll experience data we receive from our customers, helping us target new opportunities for improvement. We also celebrate great experiences our customers have had and then take steps to replicate this success further.
   

We believe that listening to our customers forms a critical part of how we establish and continue to deliver outstanding payroll experience with more visibility, better outcomes and enhanced customer trust.

If you’d like to know more about why a payroll providers approach to listening and their future roadmap is so important, we’d be delighted to hear from you.