Now in its 6th edition, CloudPay’s unique Payroll Efficiency Index (PEI) report provides deep insight into the efficiency of payroll operations around the world. We analyze the payroll performance of multinational companies – using data taken from more than 1 million 2024 payslips – to monitor performance against 5 core KPIs.
We provide data and analysis at global, regional and country-specific levels, allowing you to explore and understand how international payroll efficiency has progressed over the last 12 months.
The new report includes:
- The 5 global payroll metrics that really matter – and what your standard payroll SLAs are hiding
- The most efficient regions and countries – see who’s moved up, who’s moved down, and why
- The pivotal role of automation in driving efficiency (and in evolving our KPIs)
- How and why organizations are increasingly prioritizing flexibility to adapt to changing needs
- The impact of payment timeliness, and the ever-increasing importance of a unified end-to-end pay solution
- Actionable insights for payroll practitioners to make a positive impact on your business
Download your copy of the report to learn more, assess and benchmark your own performance, and learn how your teams can benefit from understanding the true picture of your payroll efficiency.
Benchmark the efficiency of your global payroll processes
We create the PEI every year to help you understand what’s really happening with your payroll performance.
The problem with traditional payroll SLAs, such as accuracy and timeliness, is that they typically suggest that performance is always fantastic; performance metrics of 99% or higher obviously sound great at face value.
But what these standard SLAs fail to do is paint the real picture of what it takes to reach these numbers. They give no indication – whatsoever – of the time, effort, resources and costs (both monetarily and opportunity costs) of reaching these numbers.
The reality is that many senior leadership teams believe their payrolls are performing brilliantly (when they simply are not), while payroll teams know that their operations are not efficient, but lack the data to help diagnose and fix the situation!
The CloudPay PEI report is based upon 5 KPIs designed to give you the real insight you need into how well your payroll operations are performing, and what you can act upon to make improvements where needed, focusing on optimizing processes, integrating workflows, and reducing costs.

Don’t miss our PEI calculator benchmarking tool
In addition to reading this year’s PEI report, you can now use our brand-new payroll efficiency benchmark calculator.
Simply enter your payroll metrics details to get a visualization of your payroll countries’ performance against CloudPay’s extensive benchmarking database – learn how your current KPIs stack up, and where you can focus your efforts for improvements.
How do we create the PEI report?
Our industry benchmarking report is based on payroll processing KPIs across more than 130 countries. We use anonymized data sampled from 1 million+ payslips generated between January 1st and December 31st 2024, from multinational entities across the AMER, EMEA and APAC regions.