Ep. 54: Efrain Rivera - How Have Tech Trends Affected Accounting Services and HR?

Contact Efrain Rivera:


https://www.paychex.com/newsroom/executive-bios/efrain-rivera

https://www.linkedin.com/in/efrain-rivera-75b4b15/




FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Mitch: (00:00)


Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host Mitch Roshong and I
will be bringing you episode 54 of IMA's podcast. Today's expert
guests is CFO and treasurer of Paychex. Efrain Rivera. He joined
my cohost, Adam to explain how technology trends have impacted
paychecks and the services they provide for their clients. He
also talks about how clients expectations of their services have
changed. Listen and now to hear how this executive of a highly
reputable outsourcing firm has realized the changes in our
accounting and finance world. 


 


Adam: (00:35)


So Paychex is a provider of human resource, payroll and benefits
outsourcing services. And so with the broad scope of traditional
services, how have technology trends impacted the job you and
your team are required to do? 


 


Efrain: (00:54)


Yeah, I think it's impacted it in two ways. So the first is with
respect to the platform itself that we use to deliver those
services. And then I think the second which we'll talk about is
the way those services are actually delivered. So first, let me
talk about, the technology of the platform itself. I'd say
starting about nine, 10 years ago, you saw an evolution of
service providers, moving to the cloud, on platforms that were
multitenant and SAS, meaning, you moved away from on premise
software, we moved into the cloud and your systems were available
to all of the participants, in that were using the product all at
once. And you had to have a robust system that was capable of
addressing the needs of all of those, those clients. What that
meant was, you needed to be able to deliver updates to that
platform seamlessly across all of your client base and you needed
to do that in real times. So, your systems had to become more,
high availability and, they, they needed to, participate or be
available for frequent updating instead of an update that
occurred maybe once or twice a year or three times a year. If you
were doing it more frequently, you now have the evolution of
systems which frequently were updated on weekly and monthly bases
based on, the needs of both users. And requirements of the
system. When you put that all together, it put a lot more demand,
on the technology. and it fundamentally impacted the way, the
technology was delivered and now what was a trend 10 years ago
has become the dominant way in which technology is delivered,
particularly in the human capital management space, which is what
we talk about when we talk about HR, payroll and benefits. So
it's changed very dramatically over that period of time and
impacted the way that we do our job and the way that we make
investments to sustain that platform. That's the first part of
the, equation. The second part is more recent and that's how the
services that, technology enabled service providers deliver have
changed and those services have changed because what used to be
primarily a service provider function has now shifted to become a
mix of both technology and service provider. What I mean by that
is this many things that in the past, could only have been done
directly with a phone contact or chat contact with a service
provider, an actual service provider can now be done through
technology itself. So, for example, the use of technologies such
as intelligent chat bots, artificial intelligence, robotic
process automation, all of these things have revolutionized the
way service is delivered. So while we used to think about this
clear divide between technology and service delivery, those lines
became blurred. And what used to be a service is now increasingly
delivered through technology. In our case, we have, intelligent
chatbots that, that can answer many, many questions that clients,
pose. And our systems are becoming more and more intelligent so
that when we see that a customer is lingering in one part of the,
application, chat, a chat window will pop up, giving them some
indication around what to do next. So systems are becoming more
intelligent, service is becoming more blurred with technology,
and all of that puts a premium on making the right kinds of
investments in technology. So that, the customer can get the
service that, that they want and deserve. 


 


Adam: (05:54)


So you just mentioned a lot of different software applications,
the, the evolution of all those and there's also the evolution of
cloud accounting technology, which all those things have to talk
together. Do you, what found, what challenges do you face in
providing those services? 


 


Efrain: (06:11)


So I would say with respect to the evolution of cloud accounting
services, um, that's not an area that, that we provide, but a
cloud accounting services interface with the technology that we
do provide. And so for us, the biggest challenge there is, or one
of the bigger challenges is to ensure that our systems and our
software, particularly our, our software interface seamlessly
with the kinds of accounting software that major providers,
delivered, to customers. So there's a number of packages that,
that are prevalent in the marketplace. There's one dominant
package. And, for us as we design our systems, particularly on
the payroll side, but in other areas too, on, on, human resources
administration and also in our time and attendance systems, our
time tracking systems, they need to seamlessly integrate with
those, accounting packages so that the information that's being,
captured in the system is transmitted, into the accounting
systems and the correct information flows both ways and
increasingly if not just good enough to do it, on some sort of
file transfer basis. Increasingly what's going on is that that
information is exchanged real time or, or we're being asked to
exchange that information real time, with third party vendors.
And so configuring our systems to be able to do that becomes an
important challenge. and, one of the, one of the things that,
that our it group, works on. 


 


Adam: (08:02)


How have you handled a security, with those systems talking
together in real time now? 


 


Efrain: (08:08)


Yeah, security, I would say in the last decade, the amount of,
the amount of investment that we have made in security has
increased significantly. There's a couple of reasons for that.
One is because we transmit so much, money, we have to ensure that
the perimeter of our, our systems is hardened, to prevent
intrusion. So we're constantly on the lookout for that. But the
second point, which you just mentioned is we also need to be, um,
we also need to look at how our systems interface with other,
other providers to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities when
information is exchanged. And so we have made a lot of
investments and things like encryption of information ensuring
that, when there are handoffs, in information, there's no,
there's no security issues around that. And also, um, we have
made significant investments in monitoring activity in and out of
our systems to ensure that, data is protected and there
intrusions are not minimized, but basically prevented. so we, we
spent a lot of time, thinking about that and working on that and
investing to make sure that those issues will not occur. 


 


Adam: (09:44)


Now, I'm sure your clien...