Ramco Systems had arranged an exclusive product launch event to showcase their #TheNextBigThing in the world of payroll – “Ramco Payce” on Thursday 16th May 2024 at JW Marriott, Pune. Quadrant Knowledge Solutions was exclusively invited for this milestone occasion. After its first launch event in Feb -2024, this was 10th such event including India, the Middle East and other countries. In the next few days, Mumbai and Delhi will be the next stops on the Payce roadshow.

Ramco believes it has brewed something truly extraordinary and were  excited to share this ground-breaking innovation with the CHRO’s / CIO’s / CxO’s, the larger community of HR professionals and analysts in Pune.

Tarun Devasia – Chief Marketing Officer - He made the first presentation and provided a sneak peak of the new features of Ramco Payce - Faster implementation, Lightning-fast payroll processing speed, New and improved UI for both payroll managers and employees, Custom report builder etc. Ramco’s growth in Multi Country Payroll platform and services has been phenomenal, from processing 10M payslips in 2010 to 32M payslips in 2023 and serving 143 customers a decade back to 500 plus customers today, that include 50 plus of Fortune 500 customers.

Paul Nikhil Prasad: Business Head - Managed Payroll – Nikhil’s presentation focussed on how payroll has transformed from a back office (task master) function conducted by a small group of employees occupying a non-descript tiny space to now being a key driver in the boardrooms.

Major trends such as, remote / hybrid work & the gig economy and expectations relating to employee wellbeing & their strategic insights is leading to consolidated payroll ops, payroll with no touch points, zero errors, faster implementation, real time insights, updated payroll compliance, better UX and simplified ops. This is where Ramco believes its revolutionary new platform Payce fits perfectly.

Payce, the payroll of future, as Ramco now positions it, is a smart payroll, which at the click of a button provides – Daily HR, as employee self-service portal with a refreshed UI; Payroll Workspace, mainly for Admin users that provides state of the art console to simplify end-to-end payroll processing; easy implementation of payroll set up through QIK (Quick Implementation Kit) that uses AI driven pre-configurations, and bring your own data; and BInGO (BI on the Go)which is DIY report viewer and analytics tool to get real time insights with drag and drop features & exception analysis.

Design thinking, first serverless compute, scalable architecture and low code /no code features is powering the Payce platform.

Nikhil elaborated on case study for a company with  90k employees, 110 M pay records, bi weekly pay cycle where the earlier processing time was 6 hours, now drastically getting reduced to less than 30 minutes.

Karthik Kumara Guru – Head: Product Strategy - He provided more technical insights as well as demo of the new Payce platform. The Employee Self Service (ESS) has a feature of comparing one’s previous payslips and CHIA chatbot to answer FAQs. The payroll dashboard for Admins can be configured in a Managed payroll model with tasks set-out for both, Ramco as well as their customers. The in-memory serverless compute ensures not only fast but accurate processing. The AI based anomaly engine helps find out issues that need attention. He then showed an online payroll processing demo for a business entity with 1,808 employees which was done in a matter of minutes.  

The event concluded through a panel discussion with prominent Global Payroll / HR leaders (from Avaya, Synechron, Thoughtworks and others) on how to transform payroll from a Back-office function to Boardroom as a strategic tool that empowers workforces and drives business success. In this session, moderated by Paul Nikhil Prasad, they exchanged their views on various aspects such as, skill sets for future payroll administrators, increasing adoption of AI, payroll compliances and the likely implementation of code of wages in India.

Analyst /Quadrant’s perspective: As per Narayan Gokhale, in the post-COVID era (remote / hybrid work, the gig economy etc.), the workplace and workforce dynamics have completely changed. Payroll administration therefore cannot remain a backroom function but has to move to the Boardroom as it becomes a strategic enterprise application / tool. Ramco’s new positioning and emphasis of faster implementation, lightning-fast payroll processing speed for the new product Ramco Payce is a step in the right direction.

Author: Narayan Gokhale, Vice President & Principal Analyst – Research & User Consulting At Quadrant Knowledge Solutions