04:05 INTERVIEW
down into it and rolling my sleeves up.
I love the helping people side of my job, the finding-the-solution part and the investigation.
Often our role is applying the expertise of knowing what’s the right thing to do to get the right answer. Sometimes, however, it involves pushing back and saying “we don’t think you can actually do that.” You’ve got to know the details and be able to explain the consequences. That’s another thing I love about the consultancy side of what I do. I help clients see those things that they wouldn’t necessarily see. GPA: How has technology changed payroll operations? Lisa Orton: Technology has changed hugely and continues to change payroll. One thing that strikes me is that men go to the moon and all, and in business, we do all these amazing things with technology, but there still is no really one true, single space to process multiple country payrolls for every country! There’s not one magic platform or button that can be pressed to process all those payrolls in every country. I’ve seen lots of progress in that, and it’s improving all the time, but we’re still a long way from that holy grail piece.
normally find within a normal payroll team within an industry. So, we focus on those really specialist areas and I lead that function. I have another role helping some clients determine and assess what they really want for their payroll, and then we go out with them to solicit requests for proposals (RFPs) and help them review the potential vendors. We’re doing another exercise that involves helping a client review their entire payroll function because they have a lot of errors. So, we’re re-running that whole thing and advising them on how to correct the errors and set them up to make sure those issues don’t happen in the future. I love the helping people side of my job, the finding-the-solution part and the investigation. I’m sure in a previous life I would have been an auditor or something because I enjoy really digging
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 21
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