As the tumultuous events of 2020 demonstrated, every company has a deep need for a robust contingency plan for critical payroll services.
Even with an increase in payroll automation among global companies, many remain vulnerable to another large-scale disruption such as a major power outage, loss of connectivity, or a natural disaster.
Critical payroll service capabilities largely fall into three areas: business continuity planning (BCP), disaster recovery management, and service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring. Finding the company with the most advanced competencies in those areas will provide the highest level of protection against system downtime and lost data and get the service back on track in the shortest possible time.
Papaya Global has emerged as an industry leader in those three areas – and continues to improve its capabilities. Comparing Papaya’s offering to the industry standards reveals just how far ahead of the field Papaya is, and how much safer your company is with Papaya in the event of another disruption, large or small.
Business Continuity Planning
Even with the best planning, it may not be possible to avoid every catastrophe. Some events are simply beyond human control. But with effective BCP, operational functionality can be restored in the shortest amount of time.
BCP involves assessing all possible risks, testing contingencies, and applying safety measures. It aligns all key individuals so that everyone knows what to do when time is ticking and business must be done.
Industry standard:
Much of the payroll industry relies on storing data in different geographic locations to prevent any major disruption for the company in general. With multiple locations, the risk is spread throughout the world, increasing the probability that some locations will remain functional even in a major crisis.
Periodic testing is standard practice to ensure that all of the recovery systems are effective and up-to-date. Virtually all businesses test the system at least once a year, many do it two times.
An increasing number of companies use cloud technology to allow data accessibility from anywhere in the world. That way, if a disaster takes place and people cannot travel to their offices, they can continue to work at remote locations. This approach was widely adopted throughout 2020, when many people could not work at an office but were able to continue to function at home.
Papaya’s BCP:
Papaya’s BCP goes well beyond the industry standard.
Papaya is ISO 27001 certified, which means Papaya maintains the highest level of data security, but more importantly in regard to BCP, in order to gain certification, Papaya has to submit a detailed BCP and disaster recovery plan to a third party for audit. Certification will only be given to a company when its BCP meets a high standard.
All of Papaya’s servers are stored on the cloud through Amazon Web Service, which itself offers a its own protection – If something happens to an Amazon data center, it has the ability to move Papaya’s data to another availability zone, away from the disruption.
On top of that, all critical and irreplaceable files are backed every eight hours and saved in a separate location. If anything happens to the original files, the backups are ready for use, keeping business going around the clock even if a major disaster takes place in one part of the world.
Database recovery tests are performed every quarter.
If buildings are not accessible, Papaya’s infrastructure allows for the entire company to work from a remote location without any drop in capabilities. All of the IT functions will continue to operate, providing ongoing support to the entire company.
Disaster Recovery
One of the most debilitating things that can happen to a company is the loss of substantial data. For a payroll company, data can be irreplaceable. Losing a large amount of data could make it impossible to perform a payroll run at all.
Disaster recovery covers areas such a data recovery, the steps a company takes to ensure that data remains safe under any circumstances, and the process it has in place to recover data that could be lost in the event of an unforeseen crisis.
Industry Standards:
A company’s ability to recover from disaster is often measured by two parameters. The recovery time objective (RTO) refers to the amount of time a company needs to restore functioning after a disaster takes place. The recovery point objective (RPO) refers to the amount of data that is lost, measured in the amount of time that the system was down.
While the range in the industry can fluctuate significantly, several payroll companies report an RTO of 24 hours and an RPO of 48 hours. Other companies state that their RPO is 24 hours for disasters and less for equipment failure.
Papaya’s DR:
With a backup system that creates a snapshot of the entire database three times each day, Papaya is never more than 8 hours away from its last backup, minimizing the amount of data that could be lost under any circumstance.
For critical issues that occur during payroll processing time, a critical response could come as quickly as 8 hours, a resolution within 16 hours, and a fix as quickly as 24 hours.
Test are conducted regularly and backups are stored separately. Papaya also benefits from its cloud storage for disaster recovery. The data is never stored in one place, or even one region, making it easier to recover data lost to a disaster in one region.
SLA Monitoring
A service level agreement between a service provider and a client is an expression of when and how the service will be delivered and what it will include. For a multi-country payroll provider, that could include uptime for its payroll administration software, the accuracy of payroll calculations, or methods for ensuring legal compliance. Terms of the agreement are often stated in measurable goals.
Industry standards:
Since SLAs are essentially nothing more than a clear agreement between multi-country payroll vendors and clients, they will vary according to the needs of the clients. The way those terms are measured will also vary. Some focus on platform uptime, others focus more on metrics such as payroll speed and accuracy, reporting ability and other aspects of payroll monitoring.
Papaya’s SLA Monitoring:
Papaya covers the full spectrum of SLA monitoring – offering a technical and a service-level solution to ensure that all services are delivered at the highest level.
The Papaya platform – the automated payroll software used to execute a multi-country payroll – has achieved an uptime of 99.9%.
The accuracy and integrity of the service is achieved through a combination of technology and people. The platform contains safeguards to ensure that all of the payroll calculations are complete, accurate, and locally compliant. When errors occur, the platform catches them at the earliest possible point and alerts the dedicated customer success manager.
After the figures are calculated, the process goes through an internal audit by the dedicated manager as an additional level of oversight. Clients are supported through three levels of service. Each country has a vetted in-country partner that serves as an expert on compliance. Every client has a dedicated customer success manager to answer any payroll inquiries. And there is a Center of Excellence with experts to advise on issues related to HR, legal, compensation, and benefits.
Papaya is Ready for the Future
Every company needs to know that its payroll will continue to function under any circumstances. With Papaya, you are always ready.
Papaya offers a total workforce management solution supporting all types of global workers (payroll, EoR, and contractors) in over 140 countries. The automated, cloud-based SaaS platform provides an end-to-end solution, from onboarding to on-going management to cross-border payments.
The automated platform ensures payroll compliance, provides benefits management, and ensure data privacy in compliance with GDPR. Papaya’s knowledge center provides updated information on salary benchmarks, mandatory benefits, tax rates, and more – everything you need to know before hiring overseas.
Contact us for a strategic consultation. We can help with budget planning, compliance, and a plan for management and communication for your distributed workforce.
