Fact: Being enthusiastic about cloud technology is hard. It’s constantly changing, forever trying to justify its existence and never, ever “finished.” We all love to loathe technology, and none so much today as the ubiquitous “cloud.” It’s now harder than ever to leave your desk without being somehow connected to your work and your colleagues, whether it be through email or instant messaging. It’s difficult to shake that nagging feeling that it just won’t leave you alone when you really need to switch off. However, for all its nuisances and misapplications, we are capable of achieving great things when we embrace the best that it has to offer. With the right technologies by our side, we can begin to bring people together in new and unexpected ways, bridging the gaps between language, geography and culture in ways that are more accessible and more seamless than ever before.

In my role here at CloudPay, I’m constantly challenged to justify why we need to, and how we should, advance our own technology in the payroll space. This is not an immature industry; indeed, some of the first commercial computer programs were built specifically for solving payroll problems. As I’m often reminded, the problem is not a lack of technology, but rather the fragmentation of it all. Many of the people I speak to and articles I read have a similar message to give: the industry is seeking consistency, consolidation and visibility. These are the problems that CloudPay was built to solve and are the reason that so many of you come to explore and experience what we have to offer. It’s been almost 10 years now since we set out to solve this problem and, while the general message is the same, the expectations of the cloud marketplace have grown in both scope and maturity.

Cloud technologies, when deployed properly, can be put to immensely great use, and if there’s one place that could do with a boost from a great set of technologies, it’s the payroll space. As I look around at the tools and systems that I use every day to do my job, and run my life, it’s clear that the cloud is driving some of the most exciting and transformational changes. As a software developer, there are many great products out there that help me become a better developer, help our team schedule, communicate and share knowledge, and aid us in engaging with the rest of our company and beyond. All of these things, as I would expect, are right at the forefront of what technology is capable of today; there’s nothing better to prove the theory than eating our own dog food, after all. But how many of them have transferred out of our realm and into yours? As I look around I’m disappointed to say “not nearly enough.”

The cloud has given us a perfect excuse to change the way that we work, both as businesses and as people. No-longer should we feel constrained by technology in its traditional forms; as the consumer of a cloud service, you don’t have to worry about owning specific hardware, performing miracles when upgrading between versions or having a special team just to keep a specific behemoth application running 24/7. You’re now free to shake off that responsibility to others and simply consume the rewards. All of these things sound and feel great for any business – the less you have to do yourself, the more you can concentrate on what makes you money. Of course, there are many things that make the switch-over seem foreign and unintuitive – reliability, security and that sense of “not being in control” are just some of the common concerns voiced when anyone starts to look towards embracing the cloud. A number of years ago, I would have agreed, but today the world of cloud services and technologies is significantly more mature and better understood. Cloud is now the norm and as I watch the marketplace, even the largest of the traditional players are acknowledging and attempting to address the expectations of their tech-savvy users.
When I look at the way that purposefully built cloud experiences are constructed, at its heart, the cloud itself isn’t really about shedding responsibility or saving money. It’s key value is in enabling an entirely new, interconnected, collaborative way of doing things we are used to doing every day, whether that be as individuals, businesses or even between software systems. For me, our CloudPay platform is there to do just that – “enable your business to happen in a better way.” It enables you to focus less on the intricacies of day-to-day payroll and more on doing what makes your company money. It enables us to communicate with our clients, our provider and partner networks and even ourselves, to provide the payroll service that you need. It enables our partners, no matter where in the world, to work with us in the same way, consistently, no matter how much geography divides us. It is a great keystone towards delivering a truly global payroll implementation. By choosing to leverage the cloud as a core part of the CloudPay service, we can make the process of paying people smooth, consistent and controlled.

As we drive forward with various initiatives within CloudPay that help us understand how we can deliver a better overall service, we too are thinking about the future of the CloudPay platform and how it needs to evolve to continue to underpin the solutions we offer. Being a global, multi-tenanted application gives us access to an almost limitless community of requirements, opinions and wishes for all manner of payroll processing scenarios, which all need to be carefully balanced and considered into the application’s suite of features and functions. However it also gives us a great opportunity to explore and incorporate new experiences that embrace the collective, collaborative nature of the cloud to enable an evolutionary improvement to the way that payrolls are managed, information is exchanged and individuals interact for all members of the payroll ecosystem. There are a great number of opportunities to improve and enhance the value that CloudPay can offer all of its users, whether those be employers, service providers or technology partners, by embracing the best of what the cloud has to offer. I hope, as we continue to explore and incorporate the very best ideas into our platform in the coming months and years, that you’ll be able to see and experience things that will truly make you excited about doing payroll again.