Australia
About the company:
- Industry: Consumer goods
- Headquarters: London, UK
- Workforce: 6,000 employees in the UK
- Workday SKUs: Payroll for the UK
- Alight Services: Advisory & Readiness Support, Workday Deployment, Testing, Managed Payroll Services, Application Maintenance Services
A leading global consumer goods company with a rich history spanning several decades, recognized for its diverse product portfolio, recently undertook a significant transformation in its payroll processes.
As a global company with a global purpose, the team were looking to expand on their existing Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) platform seeking to unify HR and payroll systems and streamline operations. The goal was to set new standards for efficiency, accuracy and the overall employee experience.
Since 2015, Alight has been a trusted partner to the organization, delivering payroll services across multiple countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia. The company decided it was time to expand these services to include their operations in the UK, utilizing Alight's global payroll expertise and leveraging the capabilities of Workday Payroll.
Key Takeaways:
- Implementation of a secure, accurate, and compliant payroll system fully integrated with Workday HCM.
- Improved employee experience through a modern platform, enabling effective time management and real-time data reflection in payroll.
- Managed payroll services by Alight experts directly from the Workday tenant for precise payroll execution, regulatory compliance and streamlined processes.
- Alight's technical team handles maintenance and configuration changes on Workday Payroll through Application Management Services (AMS).
- Effective integration of various vendors to simplify payroll operations, reduce manual efforts, and establish seamless data flow.
Opportunities for Improvement:
Before their journey with Alight, the company identified many opportunities for modernization in its payroll landscape. Accumulated legacy systems, challenging integrations, manual tasks and intricate processes made their payroll environment extremely complex. These complexities gave the organization opportunities for improvement, particularly in tracking time at their factories, which affected overtime calculations and sick leave management.
The decision to consolidate its various systems and processes under one modern, scalable payroll solution aligned with their ongoing business transformation efforts. With already leveraging Workday HCM as their HR platform, it was a natural fit for them to expand this to Workday Payroll for the UK.
Solution:
The consumer goods company partnered with Alight to deploy Workday Payroll for the UK, with the added support of Alight’s Payroll Services to handle their payroll processing and Alight’s AMS support to maintain the configuration. This strategic decision aimed at enhancing the employee experience, acquiring a seamlessly integrated system and improving payroll efficiency.
Leveraging Alight’s Payroll Services provided their team with access to experienced professionals—all while having access to operate within their Workday tenant. With Alight as their payroll partner, precise payroll execution is ensured, adhering to regulatory standards and industry best practices.
Implementation:
The company went live with Workday Payroll in April 2023, consolidating their payroll into one unified solution. Implementation kicked off with the careful planning and mapping of their payroll landscape. Together, Alight and the organization’s teams worked closely to define specific payroll requirements and identify the critical features needed.
The deployment process addressed core pain points, streamlining payroll processing and data migration from the legacy system. While faced with some hurdles, specifically in extracting historic data, Alight’s expertise ensured a smooth transition. Open communication and prompt escalation management between teams was vital in effective problem solving.
Results:
After successfully moving to a single platform for HR and Payroll and leveraging the flexible and scalable payroll services of Alight, the consumer goods company was able to reap the rewards.
- Greater accuracy and data integrity with real-time automated data flow between HR and payroll.
- Improved operational efficiency by streamlining process and leveraging automation to complete manual tasks.
- Timely issue resolution and improved responsiveness.
- Enhanced employee experience with an intuitive single platform experience.
- A payroll services team to spot and escalate potential errors early on with root cause analysis shared.
- Instant access to a team of payroll experts who provide guidance and best practices.
- Improved payroll compliance reducing the risk of errors and overpayments.
- Successful payroll run since day one of going live.
What's Next:
Simplification remains a key focus for the company's success. The company will continue to focus on driving additional value from their Workday platform with the goal of continuously improving the employee experience.
