Paycheck Plus is an international payroll services provider operating in Ireland and the UK. It provides an extensive range of payroll outsourcing services including consultancy, audits, reporting, training, payroll set-up and wind-down, and special projects.
The firm specializes in providing international payroll services and is one of Ireland’s leading payroll providers, with over €500,000,000 worth of payroll payments a year, producing over 22,000 payslips each month for in excess of 400 organizations across a wide range of sectors.
With more than 35 awards for payroll excellence to date, including six wins at the London Rewards Payroll Awards 2019 and Best Payroll Manager & Best Payroll Student at the 2020 Global Payroll Association Awards, Paycheck Plus is Ireland’s most highly awarded payroll bureau and has also been recognized as a Great Place to Work.
Since inception in 2005, Paycheck Plus has experienced consistent growth, thanks to a culture of excellence that has resulted in quality service and an extensive list of satisfied customers.
However, there have been some growing pains. Up until 2020, a significant portion of Paycheck Plus’s payroll processing and delivery operations were not digitized. This was causing bottlenecks, hindering Paycheck Plus’s ability to maintain its elevated quality standards as it took on new customers and slowing overall growth.
“If we didn’t move quickly, we would lose our competitive advantage, we would be left behind, we would no longer be able to offer the service that we pride ourselves on” – Brona Grogan, COO
The Challenge: digitizing payroll operations to allow the business to continue to grow
For most of the company’s life, Paycheck Plus operated its services manually, using physical payroll calendars to manage and process payroll, and conserving most of its data, such as journals and gross to net files in the shape of physical documents.
This extremely detail-oriented way of operating earned Paycheck Plus recognition for its quality of service, but limited the scalability of the business.
“Everything was done manually, from documenting to creating calendars. There were huge calendars on the wall, big folders of documents everywhere, and enormous whiteboards to track payroll stages and cycles for the different clients. Everything was being shared by email. It served its purpose, but it was no longer fit for purpose going forward.” – Brona Grogan, COO
To remedy this, Paycheck Plus initiated a transformation initiative to digitize its operations and bring its payroll service into the cloud, with the goal of leveraging automation and standardization to increase productivity and be able to keep growing the business.
The Solution: A payroll management platform in the cloud to support Paycheck Plus’s growth
To address these issues, Paycheck Plus searched for a payroll management solution that could integrate into its existing processes and reduce the amount of manual work the team performed, while digitizing all the analog elements of its operations.
The goal was to move everything to the cloud, making it easier for the Paycheck Plus team to operate at scale and at the same time deliver a better customer experience.
The primary areas of focus were improving reporting capabilities, enabling more flexibility in the payroll workflow to improve client experience, and improving checking and validation capabilities through improved collaboration and communication with clients.
Payzaar’s open platform approach was a great fit for Paycheck Plus’s needs, as it was the only solution on the market that combined payroll workflow management capabilities, collaboration enablement, global reporting, and the possibility of white-labeling the platform so it could be deployed to Paycheck Plus’s customer base under its own branding.
Some of the alternatives considered were local-oriented solutions that could provide payroll calculations, but this approach was discarded because the consolidation of workflow management and data was deemed a higher priority for Paycheck Plus.
Decision Drivers
The key factors why Paycheck Plus selected Payzaar as its payroll technology partner are:
- A robust reporting suite that can aggregate all of the clients’ data and generate highly customized reports quickly and easily.
- Flexibility and ability to adapt to Paycheck Plus’s requirements, including payroll workflow and calendar customization to fit the needs of a broad and diverse customer base.
- Ability to host and manage payslips and tax documents for end-customer employees through an employee self-service portal.
- White label capabilities, which have allowed Paycheck Plus to brand the solution and customize it to their needs. The platform is delivered to users as Paycheck Plus Engage.
- Platform self-serviceability, thanks to which Paycheck Plus can manage client setup and configuration itself without support from Payzaar.
The Results
Enabled continued growth: Becoming more scalable was Paycheck Plus’s number 1 priority and they have achieved it with Payzaar. Since implementing the solution in 2020, the firm has experienced substantial client growth and is no longer experiencing issues delivering service to its clients due to processes that are too manual and unscalable.
“The platform features prominently in all of our pitches to clients and is helping us to demonstrate commitment to service and innovation.” – Brona Grogan, COO
Marked improvement of internal performance KPIs: Since transitioning to Engage (the branding chosen by Paycheck Plus) there have been significant processing time savings achieved by the Paycheck Plus team. Efficiencies have been added as a result of variance reporting, data analyzer features, and the speed at which pay cycles are completed. Out of a sample of 20 key clients, 90% have had processing time savings pre vs post Engage. A lot of this relates to the efficiencies gained in checking and reconciling payrolls internally as a result of the variance reporting function within the platform.
Smooth and fast migration to the cloud: Paycheck Plus was able to migrate its entire client base onto the Payzaar platform very quickly. Working in batches of 40 to 50 client payrolls per month, the entire process took around 8 months and was led by the Paycheck Plus team, which is able to operate autonomously and manage the solution themselves.
Improved communication and collaboration: Since implementing Payzaar, the Paycheck Plus team has enjoyed better communication and collaboration. With all data and processes tracked through a central dashboard, it has become much easier to keep track of what work needs to be done, by whom, and for the team to align around said work.
“By having all information in one place the team has a full understanding of where they are within their client workflow process and what to expect. They don’t have to search various places to find information, it’s all in one location. No more paper, all online. It has proved instrumental in streamlining our processes.” – Brona Grogan, COO
Much improved reporting capabilities: Paycheck Plus can now report at a level that was previously impossible thanks to consolidated, digitized data, ranging from high level overviews of a client’s payroll down to the employee level.
“Payzaar gives huge flexibility from a reporting and communication perspective. It’s very clear and very transparent, easy to see at which stage of the payroll cycle we are. Saves a huge amount of time from a checking perspective ” – Brona Grogan, COO
