Today Workday announced the availability of its French Payroll capability, available at March 12th 2016. This brings to an end the long ago announced roadmap for payroll support beyond the USA and Canada, with the delivery of UK payroll last summer and French payroll right now.
PLEASANTON, Calif. and PARIS — March 10, 2016 — Workday, Inc. (NYSE: WDAY), a leader in enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, today announced the availability of Workday Payroll for France, a new application that enables organizations with employees in France to streamline the payroll process and address the full spectrum of enterprise payroll needs. Workday Payroll for France was built as part of Workday Financial Management and Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) to facilitate faster financial reporting, improve compliance control, and provide a more comprehensive view of global and local labor costs.
MyPOV – Describes well what is being announced, including the benefits. Customers want native vendor support for payroll as they know from experience that usually less things can go wrong given the challenging legislative environment for payroll. The long term Workday observer will also notice the two time mention of Finance, the more junior area of automation at Workday, that is getting a lot of marketing attention these days.
Payroll has traditionally been challenging for global organizations due to complex regulatory requirements pertaining to each country and a lack of real-time insights on global payroll actuals. Building on the success of Workday Payroll for the U.S., Canada, and UK, Workday Payroll for France helps alleviate these pain points and equips customers with the flexibility, control, and insight required to support the unique aspects of their organizations.
MyPOV – Again a description of the challenges of payroll, but interesting it stresses the global perspective into payroll. There is of course a pure French perspective on a local payroll, too. Workday is walking a fine line with native / own payroll support for USA, Canada, UK and now France – versus the ‘rest of the world’ that it supports with a partnership with payroll giant ADP (read the news analysis here). Customers may well ask for more native payroll support for further countries.
Customers using Workday Payroll for France benefit from:
• Support for France-specific and Regional Legislative Requirements – For example, Workday Payroll for France automatically runs the newly-initiated Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) process, making it simpler for organizations to replace a wide range of reports with a single statement. The application also supports the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payment-integration initiative of the European Union.
MyPOV – Good to see support for French legislative requirements. The nature of payroll requires that you support it all – including latest developments, e.g. the support for DSN.
• Real-time Analytics and Reporting – Organizations can now see what they are actually spending on workers via pre-built reports and analytics. In addition, the new application features a unique dashboard that enables customers to quickly identify and proactively manage high-impact compliance changes directly affecting their employee populations.
MyPOV – Always good to show customers what is going on in payroll. Getting pro-active on compliance changes will be appreciated functionality for both payroll managers and employees. And who does not love dashboards?
• Automatic Tax Updates – With a cloud delivery model, new tax updates are automatically applied, eliminating the need for upgrades and patches required by on-premise payroll systems.
MyPOV – Good to read and hear, but a table stake for a cloud based payroll system.
• Powerful and Flexible Calculation Tool – Workday’s robust calculation engine makes it easy for payroll administrators to handle complex requirements and run calculations as often as needed, with faster payroll-processing time.
MyPOV – Good to hear about the performance of the Workday calculation tool, good that it seems to be performing well, but it would be good to see specifics.
• High Configurability – Payroll administrators can easily configure unlimited earnings, deductions, pay groups, and pay frequencies to support calculation and reporting needs.
MyPOV – Always good to see configurability, but that is what customers expect from a modern payroll system.
• Mobile Access – With one self-service application, employees can check pay slips and payment elections, and administrators have the ability to process payroll – anywhere, anytime.MyPOV – Good to see mobile self-service supported, as mobile is the most popular platform to access pay check information for today’s employees. That sounds up a pretty functional payroll release, which goes beyond the very bread and butter requirements for a payroll system. Good to see.
Comments on the News -“Organizations in France require a modern application to simplify payroll processing and keep pace with recent legislation and a constantly-changing workforce,” said Barbry McGann, vice president, payroll and time products, Workday. “Workday Payroll for France unifies payroll and HR in the cloud, offering customers the control, flexibility, and insight required to gain complete visibility across the business and workforce to help fuel growth.”
MyPOV – Good quote of McGann that sums up well what Workday delivers with French payroll.
Availability Workday Payroll for France will be generally available on March 12, 2016. […]MyPOV – Good to see imminent general availability of the new French payroll.
Overall MyPOV
Always good to see software vendors deliver product at the announced milestones and congrats to Workday to deliver the French payroll as announced over 2 years ago. That seemed a long way out, but time flies and French payroll is now available both for global customers with French employee populations and French customers of Workday. It looks like the first version is a robust, functional release, the mobile capabilities even going beyond a typical V1 of a payroll product.
On the concern side Workday will have to explain why it supports 4 country’s payroll, native in the product and no other countries, but uses the partnership to ADP instead. In recent meetings we noticed jokingly that Workday only supports payroll in countries with red, white and blue flags. Future will tell if Workday can keep it at 4 native payrolls in the Workday product or if it will need to support more, we are seeing Germany and Japan as likely next candidates, but that’s our speculation and guess right now.
But for now, congrats to Workday to deliver native payroll to French customers and global customers who want / need a native French payroll.
More on Workday
- Progress Report - Workday Tech Summit - Good Progress, More Insights, Less Concerns - read here
- News Analysis - Workday and ADP partner to Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience for Global Payroll - read here
- Event Report - Workday Rising - Learning is there and good housekeeping - read here
- News Analysis - Workday completes Talent Management with Learning - Finally - or too late? Read here.
- Event Preview - What I would like Workday to address this Rising read here
- News Analysis – Workday to Expand Suite of Applications for Healthcare Industry - with a SCM twist - read here
- News Analysis - Workday supports UK Payroll - now speaks (British English) Payroll - read here
- Workday 24 - 'True' Analytics, a Vertical and more - now needs customer proof points - read here
- First Take - Top 3 Takeaways from of Workday Rising Day 1 Keynote - The dawn of the analytics era - time to deliver Insight Apps - read here
- Progress Report - Workday supports more cloud standard - but work remains - read here
- Workday 22 - Recruiting and rich Workday 22 are here - read here
- First Take - Why Workday acquired Identified - (real) Analytics matter - read here
- Workday Update 21 - All about the user experience and some more - read here
- Workday Update 20 - Mostly a technology release - read here
- Takeaways from the Salesforce.com and Workday partnership - read here
- Workday powers on - adds more to its plate - read here
- What I would like Workday to address this Rising - read here
- Workday Update 19 - you need to slow down to hurry up - read here
- I am worried about... Workday - read here
