Managing the payments for your global workforce could be a big challenge if you don’t have enough resources or specialists. For this reason, you could opt for preparing a payroll RFP so you can upgrade your process and get the right technology.
In this article, you’re going to learn how to prepare an RFP and how it can be the perfect solution for your payroll management. In addition, you’re going to gain more understanding on how you can use it so you can find the perfect partner for your business. Let’s observe:
- How a payroll RFP helps your company to achieve its strategic goals
- What is a payroll RFP?
- What is the purpose of an RFP?
- How can you use an RFP as part of your strategy?
- How can you set the goal of your RFP?
- What are the essential elements of an RFP?
- How can you craft questions for your RFP?
- How can you define your evaluation criteria for the RFP?
- Why is Connect Resources your best option for a global payroll?
1. How a payroll RFP helps your company to achieve its strategic goals
The payroll department is one of the most complicated ones to manage for any business. Whether you have a small or large-sized corporation, you may face some challenges with payments and other payroll-related tasks.
Additionally, if you’re planning an expansion you may face more issues since managing a global payroll can be even more difficult. For this reason, businesses look for solutions that allow them to have a smooth payroll processing.
The best way to have an excellent payroll management is by implementing new and automated payroll software. However, it’s not easy to find the best one for your business and this is when a payroll RFP is useful.
Learn more about how to implement KPI in your payroll
2. What is a payroll RFP?
A payroll RFP it’s a Request for Proposals and it’s a way businesses use to procure the right technology to have an automated platform to process payments and payroll activities.
It’s a formal invitation that companies draft to vendors so they can send proposals that meets the specific requirements established in the RFP. For this reason, it should be prepared with enough clarity so vendors can offer the best solution for the company.
2.1 What are the characteristics of an RFP?
To prepare a proper RFP you should consider adding the following:
- Problem: make sure to describe clearly the problem that you have in your payroll department and how you’d like it to be solved.
- Objectives: the RFP should highlight the objectives for the project
- Technology: be sure to include specific details about the technology you’d like to have.
- Application process: explain how you’re going to carry out the application process
- Evaluation criteria: vendor should know how you’re going to evaluate the proposals
- Deadlines: it’s important to include reasonable deadlines
- Specific questions: by including questions targeted to specific information you’re going to be able to identify the best match.
Contact the payroll outsourcing specialists of Connect Resources.
3. What is the purpose of an RFP?
Once you know what a payroll RFP is, the next thing you should understand is its general goals. The main purpose of launching an RFP is to obtain the best payroll solution that matches your needs as soon as possible.
Calling for proposals encourages a great competition among your vendors, which it’s great for you since your goals and needs will be a priority for them. In addition, it causes the vendors to give their best offer and demonstrate how they can be the perfect fit for your payroll solution.
So considering all of this, let’s observe the main goals of an RFP as follows:
- Get strong proposals that could solve your payroll issues
- Get all the information about vendors so you can make a well-informed decision
- Receive proposals with new and innovative solutions that may improve your payroll management
- Obtain the best offers at the lowest price
- Reach out vendors even when there’s not a relationship with them
Get more understanding on how to improve your payroll management with outsourcing
4. How can you use an RFP as part of your strategy?
Drafting a payroll RFP could be part of your strategy to improve your payroll management. Once you know all the benefits and advantages you get with it you can use it as part of your future planning.
Therefore, your RFP should contain your current and anticipated main aspects of your payroll, including goals and business problem.
You can use the RFP to let know the vendors the technology you need to solve your current situation. This way, they will provide an automated platform that fits your criteria and helps you improve your current operations.
Let’s observe some of the ways in which an RFP can help you have a better management and therefore be part of your strategy:
- Solve a manual system that’s error-prone
- Calculate the workforce spending for each country where you have employees
- Ensure compliance in all the countries where you have a workforce
- Integrate your payroll platform with additional systems
- Have an effective reporting
- Provide human support to employees
As you can see, it’s important to know your goals in terms of payroll so you can communicate them to the vendors.
Get to know the difference between an in-house payroll processing and outsourcing payroll
5. How can you set the goal of your RFP?
As we have mentioned before, a payroll RFP has some general goals, but as a business you must determine your main goal. It’s essential to point out your company’s needs since the vendors will aim to solve them.
This is known as the “discovery” stage. In this stage you must evaluate your current situation and determine the goal for the desired payroll platform. It’s crucial for you to invest time in developing the main goal since this will allow you to determine the right solution.
How can you do this? Let’s observe the following:
- Ask your HR and payroll staff to provide a vision of the solution they expect regarding the global payroll
- Have a meeting where everyone agree on the requirements of the automated platform
- Develop a clear vision of the solution
- Determine all the details you want in the desired technology
It’s important as a business to have all the information regarding the technologies you’d like to implement. For example, if you desire a cloud-based solution, everyone should be clear about the technical aspects, benefits and advantages of this kind of software.
Get the best staff outsourcing service with Connect Resources.
6. What are the essential elements of an RFP?
Every payroll RFP is different from each other. The main reason is because each one has a specific goal. However, you should include essential sections that will help you address the solution you expect. This way, the vendors will know what to offer and how to show their unique approach to your current problem.
Some of the most important elements of your RFP should be the following:
- Company background: Introduce your company, point out your scope, history, etc.
- Goals and objectives: Explain what you need, what you’re looking for and the features of the winning submission.
- Requirements: vendor’s experience and background, length of contract, budget, etc. In the requirements you should also include the questions. Questions about the stability and sustainability of the vendor, questions to gain insight about the product, and questions about the service. These questions help you get to the essential about the solution.
- Evaluation criteria: Explain how you will determine which proposals may get the approval for a second round.
- Anticipated challenges: lay out the difficulties you may face with implementation and how the solution will solve the challenges.
- Timeline: it’s essential to include deadline for submissions, date of choosing the proposal, date of decision, etc.
Find out how payroll outsourcing can relieve your administrative burden
7. How can you craft questions for your RFP?
A crucial part of your payroll RFP relates to the bulk of the questions. In fact, the questions are the main aspect that you should know how to draft since it will give valuable information to the applicants and you’ll be able to get the answers you expect to evaluate each proposal.
Nevertheless, you should draft your questions with an answer in mind. It means that you’re going to evaluate the vendor regarding the quality of the answer. There are three kind of questions you can ask:
- Specific questions: They help you get basic information. For example, you could ask the vendor how many countries they cover so you could choose the one that fits your plans.
- Detailed questions: It will help you gain more insight about a determinate topic. You could ask about step-by-step procedures or something similar.
- Open-ended questions: It allows you to learn about the implementation of the vendor’s solution. It’s useful to know how the vendor may solve a specific situation and helps you make a direct comparison.
Discover how to implement payroll outsourcing in Abu Dhabi.
8. How can you define your evaluation criteria for the RFP?
One of the final elements of your payroll RFP is the evaluation criteria. Once you have finished drafting it and everyone involved has carry out a thorough review, you can send it to vendors so you can receive the proposals.
However, this doesn’t end here since the next challenge is determining which proposal could be the perfect one for your business.
In this regard, having great evaluation criteria could make a long way to help you choose the best vendor. It may be hard because every proposal may look good at first but for this reason you need an evaluation strategy in place.
8.1 What are the evaluation strategies you should include?
The first thing you should do is communicate the applicants the official standard so they can fit their proposal to your requirements. This is called the acceptance standard.
The other standard is the elimination standard, but this one should remain as a private evaluation criteria. Let’s observe the features of each one so you know how you can implement them:
- Acceptance standard: let know what you expect from vendors. Set the bar to they can offer a proposal that cross it. Be sure to be accurate and specific about what you want.
- Elimination standard: in this strategy you have to set which personal preferences may concede an advantage to a particular vendor. For example, you could have a clear preference over a cloud-based solution and one vendor may be more convincing in this matter than another one.
Keep in mind that the main objective of your RFP is to obtain outstanding payroll software. So you should focus on your particular needs and see which proposal gives you the better solution than all the rest.
Understand how payroll outsourcing can boost your business operations.
9. Why is Connect Resources your best option for a global payroll?
Here in Connect Resources we want t help you take your business in the road to success. For this reason, we want to assist you in all of your payroll tasks and functions. If you’re looking for the best proposal from a payroll RFP you can trust that we can do our best job to meet your needs.
Our team of specialists has been providing a comprehensive service to several companies in a variety of industries for the past two decades, so we guarantee you we will understand your requirements.
Would you like to contact Connect Resources for payroll outsourcing services? You can call at +971 433 166 88 or send an email to contact@connectresources.ae, and you’ll talk to one of their representatives that will gladly answer all of your questions.
