Friday, February 27, 2009

Panic or Crash? When will it end?

Though this topic is not for the payroll site ...but every one is impacted in this situation with budgets being cut...travel cut...project on hold etc.

Some time back one of my friend gave a 5 min speech on how bad the economic situation. Some how it still didn’t make sense to me. On how bad it is apart from there are job cuts happening due to reduced sales, sales are down because corporate/individual clients are not purchasing, they are not purchasing because they believe future is bad so better save some money for bad time. While the issues which started off the crisis was on financial institutions part were taken care with stimulus package by Government. But every one is impacted, every one is panic .Their is no war, no famine, no terrorist attack, no inflation, no natural calamity, no shortage of human capital, low oil price, moderate stock price, high gold price, real estate is more affordable. What is wrong than??????????????

Last night I went into Wikipedia and searched for all known economic disasters (panics and crashes). I found total 28 of them (http://cid-95ceb06d4d2707fb.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/other?uc=1). I found 1837, 1873 &1929 US crashes stands out .But doesn’t show same scenario as today. Post 1929 there were almost no record of economic panic other than the current one. There was record of 10 stock market crashes b/w 1929 to 2008. There were 17 economy panics before 1929 (including 1929).

After 1837 it took 37 year for next one to happen .......but it took another 56 year for the next one..... it took 79 year for the current one. There were 3 crashes b/w 1837 to 1873......but there were 7 of them b/w 1873 to 1929....there were 10 of them b/w 1929 to 2008.

all put together....Some how it makes me feel......than is it is just another crash along with other 10 which happened after 1929 ....we are still far from seeing one like 1929 or 1873 or 1837.

I am not economist or a finance wizard but just an optimist.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Multi layered customer interaction is very real and day to day ingredient of Payroll manager. This also poses question on who matters in the end.........or in six sigma terms "who is the customer". I believe there is no one answers other than servicing different customer at different level depending on asks. At the same time we must not forget payroll as an employee service function which has to listen to requirements of end customer -Employee. This helps in big for any transformational activities.
Conventionally it is a accepted principal to consider payroll as execution point rather than a strategy point. I believe this depends on how company wants to consolidate its ROI on process improvement. As you can see in the picture, payroll as function can spread its wings to make it self more standard. As I mentioned in earlier posting "Payroll in isolation is only manifestation on imperfections in the process (like C&B policy, Payroll practice, employee communication etc.". We can not achieve sustainable ROI, Lower cost per pay slip and customer satisfaction unless we go upper the pyramid to take influencing position to inject required changes to overall policy and procedure of the company.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Payroll - Semi globalization works

Semi-globalization works very well when consolidation payroll either across region or across the globe. This enable effective business partnering and governance.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Is Payroll a process or symptom?











Payroll neither creates data nor a upstream primary process. Payroll is a midware process in an over all business process of a company. Let me know your thoughts?