Recently at QXW Week – Cloud Day, we had the pleasure of having Chris Luse, Manager Human Resource Applications at Yum! Brands and Rakesh Duvoor, Associate Manager, Corporate Systems at Yum! Brands present.

This webinar is a “must see” for anyone working with payroll. The webinar format of myths and misconceptions is easy to follow. And the frank and transparent approach Luse and Duvoor offer is compelling. Details, general advice, quick tips … it’s all there. If your business is planning to move payroll to the cloud, check out the webinar on the Quest Content Library and get ready for some serious note-taking.

Who leads the session?

Luse and Duvoor are with Yum Brands, the American fast food company known for KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and others. Yum Brands is implementing payroll in the Oracle Cloud in two waves. The first wave – the corporate implementation of core HR, benefits, payroll, time & labor and absence management – is complete. The second wave is in the planning stage and will be immense with the addition of 30,000 employees, time-reported from third-party systems and full assignment and salary history conversion. There’s lots to be learned from their experience.

Luse and Duvoor provide great examples as their implementation (with salaried and hourly employees, a national population, benefits administration eligible, etc.) has so much in common with those of many others moving payroll to the web. Their transfer is from PeopleSoft version 8.8, DB2.

Businesses invest lots of time in preparing for the transfer to the cloud. What do they cover in this one hour that can get businesses like mine started in transferring payroll?

In the webinar Duvoor covers what they consider to be “the areas most useful to users.” For each of these areas they address commons myths, the facts and then their experience.

• System design
• System functionality regarding payroll taxes
• System functionality for elements (earnings and deductions)
• System functionality for payroll reconciliation
• System functionality for payroll processing
• Testing
• Go live and post go live

Is there any general advice?

Duvoor and Luce tailor the myths, facts and experiences for each area but you’ll notice some reoccurring themes:

• Think ahead. Plan. Specifically, plan for attributes, implementation, and testing. It can be difficult to make changes later.
• Don’t assume “good enough” is good and that you can “tweak” the process later. Do your best to get it right the first time.
• Consider all scenarios before designing settings.
• Don’t assume there is a one-to-one relationship with PeopleSoft.
• Focus on the must-haves; make a list of the nice-to-haves but focus on the must-haves.
• Engage your super users. Educate super users and users as early as possible.
• Put a lot of effort into the design stage and all the different scenarios.
• Understand what each attribute does before you design.
• Cloud has robust functionality and there is flexibility for the customizations that might be your responsibility. You need to plan for this. This is especially important for payroll taxes.
• Begin working early with your Implementation Surface Manager (IASON) early, if you need custom classifications.
• Make sure you have resolved data situations before the implementation stage.
• Be wise about choosing when to automate.
• Not all configurations can be migrated from environment to environment.