5 Pillars of Modern Payroll, PPCI, Paychex Acquire Paycor, SAP end of Life, HR & IT and more!

[00:00:02] Payroll, PPCI, Payroll, Baddy, Payroll, Baddy, Payroll, Baddy, Payroll, Baddy, Daddy Payroll, Baddy, Daddy is summoned? Is that how this happens? You got to do that.

[00:00:31] Thank you for wearing pants today, Todd. Much appreciated. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome to all of our listeners, to all of our regular listeners. Thank you for coming back and to our new listeners. Welcome to our podcast. And just a little disclaimer, you know, we're a very SAP-biased podcast. If you don't like it, GTFO, right? So we're very excited today to bring you guys, uh, um, your really a fun podcast with some really good

[00:01:01] topics. But wait a second. Are we missing somebody? Yeah, where's our, uh, where's Giovanna? Giovanna was running late today, but she's joining. Where? Oh, there's she. Oh, hey, Gia! Yeah? What's up? Hey! I like the suit. I like the suit. I like it. I thought I had the big chain on. Ooh, yeah. She got the Flava Flav side. Yeah.

[00:01:30] Oh, she, I guess she's not talking much today. That's okay though, Gia. We're glad to be here. She's happy to be here. She's listening again. You know, I, today's podcast, you know, we thought we would start with a fun, fun segment about what grinds Baddy Daddy's gear. Cause don't we all love to hear Baddy Daddy go off on something, right? Oh yeah. What do you, what do you got for us today? Well, I'll tell you what, I could throw that at the hearts, but I'm got a lot of anger about a couple of things. No.

[00:01:59] Listen, I have always had a problem with this idea of a chair at the table, right? When you hear this from your analysts and some of our friends, oh, you know, HR payroll, they deserve a chair at the table. They deserve to have their voices heard. And listen, we know, we, we know for sure, but how, how? Because it's so easy to say, look, you know, you, you gotta go help, help a company run their

[00:02:28] business and, but it's, it's hard to operationalize how you do that and how you set your payroll structure up and your department up so that you can create that kind of expertise where you, you really earn the cred to get asked into those meetings. And so I was, I was actually having this conversation and I was walking around Costco and I know Pete's up late at night. So I called my buddy, Pete Tiliakis and we start talking about it. I'm kind of grumpy at him. Cause it's like, he's a representative of those analysts that are like always with that.

[00:02:58] And I said, you know, how Pete, how do we tell our customers and our payroll baddies out there, how to build an organizational structure that gets them invited to the table. We want the esteem of the payroll people lifted. Right? So, so Pete, you know, doesn't miss a beat goes right into his five pillars. And I I've seen his five, I've heard of him, but I, I haven't really gone through and had them explain them the way they did.

[00:03:23] So I'm going to do a quick version of it, but then I would suggest if anybody's interested in, in organizing it, in, you know, like organizing the payroll department or that structure to kind of elevate the department to that level, get all the Pete. I mean, he's happy to explain it to you, but it starts with a center of expertise around compliance, right? We can't let the business go out of business. And that is a critical component, whether you're doing a, a large enterprise global payroll

[00:03:50] environment with 35 countries, or you're, you know, keeping the lights on at a 500 employee, you know, a law firm, for instance, either way, you need to have that as the core capability. Right? The next thing, and this is really a change in the past is delivering on the modern payroll experience. What does that mean? Like I want to get paid when and where I want to get paid. And we're seeing that more and more daily.

[00:04:17] I, the idea of transparency and trust, those are huge things right now. Right. And they've been, you know, kind of coming on for the last couple of years. And then finally, into that idea of the pay experience, you know, financial wellness and, you know, insights into my financial welfare at the company or the company delivered that welfare. And then you move over into, you know, facilitating the compliant access to skills and talent. And all this means is look, we got to make sure that the company can hire whoever they

[00:04:46] want, anytime, any type, anywhere. So whether it's a contractor, a professional in somebody in Thailand that knows how to, has a specific skill or needs to go into an organization there in Thailand or division department, like you need to be ready in payroll to make that happen. And there's, you know, a bunch going on there and then enabling that organizational agility. Right? So scalability, I have a feeling Imran's going to get a little bit of crap later on

[00:05:13] for like Atlanta being snowed in and can't get payroll done. Oh no, they're going to get started. Hey, so listen, agility from an organizational perspective is something that needs to be looked at. How are you managing a redundancy state of privacy and security and leveraging data and insights to help that organization see around the next corner. Right? And then finally, we got, you know, advising on strategic initiatives. So if you do the other four things, right?

[00:05:41] Compliance center of expertise, delivering on the payroll experience or that pay experience for the employee, getting, you know, enabling the organization to hire anywhere, anybody, anytime, any place. And then you do that organizational agility component. The last thing you get to do is you're going to get invited in to talk about strategic initiatives. You need to be proactive on business engagement and the forward thinking strategic plans, what's coming around the next corner.

[00:06:06] So, like, that was a completely quick version of this, but, you know, and click on, you know, Pete's contact information and you can talk to him directly. But I tell you what, and I know something Pete just put out that he put out last year that was really interesting. Imran, you know about this, his survey. Yeah, yeah. I think all the payroll profession confidence index survey. Right. So mouthful. So it's very unique research he's doing.

[00:06:34] And actually, like the thing I appreciate about it is he's upfront. It's free of any sponsorship or monetization. Right. It's 100 percent anonymous. So there's not any personal information that you have to do. And then it's very inclusive. So he's not just looking for just admins or just a certain type of people, anyone that touches payroll. So for all you baddies out there, we'll share the link. You know, Pete does a lot of good things just for the ecosystem, knows the stuff. Right. He's one of our favorites.

[00:07:03] Hello, HLN as well. He's a box fan, but I try not to hold that against him. Hey, now there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the thing I like about the survey, and this is good for our payroll baddies out there to know, he spends time talking about it's not like, you know, when are you going to buy payroll next? Or what are you looking at for, you know, you are, you know, like any of the functional things. It's really like a sentiment analysis of what you know is. Are you held in esteem in your organization?

[00:07:33] How did you get there? You know, those types of things, which just goes right back to this. How do we get a chair at the table? Right. It's that strategic delivery that payroll can do through that operational excellence. So like he, he brings it all together with this thing. So I'd love everybody out there to go and click on his survey and take that survey and you'll get the outcomes. For sure. For sure. And then, I mean, it's just good for the whole ecosystem payroll period. Right. Cause to get the results of that, more people in this state. So absolutely. That out for sure. Um, I mean, Pete's doing a lot of great stuff.

[00:08:01] Like I feel like guys, we got to have them on the show at one of these days. Yeah. Awesome. Got to make that work. All right, cool. So yeah, everyone check that out. Let's jump over to our next section. Roger. Let's do new news. Um, I know it's been a couple of weeks now, but let's talk about GTM con right up San Diego, all the go to market sales people coming together. Great event. Love the weather. Love seeing you guys. My minus Rod, Jesse, Gio. Yeah. Rod, Jesse.

[00:08:31] Where were you guys? It's a, it's a very sensitive topic. Perfect. Yeah. I was trapped in the snow. If you guys didn't know, there was a, a snow blizzard that went across the Midwest and yeah, no, I was definitely having FOMO. Like I, I saw all the pictures and all the good fun stuff you guys did. And, uh, you know, it just looked like a awesome time. So that's a valid excuse for Raj, but what about you, Jesse? Well, let me see here.

[00:09:00] Uh, Sonny Imran looks like you may have crashed a party or two that you were, I was, you were, I was representing with an event and you were there. So. Oh, wait, wait to turn the topic. But yes. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for unofficially inviting us. You're welcome. Yeah. It was a great party. Back to GTM comm though. Wait a minute. No, it was, it was, I mean, GTM comm. It was great. I mean, obviously we've missed you guys, right?

[00:09:30] But like Todd, myself, um, Imran, it's just, it's always great. Just, I mean, we, we kept it GTM comm. I kept on getting confused whether it was, you know, F comm CS comm next time. It's just going to be some kickoff meeting. Right. But we'll, we'll stick to the good old, um, you know, F comm. Um, I think like personally for me, it was great. Cause kind of like what Imran said, like we got to meet a lot of, you know, uh, the field sales, all the great, um, kind of sales leaders from different line of businesses, kind of seeing

[00:10:00] how SAP overall is aligning their broader strategy with the different lines of business. Right. And kind of seeing how we all as partners, um, along with, you know, different, um, uh, industry folks, right. Can come in and ultimately help, help the customer. So I think it was great. The parties were great. Um, the connections were great. What do you think, Todd? Yeah. You know, I had a great time. Um, going back, we, a lot of, uh, CSPs there, like the folks that take care of our customers

[00:10:27] and, and, uh, they were super into the baddies, which is fun. Um, they're celebrating their, uh, you know, their customers going live. We might see something about that, but you know, uh, I, I was also super excited to see a lot of the folks in our sales organization that work in payroll, um, are still here. Like we have a lot of longevity, uh, in the payroll ranks. And so that's great. Uh, it's great to see those guys and they were super excited about our, our mission to

[00:10:55] elevate the, the, the prestige of the payroll, the payroll crew. Yeah. And I got to give a shout out to Imran and Todd, both of you guys. Like, I don't think you've, um, given sort of what do we call it? The, the, the payroll chain ceremony, like officiating all of the new payroll baddies. Nighting. Nighting, right? Like you guys knighted so many payroll baddies, I think for the right reasons. And I think for those of you that are watching this, you've seen all of our posts on there.

[00:11:21] Uh, it was just a great experience kind of having everyone collaborate and have that camaraderie around payroll in general. I like even our SAP, like I was there with my SAP counterparts and they're like, I see so many people wearing these payroll chains. Like what's all that about? I'm like, Hey, it's SAP. It's success factors. It's payroll. We're making routes, baby. And listen, listen, I don't want anyone to get confused. If they were where chain, they earned it. We do not just hand them out. Right. That's right.

[00:11:46] But the reality was in San Diego, there are a lot of people that earned it and have put in years. Todd, you started your post 30 years, the whole Costco, the silver thing. They earned it. So yeah, that might've had a lot of people, but you know, we're just trying to try to really bring that out for the people that worked in this for a very, very long time. For us who weren't there. And again, the FOMO was real, but like just seeing the, again, the feeling that we carried

[00:12:13] from Portugal of like the payroll being on center stage, it just felt like it was still carried over to GTM comm and I, and we loved seeing that. And again, uh, again, as Sonny said, all three of you, thank you for, you know, kind of facilitating that. But it seems like everybody's like, everybody was just waiting to release their inner payroll baddie. And it seems like it was awesome. So absolutely. That's great.

[00:12:39] Uh, maybe, oh, well, actually, since the last time we met, did you guys hear about the news about, uh, paychecks and pay core? So I know like, I, I don't know a lot of people may be in, in the SAP space and like in the bigger market, sometimes, you know, pay, uh, you know, paychecks and pay core are not really talked about, but you know, from, you know, SAP going down market, I know we sell a lot into mid market. I know, uh, that, you know, that's a really, uh, you know, huge space now for SAP.

[00:13:07] You know, again, paychecks and pay core was a big news, at least to me is because those are two competitive, like two big competitors. Now there's going to be one and it's going to be interesting to see how they meld those two things. Right. And I guess one thing we can maybe say for another time, one thing that kind of maybe grinds my gear is that if you actually look at paychecks and pay core and all these other companies, they sometimes don't see SAP payroll as a, as a competitor.

[00:13:34] Well, a, because they're so downstream, but then you see them throw in like work day and things like that. So I think they need to understand, look, SAP payroll, it's not only for large enterprise clients, it goes down to, you know, to mid market and SMB. So again, it's, it's going to be interesting to watch the space. So I don't know if you guys had any thoughts about what happened or any other top, any other things about that? Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting for sure. Right. There's a lot of activity going on, right? DC space funding.

[00:14:04] So, you know, I'm watching it. I don't, I don't have too many thoughts on it though. I don't know if anyone else does. I'll just say it validates our strategy. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah. Good. Good. We're powerful. The other thing, Raj, I read recently was this whole kind of extension with the whole SAP rise, like the whole maintenance period or something of that sort. Like what, what's going on with that? Yeah. I mean, that's, I would love, yeah, I would love to hear from, again, from everybody, but

[00:14:34] like Todd being at SAP too, but from what I understand, from what I understand of looking at the post was that they are, SAP is not saying that they're increasing their, like again, 2027 is a deadline, right? They are allowing, if you sign on for rise for some customers, allowing them to maybe push it to 23, like have a longer leeway. Right.

[00:15:03] But you still have to sign a contract for rise before 2027. Yeah. So again, this is where, again, where did Todd go? I can't see him. That's not it. This is a safe space. You can come back in, man. It would be great to understand. Well, I think, I think I understand SAP's logic here, but just again, I hope this is not like a, like a soft push, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think the devil will be in the details, right?

[00:15:29] There's a lot more to kind of get into and hear and what are the prerequisites for it. But just generally speaking, I mean, there's so many customers that are already on premise that it's almost like, are there even enough consultants in the world if all of them suddenly decide to move? So yeah, I don't know. I guess part of it is we need to hear more about it. So I'm waiting for that to come out before making any rash. Yeah. And I know at least from what I was told, like it's going to be impacting only customers with like very super complex IT landscapes, right? Yeah.

[00:15:59] And apparently SAP and then Todd can validate this if he's authorized and able to that SAP is going to communicate in the first half to who those customers are. Yeah, we'll know more. I mean, at the end of the day, we want to give our customers flexibility to ensure that their continued business operations continue to operate and they can take advantage of, you know, the ROI that they've had for the X amount of years they've been on our system before daddy was a daddy, right? It was, goes back a long way.

[00:16:27] We have a lot of comprehensive functionality that they're taking advantage of and it's not as easy as some of our competitors may seem to be jumping, you know, from one ERP to the next. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, what other topics do we have guys? Well, food for thought. Oh, food for thought. Okay. Yeah, I know. That's where I was going with this. I'm like food, food, food. I'm hungry. It's been a long day.

[00:16:58] Raj, you and I have been talking a little bit about this HR and IT dynamic lately. Yes. And I've had some conversations this week where it's come up. Sometimes it's super beautiful. Sometimes it's not beautiful. This is a loaded topic. There's a lot. I'm just kind of curious conversation here. And then when you also think about payroll and finance and where does that come in? So the HR and IT dynamic. I mean, isn't that like that? Sorry, go ahead, Sonny.

[00:17:28] No, no, go ahead, Raj. I was going to say, isn't this like a tale as old as time about HR and IT and all that stuff? Yeah. That's all I'm going to say, but yeah, Sonny, please. No, I was just going to say, I mean, there's pros and cons to both sides, whether if you're playing nice, you're not playing nice, but I will tell you guys this, like the most successful transformations that I've seen are the ones that HR and IT are insane. Sounds easy, but it's super hard. Right.

[00:17:55] And I've been in situations and even client stories where we've gone in. I'm not going to name the clients. It's been an IT driven initiative where HR is just along for the ride. And once the project is live, HR finally figures out, wait, this is not what I wanted. Like that. Yeah. Who designed this thing? Right. And no one, how come no one really truly asked us and consulted with us? So it's that, that's the story. And then we had to go back and sort of redesign. So you don't want to get into that cycle. Right.

[00:18:23] And so start off the bat, making sure. Right. Yeah. Buy something. And then IT has to figure out the integration to it the other way. Right. And like, oh, well, how are we supposed to make that work? Right. Well, and I think that is such a, again, and the conversation that Jesse, I was having, and what I have been kind of noticing, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it is actually even, this is, again, we're talking here about implementation, but even before that, right?

[00:18:49] You know, again, when we're in sales cycle, again, we are an SAP biased podcast. So I can, I can say this again. I cannot fathom why somebody would pick something besides SAP, especially if you're again, using other things in S on, if you're an SAP shop using other things, but what we're seeing sometimes. And again, I want to see if you guys are seeing this too, is that let's say IT is controlled, you know, all the landscape, the technology for how many ever years.

[00:19:19] Sometimes I think HR feels like they have a backseat and they don't have control. And when it comes time for, oh, we need to pick a new HR product or we're moving to the cloud or things like that. Okay. I feel the only reason, and again, this is me being biased, right? That I see that somebody picking not SAP and going through, you know, whatever is because they're like, I want to get away from what IT is using. Right. I want to get away. I want to have control.

[00:19:48] And that is such a, I'm trying to say this in a nice way. That is such a bad decision. Again, there's no other way of saying that because I get it. I get that, you know, what you, what the feelings and, you know, not having control, not having a seat at the table that goes back to the conversation you guys are having, right? HR and IT together. There should be a seat in the table. They should be working together, but don't make a decision just because, um,

[00:20:15] it's the, it's the technology choice that IT doesn't own or use or vice versa. Right. So I think that's where that really got me thinking. It's like, like from a, from a, from a sales perspective, I, I hope we don't see more of that. Yeah. So you think, I actually think we're seeing less of it, frankly, because that kind of started back with the cloud early days when, you know, HR got their own budget and it was the first time that happened in a while because, you know, normally IT does the procurement on the technology.

[00:20:46] It gets their own budget and they first thing they want to do is kind of go off-roading to, because they don't have a good relationship in some cases. Right. And that, that was, that did not work out. We see a lot of, of, uh, integration issues over time, data security, data privacy, um, this ransomware that we talked about the other day. I mean, all that stuff gets impacted by a little lack of standardization in the back office.

[00:21:10] And so we're seeing a lot less of it, a lot more synergy in keeping everything in a, in a, in a complete business suite. Yeah. And on the flip side. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, I was just gonna say. Yeah. No, go, go. Go for it. Go. Giovanna, what do you think? Yeah. She's been really quiet today. Gio has been super quiet. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get geo talk.

[00:21:33] So Giovanna says, from a delivery standpoint, of course, right. Uh, Giovanna thinks it's definitely gotten better. You're right, Todd. Um, I think there's been great strides. Like I Giovanna have a customer where HR, the CHRO and the CIO are literally best friends, right? They can finish each other's sentences. The CIO looks out for the CHRO, right?

[00:22:00] Wants to make sure that at the end of the day, the experience for the employees is that of what the CHRO's vision is. And so I really love seeing that as the chief delivery officer here. Right. Gio, that's amazing. Yeah. What a profound thought. But there's still challenges. We also come into challenges where, you know, we still are years behind and IT has

[00:22:26] picked a solution and hasn't maybe kept HR at the table for the decision making. And even though they may have even picked SAP, right? And we know that's King. The challenge is the process piece. The processes aren't well known, right? What are you really, truly trying to solve for? And then you're trying to solve for it later on. So I still think there's room for growth to make sure in the RFP stage early on, the

[00:22:53] demonstrations, that HR is there for everything and has a voice. What great insightful. And smart. And smart. Gio. Smart, Gio. Smartest thing she said on this podcast. But, but, but, but again, you know, I shared an article in our group and Todd mentioned it earlier today, but we should give some shit to him, Ron. What's going on with Atlanta, buddy? You know?

[00:23:18] So, so just the article came out and again, I, I feel again, we obviously there's a lot of details that we don't know. And you always feel bad when things like this happen because it's affecting people's livelihood. So this is no joke by any means, but again, the article stated, it was again, I think a school district or something in Atlanta because of all the snow days that they missed a payroll and missed getting people paid. So again, in my opinion going into the office and like running payroll. That's why they didn't know.

[00:23:47] I mean, look guys. Yeah. We don't deal with snow very well over here. And then. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, although I, I made it to San Diego though, guys. Oh, well. No, no, no, no. But I do think this is an important conversation, right? Because I don't even know what software was or anything. And I'm not even trying to give anyone shit over anything. Right. Because it could happen to anyone. And some of it is process related things.

[00:24:14] Do you just have a desktop that's in an office and that's the only way that you can access the payroll system to do it? Like I have more questions than answers, but I think it gets you to it's 2025, right? You should be able to run payroll remotely from wherever you are. Right. And so as emergencies come up or things happen, then, you know, you'd have to have those contingencies planned. Yeah. Listen, it's 2025. Your payroll should be running while you're sleeping. Yeah, exactly. Boom. You know what's awesome about this?

[00:24:44] We just connected back to Batty Daddy's grinding his gear and the five pillars of modern payroll. Right. So this is how awesome we are. Continuous payroll is a real thing. Exactly. It always is right. Yeah. Love it. That's awesome. Guys. Yeah. I mean, I think we talked about a lot of a lot of great topics. Right. I think we're kind of we'll close it out with one final announcement that I wanted to make.

[00:25:07] I know we've been kind of planning this for quite some time, and I think it's super exciting that we're going to have our chief esteemed guest, Marianne Abadjay on our next podcast. Yeah. So looking forward to having Marianne, you know, I think that there's a lot of great sort of insights and support that she's been kind of doing across the whole SAP Success Factors, you know, community and specifically around payroll. So I think it's going to be a great conversation.

[00:25:36] We're looking forward to that and can't wait. So that being said, we have some more upcoming amazing content. We're not going to really like release all the details just yet. More amazing guests that are coming up. So be sure to like subscribe. We're focusing on our LinkedIn and YouTube. So continue to make sure you follow us on there. Lots of great content. And I want to thank Raj and Imran, both of you guys, for continuing to kind of keeping publishing and keeping that momentum going. So it's all of us teamwork. Teamwork. Absolutely.

[00:26:06] So thank you so much, guys. And we look forward to the next one. Go ahead, Raj. And let's just say a big thank you to Giovanna. Again, I know she didn't speak a lot today, but I felt like when she did speak, it was a point. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

[00:26:47] Bye. Baddies got the vision making payroll proud. SAP Payroll is king, we're wearing the crown. Those companies starting with P, y'all know the name. Try to keep up, but it's not the same. Tech on lock, we automating the flow. No more headaches, we let that payroll glow. Innovating daily, got the future on deck. Payroll baddies running it, showing respect. So all the payroll baddies, you know who you are. Join the cause, let's take it far.

[00:27:17] All you baddies out there, it's time to rise. Join the movement, no compromise. Keep your rock stars with classy, no charades. Payroll baddies, rain and fire, get paid.

[00:27:43] You're with baddies in the game, bringing more to the loop.