Well 2020 was quite a year! I was fortunate to maintain good health, stay busy with good work and travel about 10% of normal. My family stayed healthy and had more triumphs than challenges. But what a crazy year it was; I’m glad to leave it behind. So then what about 2021?
For the world of payroll I’m expecting more changes and challenges. We will see more economic recovery programs that impact payroll practices, compliance and reporting. It will be more of what we saw last year. Reacting to them and implementing the changes will be difficult for some more than others. Depending on the change, it can be tough for SAP to offer standard solutions for these changes, so be prepared to craft your own.
Most payroll departments have acclimated to more remote work now, and I think we will continue to see more changes on that front. More people will return to offices to work, and I think we will also see payroll departments continue efforts to automate processes and eliminate paper. The benefits are obvious, regardless of whether or not payroll people are working from home.
Payroll departments will stay busy as companies return people to work, lay them back off, offer early retirement or separation packages and so on. Workforce churn means more payroll transactions. Process automation and paper elimination will help mitigate the impact of all that. Think about how you handled those events in 2020 and how you can improve on that for 2021 – because we will see more of them.
For the SAP/EC Payroll consulting world I hope customers and consultancies alike have learned we can be productive and successfully implement projects without constant travel. We proved we could do it in 2020, delivering large and small projects all year long. Let’s keep doing it.
As for consulting demand, I have no idea. I’m focusing on taking care of customers and that usually generates enough demand on its own. But I expect we will see an increase in the pace of new projects, large and small, as companies become more confidant in their economic future.
For my own consulting practice – more automation, more sharing of knowledge and perspectives via blogs, podcasts, conferences and social media, more collaboration and more learning. Always more learning.