Chris Ward | Senior Business Development Manager, CloudPay
In years gone by, adopting new tech was a good way of standing out from the crowd and gaining a competitive advantage. But when everybody is well-equipped technologically, what’s the next option for businesses wanting to innovate?
The answer is to be first – and that means digital acceleration. In this blog, we’ll look at what that means, how it can help, and the huge difference it can make from a payroll perspective.
What is digital acceleration and how can it be beneficial?
A good way to think of digital acceleration is that it’s basically digital transformation on fast-forward. Under a digital transformation strategy, technology is adopted to help reshape the way we work, and respond to changing customer demands and workplace priorities. Digital acceleration speeds this up, with new technologies adopted as soon as they’re available in order to exploit the first-mover advantage.
This continuous process of incorporating new technologies and capabilities helps businesses stay at the cutting edge of technology. It’s especially valuable in light of the challenges of the pandemic, where the need for flexibility and agility is now far more important than it was previously.
Why is digital acceleration so important for payroll?
Payroll was one of many areas of business that had to transform its operations during the pandemic, building in new processes, procedures and structures to handle more flexible operations. With flexibility now emerging as the long-term future of business, an acceleration approach will remain vital for payroll teams wanting to stay agile and optimize the digital technology available.
Digital acceleration can be beneficial for payroll in four key areas:
- Scalability: with remote working initiatives more prevalent, payroll departments need to be able to manage payroll from outside the office just as well as they can within it. This means taking advantage of innovations in the growing cloud-based payroll software market – expected to be worth $13.3billion by 2026 – so that payroll teams can continue to serve employees around the world efficiently and accurately.
- Security and compliance: global business comes with an added layer of complexity around compliance, because of the need to deal with several different sets of laws and currencies. New capabilities like artificial intelligence can help ensure employees get paid right, with the correct deductions made and in keeping with legal requirements. This should come hand-in-hand with a constant push to adopt new security technologies to keep sensitive employee data safe.
- Improved decision-making: digital acceleration should naturally deliver a better quality of data, generated by the solutions that are put in place. This data can then be used to support more informed payroll decision-making, as payroll teams can centralize all their information and create insightful reports full of relevant employee trends.
- Talent retention and acquisition: employees have never valued their experiences at work so highly, and in the time of The Great Resignation, those who are unhappy are far more ready and willing to find a new job somewhere else. Engaging and motivating a workforce increases their happiness and productivity, and removing any worries about their financial wellbeing can play a big part in that. Technology is allowing businesses to develop strong financial wellbeing programs, incorporating education, counseling, and Earned Wage Access that gives employees much-needed flexibility in their pay frequency.
In summary
COVID-19 caused a huge change in the way that businesses and payroll operate. But it’s impossible to know whether a similarly impactful event is just around the corner. Companies that are accelerating digitally now are forging a path ahead of their competitors, which means that when the next major challenge emerges, they’ll be best placed to respond quickest and with minimal disruption to business.
CloudPay is a global innovator in the field of payroll and can help you get started on your path to digital acceleration. To find out how, explore the CloudPay Impact here.
