Payroll accuracy for a global
clinical research organisation

As an employer of a global workforce, our client, a leading Clinical Research Organisation, is responsible for the delivery of payroll payments to more than 1,800 employees in 15 countries, including Austria, Greece, Switzerland and Lithuania.

The company’s payroll team were faced with a number of challenges in managing the various global processes which required specialist staff around the world to handle the international payments.

They identified an urgent need to outsource this work to a single trusted partner who would be able to manage the different banking challenges across all the countries where it had staff.

They were looking for a partner with access to a reliable network of delivery channels to ensure payroll payments were made on time and for the correct amount. They chose EQPay.

Challenges

The organisation was looking for support from EQPay on several fronts:
Timing – many payments were not reaching employees at the correct time
Accuracy – employees did not always receive the right amount of net pay
Consistency – payments weren’t always attributed in the same way on wire transfers, making it difficult for employees to match payments to their salary documentation
Charges – fees and other charges were being deducted from payments, resulting in employees receiving too little pay EQPay’s task was to help ensure that employees received the right amount of pay at the right time and that they could identify the payment as having come from their employer.

We were facing a number of challenges that essentially prevented our teams from ensuring that all international payroll payments reached our people on time, for the full amount and with correct attribution. Rectifying those issues diverted our time and attention away from day-to-day tasks and put unnecessary strain on the relationship between the company and its global employees.”

VP OF FINANCE, CLINICAL RESEARCH ORGANISATION

Solutions

Together with the Clinical Research Organisation, EQPay worked through a phased implementation plan for an end-to-end payments process, focussing on the most problematic countries first. The solution was effective in removing the need for in-country providers and, in most cases, intermediary banks and related fees. Further, the solution also ensures employee payment instructions are formatted and delivered consistently, with an option to execute bulk payment uploads to reduce the time and effort required to manage high volumes of payments.

The result

The partnership between EQPay and the Clinical Research Organisation has achieved their key objectives and vision for a single provider that is able to help ensure that consistent payment delivery across 15 countries with collaboration ongoing to roll-out the approach across further countries.

Using EQPay’s single platform has drastically reduced the amount of time spent by the team planning, executing and reporting on our international payroll and has removed the hidden fees that we were being charged in the past. Our employees are now being paid on time, in full and in their currency of choice. We’re looking forward to rolling out the solution to support our payments to other countries as our global presence continues to grow.”