To take your company forward, put your payroll in the cloud.
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, 75% are using workflow automation, and an overwhelming 89% use the cloud for financial reporting.
However, there is one area of company finances that lags, yet often goes unnoticed. 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.
If companies don’t adequately digitise their payroll systems, they are 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 up even more as technology improves, says Bruce van Wyk, CEO of Global SaaS at Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace:
“The future is real-time processing, deeper automation, and smarter compliance. AI-driven anomaly detection will flag payroll discrepancies before they happen, and integrations will evolve from simple data syncs to fully automated, adaptive workflows.”
Cloud-adjacent payroll’s challenges
According to EY’s 2021 Global Payroll Survey, 67% of organisations have a formal payroll strategy that complements their goals and requirements.
However, many companies don’t realise that, to maximise payroll digitisation, they should use 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 mean it leverages robust cloud-native architecture that delivers ongoing digitisation benefits, says Van Wyk.
“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. We eliminate these barriers with an open API framework, real-time data sync, and automated compliance updates.”
Connecting 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. Van Wyk cites 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 integrated payroll matters
Some payroll departments still function as isolated silos, and it’s tempting to not disrupt that equilibrium. But in reality, a lack of payroll innovation creates an imbalance in a company’s digital prospects—especially around human capital management and financial management. It erects barriers against major advantages: automated tax management, employee self-service, and fraud detection, to name a few.
“The future of payroll is real-time processing, deeper automation, and smarter compliance. AI-driven anomaly detection will flag payroll discrepancies before they happen, and integrations will evolve from simple data syncs to fully automated, adaptive workflows,” says Van Wyk.
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 that future.
