Blooming success: Insights from SAP Payroll SIG

 Blooming success: Insights from the Payroll SIG in Birmingham in June, and a path to future-proof SAP Payroll

On 27 June, we had the great opportunity to sponsor the Payroll Special Interest Group (SIG) organized by the UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG) in the vibrant city of Birmingham. This is always the best place to connect with industry experts, gain valuable insights, and explore the latest trends in SAP Payroll. In this blog, I share my experience of attending the Payroll SIG and highlight some takeaways from this enriching event.

The Payroll SIG brought together a diverse community of payroll professionals from various organisations across the UK. It was truly inspiring to meet individuals who shared a common passion for payroll and had valuable experiences to share. The event provided an ideal platform to network, exchange ideas, and learn from each other's successes and challenges.

The event featured a line-up of interesting speakers. After a welcome and introduction from Adam Frank and Rachel Boardman (Payroll SIG Co-Chairs), the day continued with a fascinating presentation from Tony Moran from Mitchells and Butlers about their SAP journey.  We also had the pleasure of hearing all about the SAP Payroll and Legal updates from Natasha Robinson, HCM Product Expert for UKI. The day ended with a presentation from our own Natasha Mowatt and Jessica Keartland.

The pragmatic approach to modernising SAP Payroll

This session started a little bit differently to the usual SAP Payroll presentation. And instead of diving into infotype 001 and payroll runs, Jessica told us the story of how during her childhood in South Africa, she cherished the summers spent at her grandmother's house. Jessica and her grandma used to tend to the garden, filled with magnificent roses. As she grew up, her grandmother gifted her a potted rose plant.

I know you will be wondering what this has to do with modernising SAP Payroll... but bear with me! 

Over time, the roses aged and looked sad. She faced a choice: discard or revive. Inspired by her grandmother's care, she pruned, fertilised and replanted the roses, not just bringing them back to life, but allowing them to flourish even better than before.

In a similar way, SAP payroll remains one of the most powerful payroll engines available, capable of handling complex rules and diverse pay requirements. Many organizations have invested years – even decades – in perfecting their payroll systems to ensure accurate compensation. However, as the older on-premise system reaches its end of life, a new approach is necessary. Just as with Jessica's grandmother's roses, the question arises: Should you start with a new payroll implementation, or reinvigorate and future-proof the one you have?

In their presentation, Jessica and Natasha were able to illustrate a very clear path with our PRISM methodology for those who are ready to take the plunge and embrace the future of Payroll, and want to move their on-premise payroll to the cloud, surgically carving out their Payroll into the ECP system and providing auditable pay run results, mitigating risks and reducing payment errors.

Read more about PRISM.

Moving Payroll to the Cloud

Throughout our session, we also asked a couple of questions to the audience, and the findings were very interesting. Even though 95% of our audience's payroll is still on-premise, only 67% have seen a demo of Employee Central, and 53% have seen a demo of Payroll Control Center.

Which brings the question: Why haven't more people been exposed to demos of Employee Central and Payroll Control Center despite the pressing deadline to move to the Cloud?

There could be several reasons why a significant portion of our audience has not yet seen demos of Employee Central and Payroll Control Center, including the overabundance of information which make people unsure of the best approach for their own unique situation. If you would like to find out more about this, watch this on-demand webinar by Danielle Larocca, where she illustrates the current options and deadlines to migrate to SuccessFactors. 

The value of events like this

Overall, the post-event feedback has been extremely positive; attendees said our session was a 'very useful presentation and also very engaging’.

Being part of the Payroll SIG organised by UKISUG in Birmingham was a fantastic experience. The event not only provided a platform to connect with like-minded professionals but also facilitated knowledge sharing, learning, and exploration of the latest payroll trends and regulations in the SAP world. I highly recommend attending SIGs and industry conferences to all SAP professionals seeking to stay updated, expand their network, and enhance their expertise in this critical field.

So don't forget to register for our own INSPIRE User Group event in Birmingham on 16 October, held in collaboration with our esteemed partners, EPI-USE and G3G.

Would you like to share your story and join us as a speaker? Get in touch

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