Streamlining Payroll with Automation: A Real-Life Case Study.

Recently there have been hundreds of articles published that state that AI, APIs, integrations and automation are the way of the future and will radically transform payroll. While we agree wholeheartedly, the articles fail to furnish practical advice, tangible examples and/or a case study. One is often left wondering how one can take advantage of this technology. Given this, we will publish a series of articles which provide practical examples of how we, and our clients, have harnessed the power of new technology to streamline processes and save money.
A large client wanted to streamline the salary increase process to provide payroll with a mass update and an automated process to deliver salary increase letters to the employees.
The entire process was divided into 3 phases:
  1. Mail merge: The creation of a personalized, signed, PDF increase letter, based on various predetermined formats including separate templates for the subsidiary companies.
  2. Distribution: The upload of the increase letter, onto the ESS (Employee Self Service) Portal, using API. The employee can then view and download the letter in a secure environment.
  3. Payroll update: A mass update to advise payroll of the new salaries.
Given the relatively large number of employees, it was a prerequisite that the process had to be automated and given the fact the data was salaries, the outcome had to be zero errors.

A helicopter summary of the process flow which Axiomatic adopted was the following:

  1. Build the templates: The fields on the Excel sheet were mapped to the Word salary increase document. The templates were split per manager with a pre-populated manager’s signature. Each division and/or subsidiary had a unique salary increase letter.
  2. Run the mail merger macros: The macro was run for each manager’s separate folder.
  3. Quality control:Quality control was essential and spot checks were done to ensure accuracy. Further, comprehensive testing was done to ensure that the documentation was in the correct format for the API transfer.
  4. API: 
  • Ensure that the relevant platforms are ready for the data transfer.
  • Test runs were processed, and verification testing was done.
  • Live runs were then processed, uploaded and checked in both the transfer applications and the payroll platform.
  • Final spot checks were conducted to verify that the correct documentation was uploaded on the correct employee profiles.
The process concluded with a log file report which facilitated an audit of the headcount and the letter generation.
There is little doubt that the salary increase process is often a manual, laborious, time-consuming, and taxing project for HR and payroll personnel, which is prone to errors. The automation of the process not only saves time but increases efficiency by reducing the possibility of errors in the process.
The use of automation and APIs is often considered to be restricted to the integration of real-time data exchanges between payroll and the HRIS, T&A or Finance systems. This is a tangible example of how APIs can streamline other processes such as the annual salary increase process.
The client is a company that has a culture of exploring and embracing tech automation, and we were fortunate to partner with such a forward-thinking company on an exciting project of this nature.

To learn more about how automation can streamline your payroll processes, contact us today to schedule a consultation with one of our payroll experts.

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