Payroll Expert Advice to Enterprise Businesses

With complex payroll structures spanning hundreds of countries, enterprise leaders face mounting challenges, such as inefficient reporting, misaligned processes, and compliance risks. Although a payroll system implemented a few years ago may have worked back then, inflexible solutions that don’t adapt to your present business needs leads to more time and money lost to manual processes.

To uncover insights for overcoming enterprise payroll challenges, we spoke with two global payroll experts at Deel:

• Vic O'Callaghan, Director of Global Payroll Presales Delivery
• Daniel Mellor, Director of Payroll Operations.

Drawing from years of experience managing enterprise payroll implementation and operations, they share advice on the most common global payroll challenges and how to solve them.

6 common global payroll challenges for enterprise businesses

To optimize existing global payroll systems, we need to start by addressing current roadblocks. For enterprise businesses, common payroll challenges include:

1. Maintaining standardized global payroll and HR
2. Accessing local payroll expertise
3. Protecting sensitive employee data
4. Integrating global payroll with HR and finance systems
5. Achieving scalability with a flexible, long-term solution
6. Preparing for a payroll transformation

In this blog, we’ll explore each challenge in more detail along with expert guidance on overcoming them.

1. Maintaining standardized global payroll and HR

Enterprise businesses often use a patchwork of local payroll providers, platforms, and processes across countries. This fragmented approach creates inconsistent data structures, duplicated efforts, and a lack of payroll visibility at the global level.

But it’s important to note that standardization doesn’t mean eliminating local nuances, which are inevitable across multiple countries. Standardization is about establishing a unified structure that brings consistency to reporting and operations, leading to increased accuracy and compliance.

Payroll expert advice: How to standardize global payroll

Deel’s gross-to-net (G2N) reporting analytics enables payroll teams to access data from a single source of truth, standardizing reports and contributing to better visibility.

“Being able to quickly pivot based on board or accounting requirements to pull reports at a global level—whether it's all commission-based payments over 24 months or bonuses by region—is a huge win,” Daniel explains. “Compared to having to do that through 10 different platforms and different wage codes, the Deel platform makes it easy to pull information at whatever level of granularity you need.”

Start with platform consolidation, then align payroll data structures, wage codes, and reporting across regions. This gives global teams the strategic oversight they need, while still enabling local teams to manage jurisdiction-specific needs.

2. Accessing local payroll expertise

Employment laws, tax codes, and statutory benefits differ from country to country, and staying compliant requires local knowledge. But most global payroll providers rely on third-party vendors, leaving clients without direct access to in-country expertise.

Payroll expert advice: Look for a provider with local expertise

A trusted payroll expert doesn’t only automate payroll calculations and processes. They also advise on compliance, identify risks, and guide country-specific decisions.

“Our platform is world class for what we can deliver, but I also think we complement that by providing local-level Deel experts,” says Vic. “The people you meet are Deel employees. Third-party providers and in-country partners aren’t the ones processing your payroll.”

Make sure your payroll provider offers local experts for every market you operate in. This ensures compliance, speeds up problem-solving, and builds confidence across HR, legal, and finance.

3. Protecting sensitive employee data

Global payroll systems contain sensitive data like employee salaries, tax IDs, banking information, and legal documents. Businesses must protect this information across jurisdictions with enterprise-grade security and data protection, such as GDPR, SOC2, ISO 27001, and AES-256.

Payroll expert advice: Must-have data security standards

Look for a provider with robust platform encryption, SOC2 compliance, role-based access controls, and built-in audit trails. This ensures sensitive data is secure, trackable, and centrally managed.

“A lot of effort has been put into making sure that we are GDPR-compliant and rigorously locking down access to data that shouldn't be seen by anyone else,” Daniel says.

Additionally, staying updated on data security regulations across countries and training employees on best practices prevents costly fines and reputational damage.

4. Integrating global payroll with HR and finance systems

Without integration, payroll becomes a silo cut off from HR systems like Workday and finance platforms like QuickBooks. This limits visibility and makes it harder to close books, reconcile costs, and ensure data accuracy across departments.

Payroll expert advice: Benefits of payroll integrations

Partnering with a payroll provider that can integrate with your systems gives your business a single source of truth, reduces duplicate data entry, and ensures faster, more accurate financial reporting.

Daniel elaborates on how Deel’s solutions are flexible to enterprise needs by explaining, “We can generally spin up an integration quite quickly compared to a lot of companies. We’ve done that with benefits providers in the US where it’s a core part of the payroll offering, and we’ve made bespoke integrations as part of the enterprise package.”

5. Achieving scalability with a flexible, long-term solution

Transforming global payroll processes takes significant preparation, time, and resources, so it’s not a project you’d want to revisit every few years. With a global payroll solution that’s flexible to your needs both now and moving forward, you can maintain efficient and accurate payroll operations long-term.

Payroll expert advice: Global payroll that grows with you

“Every client has a different level of complexity, and it’s our job at Deel to drill down and see exactly what it is they want and where we can support. That’s where Deel is different because everything doesn’t just come out of the box,” Vic explains. “We build a different plan depending on client needs, the complexity, and the countries they operate in.”

Whether you need us to run payroll in all countries or just a few, you’ll still benefit from increased efficiency and visibility. Daniel elaborates on this by sharing an example.

“Let’s say a client doesn’t have a good banking setup in one country, but they don’t need extra payroll services in the UK. Deel can handle banking and payroll for that one country, and their payroll team in the UK can use Payroll Connect to upload their end-of-month reports and see every employee on the same screen in the same reports.”

Global payroll needs are complex, and solutions must be flexible enough to meet them.

6. Preparing for a payroll transformation

The best solution for your enterprise business depends on your specific payroll needs, so proper preparation is key. However, it can be difficult to dissect an already complicated global payroll system, which is a challenge in itself.

We asked our global payroll experts to outline actionable steps you can take when starting a payroll transformation project.

Payroll expert advice: Map out your payroll processes and goals

Drawing from her experience helping businesses through global payroll implementation, Vic emphasizes the importance of defining workflows and clear goals. “First of all, make sure you've brought all the key stakeholders to the table. Ensure that they're all involved in the RFP process and that needs, processes, and goals are documented. What is broken? What is it that you're all trying to achieve?”

Whether you’re aiming to fully integrate HR and payroll systems, generate global reports, or consolidate local providers, defining those key goals will help you identify the best global payroll provider for you, not just the one that seems great.

How Deel Global Payroll solves enterprise payroll challenges

Choosing a global payroll provider is more than a procurement decision. It’s a strategic investment in your operational infrastructure. Deel's platform and team of payroll experts are built for enterprises seeking to consolidate, standardize, and scale.

Request a demo to learn more about how Deel Global Payroll streamlines payroll for your enterprise business, cutting processing time by 60% and delivering 67% ROI.