Updates, features & services
Meet Customer Solutions Director, Andy Martin
After heading up the Business Development Team for the last few years, Andy has moved into a new role within activpayroll. Today, he is focused on helping customers understand more about solutions and services that help realise as much value as possible from a payroll partner. We had a chat with Andy to find out a little more about the new role and why he thinks it’s yet another example of how activpayroll is making sure the customer is at the heart of business activities.
This might be a new role for activpayroll, but I think it’s fair to say you’ve been with the company for a while?
That’s a polite way of putting it! It’s an exaggeration to say dinosaurs still roamed the Earth when I arrived but I have indeed been at activpayroll for long time, since 2009. I’ve performed a few roles within the business over the years, including CTO and most recently Business Development Director, but all of them have one crucial thing in common with my new role – they let me make heavy use of my passion for all things technology. As a self-confessed “geek” I love to know exactly how things work – and perhaps more importantly, what part they play in the bigger picture of any process.
Sounds like you are throwing yourself into the new role, can you tell me a little more about it?
As the Customer Solutions Director, I spend most of my day with three different groups of people: our customers, Sales Team and Product Development.
With our customer’s, usually as part of the sales process working in conjunction with our Sales Team, I have all the fun of understanding the challenges they currently face with their existing service, and demonstrating how our solutions can make their life simpler or payroll process more efficient. Often, that includes demonstrating our activ8 platform, but the best part of that interaction is almost always the “Q&A” session towards the end. No two customers are ever the same, so you never know what question might be asked! It’s certainly not unusual for some of our product roadmap ideas to originate from those sessions – they play a key role in helping us understand the topics and features that are at the forefront of our customer’s minds.
With our Product Development team, in addition to the roadmap ideas collated during demos, I am in the enviable position of being one of the very first activpayroll people to see and get my hands on any new release. With a release strategy covering both major and minor releases throughout the year, there are indeed upgrades and new features all around. My excuse for early access is that I need to be able to demonstrate new things, but I’m sure the team know that just like anyone interested in technology, I love anything new and shiny!
What upcoming functionality are you most excited about?
The team are currently preparing delivery of a bi-directional, API-based integration with the Bob HR platform (from HiBob). The integration will completely automate the delivery of payroll data into activpayroll (reducing effort and increasing accuracy) and allow Bob customers full self-service functionality, including access to their payslips and Year End documents directly within Bob.
Our Early Adoption Program means that the first customers will start using the integration before the end of the year. I’m always excited when we introduce new integrations for customers.
Part of that excitement comes from making the customer’s life easier – they get to continue working in their chosen applications – but it’s also exciting learning about new solutions and opening our services up to a whole new potential set of customers too.
Is that what attracted you to the new role?
I think it’s probably the chance to act as a link between our Product Development and Sales teams, yes. By creating the Solutions Team, activpayroll recognised the extra value we can offer our customers by having those teams working more closely together. Additional value means happier customers—the most important thing for any business!
Anything else in the activpayroll roadmap you can share with us?
It’s an exciting time. There’s more investment in our solutions and our customers have a greater say in the focus and direction of our roadmap than ever before. Our current roadmap approach, created in conjunction with our customers, centres on activpayroll becoming the customer’s payroll VOICE:
- Improving the customer's visibility of the stages within and around their payroll process
- Ensuring the customer's desired outcomes are realised faster following implementation and delivered consistently thereafter
- Ensuring data integrity throughout all processing stages
- Supporting customer compliance globally within payroll
- Enhancing our unparalleled global payroll expertise and making customer access easier
Tackling multiple components across the related theme at the same time ensures there is something in our roadmap for almost everyone to look forward too – both short and longer term. This also allows our Product Development team to prioritise based on the most requested features that will have the biggest impact.
How difficult is it for a customer to make use of new features when they are released?
While we work hard to make new features and functionality accessible to customers, Change Control is important – especially for bigger changes. We use a combination of minor and major releases to help make the process as simple as possible for customers. Smaller changes, bug fixes and security updates are released on a monthly cycle and should pose very few challenges. Larger changes, released as part of our major releases, use feature locking so the customer can control the timing of the new features – making sure processes are aligned, and teams are trained and ready for release.
activ8 includes a new feature carousel to help users as they adopt new features – it’s been a popular addition since its introduction earlier this year. The Product Development team are working hard on context-sensitive support in activ8. This new feature will allow users to interact with activ8’s eSupport module as part of their workflow, keeping their focus on the task at hand.
And finally, how would you like to see your new role develop?
I’d like to find ways of spending even more time in front of customers. Whether that’s joining some of the governance meetings, annual reviews or perhaps holding separate sessions focused on new features that customers are curious about. I think customer interaction is crucial – and probably the main reason activpayroll have continued to grow over the years. activpayroll have always been more of a partner for customers rather than a traditional supplier – if I can find a way to incorporate that into my new role, I think it’ll be a real win-win situation for everyone.