Rapid Company Growth Creates Need for Payroll Process Improvement

client challenge

We were contacted by a company in the internet technology industry with 5,000 worldwide employees and an annual revenue of $2 billion when they began to experience rapid growth in global locations. While this might seem like a “good problem” to have, it caused their business to fall behind on other priorities. Some of their challenges included maintaining regional compliance, defining roles and adhering to standard procedures.

The rapid growth also raised questions about ownership, accountability, responsibility and governance, which impacted the various hand-off points in human resource and finance processes that involved employee information and transactions. If this company wanted to continue to grow, they needed assistance with improving some of these processes to successfully take on more business. We agreed to work alongside them to implement long-lasting solutions that would welcome future growth.

THE SOLUTION

After further analyzing the client’s challenges, our solution was to assemble key staff members in the Human Resource and Finance departments for a dedicated on-site set of meetings, facilitated by Sikich, where the following intended outcomes were established:

• Create new operational procedures for the most problematic and high-volume process, to be implemented now, and define clear roles and responsibilities for this process
• Utilize an agreed upon set of Guiding Principles against which the points in the new process will be tested
• Capture future state design suggestions for long-term consideration

• Develop a sustainable framework for future operation requirements that we can apply to other cross-functional initiatives

THE RESULTS

As a result of the facilitated meetings, the client created a Matrix of Roles and Responsibilities to be used between involved functional areas. Encompassing policy ownership, compliance and task responsibilities, this document was created to serve as a reference for the growth pay and net pay processes. In addition, the client refined its definitions of the roles “Accountable” and “Responsible,” which were derived using day-to-day examples. This allowed the group to better understand, and agree to, new role definitions. The client was also able to identify risks, gaps and possible solutions in order to fully adopt the new roles. Lastly, the client began the review process for new documentation and process flow diagrams.

After the client had completed their transition, Sikich presented to the C-level leadership of the functional areas who participating in these meetings, discussing results of the meetings and recommendations as they move forward and continue to grow.

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