Case Study – Payroll Processing

CLIENT : Payroll Processing

REGION :United Kingdom

INDUSTRY : Payroll

Payroll Processing - Case Study

Spotlight

Industry
Payroll Processing

Location
United Kingdom

Key Process
Services : Managed Robotic Process Automation Services.

The Challenge
Fast growing work volumes that are repetitive, deadline driven, requiring a high degree of accuracy and unevenly spread across working weeks.

Achievements

The Bot onboarded into the Payroll Sorted team in the same way a human worker would be.

Payroll Sorted initially delegated some quality control checks to the Bot to evaluate its performance.

The quality checks involved moving between CRM, payroll software and then sending an email.

We call delegating a task to the Bot an 'automation.

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Background

In recent years, UK payroll has significantly increased in complexity. PAYE tax started in 1944. Between then and 1998, four regulations were introduced, affecting pay rates and take-home pay. These were the Attachment of Earnings Orders in 1971, Retirement of NI stamps in 1975, Statutory Sick Pay in 1983 and Statutory Maternity Pay in 1987. From 1998, the complexity of payroll-associated regulations increased dramatically. For example, Student Loans of various schemes, National minimum wage and its reporting, Paternity and Adoption Pay, Pension Auto-enrolment, taxation of benefits in kind, the Apprenticeship Levy, and cycle-to-work schemes, to name just a few. Taxation also became more complicated, including different tax rates for employees in Scotland and Wales.

Challenges

1. Payroll is complicated, and since 1998, that complexity has increased exponentially.
2. Regulations : = Rules. To get people's pay right, all those rules must be applied correctly every time.
3. It is deadline-driven : and those deadlines are not conveniently spread throughout the week or month.
4. Relative to larger payrolls : it is disproportionately expensive to run small payrolls.
5. Accountancy practices : that run lots of small payrolls have a job on their hands to process them all accurately and on time.

Enter Payroll Sorted

A Payroll Bureau specialising in processing smaller payrolls with a highly systematic way of getting work done. But! Even with state-of-the-art software, systems and business processes that McKinsey could learn from, there were still many checks, clicks, emails and reports, all based on rules being followed for individual employers and employees. In relentless pursuit of excellence and efficiency, Payroll Sorted had made vast chunks of processing small payrolls into 'robot work'.

Valenta Solution

We provided a Managed Bot to Payroll Sorted. The Bot onboarded into the Payroll Sorted team in the same way a human worker would be. Payroll Sorted initially delegated some quality control checks to the Bot to evaluate its performance.

The quality checks involved moving between CRM, payroll software and then sending an email. We call delegating a task to the Bot an 'automation'. After implementation, Valenta maintains and refines automations, for example, minor configuration updates when the software vendor updates a software application the Bot is using.

Payroll Sorted now have three Bots on their team. Two of these work around the clock, 7 days a week as far as possible. The third is generally used for developing new automations; however, when a payroll deadline is looming, the third Bot is set to work on that.

Results

Payroll Sorted is a fast-growing business, they have been able to scale up more quickly and cost-effectively than would have otherwise been possible.
RPA "comes for tasks, not jobs". A lot of the boring work is off the humans' desks. .
Uneven workloads are easier to manage.
Increasing efficiencies have led to better price stability for Payroll Sorted's partner Accountants than would have otherwise been possible in an environment of rising prices and wages.

A single Bot, fully managed by Valenta, costs about the same as the monthly wage bill of a person. But a single Bot has the productivity potential of up to 20 humans. There are hindrances to achieving that, such as concurrency of tasks, having enough 'robot work' for the Bot to do, and availability of the work to be done. If there is enough "robot work" in a business to keep one human busy, there is usually a pretty strong business case to get a Bot on the team and move the human onto interesting/higher-value work.

Client Testimonial

“We're super happy with how things have turned out working with Valenta's bots at Payroll Sorted. It's been a game-changer, making our payroll processing smoother and letting our team focus on the stuff that needs a human touch. Having bots take care of the repetitive tasks has been a big win for us. Working with Valenta has been awesome, and we're excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can do together. Here's to more innovation and growth!”

Ben At Payroll Sorted said

UK Payroll fact

99.2% of businesses in the UK have fewer than 50 employees. Those small businesses employ 48% of the total UK workforce, in round terms that is 13.1 million people on small payrolls.