Our Vice President Divya Baranawal, recently attended the annual conference ‘Paymakers 2023’ by CloudPay- a leading global payroll vendor- hosted in the beautiful city of Barcelona. The event was attended by their customers, partners and some of the industry stalwarts. It was a three-day power-packed event covering CloudPay’s strategic direction, product enhancements, future roadmap, and customer success stories. The event had round table discussions, panel discussions and one-on-one interviews planned around the themes of- ‘CloudPay Solutions: Tools for Success in Payroll’ and ‘Importance of Employee Experience in Payroll’.

The event was kickstarted by the interview with CloudPay’s newly appointed CEO- Roland Folz. Roland set the direction for the event and discussed his vision for the company, which he beautifully captured as- “High Tech and High Touch”. He discussed how market dynamics has changed post covid, bringing changes to employer and employee relationship and making payroll more strategic than operational for organizations. He highlighted that automation, better HCM integration, AI, and employee experience are going to be the megatrends for payroll industry.

One of the striking things about CloudPay is how they are working closely with customers to not only understand their challenges but also collaborating to build something which is beneficial for all. This was illustrated very well in another interview session with one of their customers- Expedia, where they have collaborated and added an analytics tool to the dashboard. This new tool would enable trend analysis, give power to payroll practitioners  to design their report in their own format, and also give visibility to all data related issues entered in the software, which could then be downloaded for further sharing, review and analysis. This newly added feature will now empower their payroll customers with real time tracking and review of all issues entered across various countries.

I also grabbed the opportunity to visit their demo stations where customers were flocking to understand the new features and also getting their queries addressed from the product team itself. The event also had lot of ‘learning by sharing’ sessions as many payroll practitioners from companies like Ralph Lauren, S&P Global, Expedia and Delivery Hero shared their journey and success story with CloudPay. Paul Simpson, Sr Dir EMEA Payroll at Ralph Lauren talked about how the Earned Wage Access (EWA) facility by CloudPay has helped them elevate employee experience and impact retention. Ricardo Rehkopf, International Payroll Leader at Delivery Hero discussed about global payroll challenges and shared strategies for planning and implementing a successful global payroll solution. He also emphasized how CloudPay is providing better implementation experience by aligning payroll and payments, offering rapid implementation, and bringing human touch by being there for customers.

Another key interesting session was on ‘Future of Payroll’ by Matt Hillier, EVP Products at CloudPay. Matt said that the future of payroll industry will be pivoted around modern pay experience defined by fast, flexible and certain payroll processing. Matt made notable mentions about CloudPay’s product enhancements and focus around touchless and automation capabilities for streamlining processes and reducing errors. He also mentioned company’s focus on improved connectivity through public API program and expanding OOTB HCM integration portfolio, and on improving employee experience through EWA and instant payments capabilities.

There were multiple round table discussions planned during the event around the themes of- automation, integration, customization, implementation, payments and EoR, and customer success. I managed to join a couple of those discussions to gain insight on various customer issues and expectations and how is CloudPay either addressing those or planning to address those in the future. It was interesting to understand that one of CloudPay’s key strength, which was also highlighted in Roland’s speech of “High Tech, High Touch”, is in being a boutique payroll vendor which is continuously listening to its customers and collaborating with them to drive innovation which is not only streamlining and increasing efficiency of payroll processing but also focusing on enhancing employee experience.

Author : Divya Baranawal VP and Principal Analyst at Quadrant Knowledge Solutions