As a business owner, you are responsible for taking your company forward. When it comes to managing payroll, you should be putting your payroll in the cloud.
It’s a fact that digitally empowered financial teams are helping their companies accomplish more. Over three-quarters of executives polled by KPMG said their finance teams are using predictive analytics, with 75% using workflow automation, and an overwhelming 89% making use of the cloud for financial reporting.
However, there is one area of company finances that lags, and often goes unnoticed, payroll. Payroll is still generally treated as separate from other financial systems, yet it is a crucial part of every company’s liquidity and cash flow, accounting for up to a third of revenue spending.
Businesses that don’t adequately digitise their payroll systems, are essentially slowing their overall financial modernisation. They stand to gain substantially when they raise payroll to modern digital capabilities driven by integration and automation, and they open even more as technology improves.
Real-time processing, deeper automation, and smarter compliance are the future. AI-driven anomaly detection will help flag payroll discrepancies before they happen, and integrations will evolve from simple data syncs to fully automated, adaptive workflows.
Understanding cloud-adjacent payroll’s challenges
Does your business have a formal payroll strategy to support your objectives? According to EY’s 2021 Global Payroll Survey, 67% of organisations have formalised their payroll strategy to complement their goals and requirements.
Nevertheless, many companies don’t realise that in order to maximise payroll digitisation, they should be using a specific breed of payroll platforms: cloud-native payroll services that have built-in integration, scaling, and data processing features.
These attributes often disqualify ‘on-premise’ payroll systems, including many traditional payroll software providers that have implemented some cloud features. Just because a service has ‘cloud’ in its product features doesn’t necessarily mean it leverages robust cloud-native architecture that delivers ongoing digitisation benefits.
Cloud-native architecture offers real-time updates without downtime, scalability for multi-country payroll without reimplementation, and an API-first approach. These elements make integrations—like our Workday GPC certification—straightforward, enabling automated data exchange between payroll and HR systems. Legacy payroll systems, often built for on-premise environments, require complex, manual, and costly integrations. Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace eliminates these barriers with an open API framework, real-time data sync, and automated compliance updates.
Deeper integration with business systems and data
The gap between cloud-adjacent and cloud-native is most obvious when companies try to integrate their payroll with other business systems, such as financial software or enterprise resource management (ERP) suites, or to replace those while maintaining their underlying data assets.
Such systems use different digital management standards and protocols. Integration on a good day is tough to accomplish. Much like an orchestra learning new songs, it takes effort and skill to align different areas so they can communicate effectively, reliably, and securely.
Cloud-native platforms have the digital genetics to accomplish deep integration, supported by the best professional skills. Here’s an example from a recent Deel Local Payroll project:
First Rand Group transitioned from an Oracle-based payroll system to Workday, with Deel Local Payroll as their payroll engine. Managing 45 legal entities, 50,000 employees, and operations in eight countries, they centralised HR and payroll, automated compliance, and achieved an 80% adoption rate within three days of going live. This highlights the power of deep integration.
Why does integrated payroll matter?
Some payroll departments still function as isolated silos, and although it’s tempting to not disrupt that equilibrium, a lack of payroll innovation creates an imbalance in a company’s digital prospects, especially around human capital management and financial management. It raises barriers against major advantages including: automated tax management, employee self-service, and fraud detection, to name a few.
Payroll modernisation is one of the few remaining frontiers for digitally realising competitiveness through visibility and efficiency. It improves the lives and productivity of payroll, HR, and finance staff, using integration and automation to unlock its possibilities, and cloud-native payroll platforms provide the keys to the future your business deserves.
Ready to modernise your payroll and unlock new efficiencies?
Discover how Deel Local Payroll can integrate seamlessly with your HR and finance systems—bringing real-time data, automation, and compliance to the forefront of your business.
Schedule a personalised demo and take the first step toward smarter, scalable payroll operations.