With the digital economy pushing businesses to pivot and reimagine the way they operate, HR is under considerable pressure to support new business models and shifts in strategic direction.  Further, the workplace and the way we work is rapidly evolving, adding to the complexities and challenges HR must navigate to compete for today's top talent. As a result, organizations of all sizes are embarking on HR transformation journeys that will ‘futureproof’ their operating models, enabled by emerging digital tools and technologies.

The growing need for HR transformation has created a significant opportunity for HR service providers to deliver the innovation required to help organizations address critical challenges in human capital management today. Thus, HR service providers are investing heavily in digital capabilities that will provide the next wave of innovation and enablers to support the future workplace.

One such example is Singapore-based Excelity Global, a leading APAC-focused HR services and technology provider. While Excelity’s heritage is deeply rooted in multi-country payroll delivery for the APAC region, it has gradually built itself into a multi-process HR services and technology provider, supporting a range of HR processes including payroll, workforce administration, benefits administration, and extended talent management.

Excelity has cultivated its entire portfolio of HR solutions to be ‘digital by design', steadily investing (~20% of revenues in 2018) in bringing to market HR capabilities that can enable the digital transformation organizations are seeking and require to remain competitive. Below I highlight some of the digital solutions Excelity plans to launch in 2019.

Excelity HCM

Central to Excelity’s offering is its proprietary technology which it leverages exclusively in the delivery of its managed services. In May 2018, it expanded its technology offering by launching Excelity HCM, a cloud-based HCM platform (also available as a PaaS offering) targeted to small and middle market APAC buyers. Since launching Excelity HCM, the platform is now capable of supporting core HR, compensation, benefits, recruiting, onboarding, performance management, and learning administration, as well as integration to Excelity’s workforce management (WFM) platforms for time and attendance, leaves, and payroll.

While Excelity HCM has over 20 clients live on its HCM platform, (most with <1k employees), it is already seeing those volumes steadily increase. Its largest client user has ~5k employees operating on the platform (which it expects to scale to ~20k longer term), and it is in progress with an implementation for a large organization which will support ~12k employees once live later in 2019.

To support its steady adoption, and differentiate the solution, Excelity has enabled a rapid deployment approach, cutting deployment times down to weeks vs. months, allowing buyers to capture ROI much sooner. By leveraging its investments in RPA, Excelity can bring its HCM platform live for a client with ~20k employees in under four weeks compared to more traditional platforms and methods which can typically bring ~1k employees live in about six months.

Over the next 12 months, Excelity expects to continue expanding its HCM capability, with its roadmap focused on further enhancing its existing modules, deepening its mobile capability, embedding AI, ML, and NLP into the platform and expanding its analytic reporting capability, including a report builder tool. Additionally, it plans to launch (Q1 2019) a workflow-as-a-service option, whereby clients can configure (drag and drop) the HCM workflow rules and functionality specifically for their organizations, including access to workflow design tools and chatbot capability. 

Excelity also plans to launch an HCM marketplace offering in 2019, to provide clients with a range of add-on, connected solutions through APIs. Through its HCM marketplace, Excelity expects to enable the expansions of its service offerings through integrations with key partners and providers.

Excelity’s Digital Marketplace: PaySure & Payroll to PayOut (P2P) Platform

Building on its managed payroll and benefits service capability and offering, Excelity will launch a new digital benefits marketplace branded PaySure in Q2 2019. The PaySure offering provides clients and their employees a centralized marketplace for purchasing both insured and non-insured voluntary benefit and wellness products (including the ability to view and manage policy documents, submit and track claims, etc.). The digital marketplace provides prebuilt APIs for integration to benefit carriers and providers and can be configured for clients’ unique requirements within about two weeks.

Further, in collaboration with leading digital wallet providers across the APAC region, Excelity will also introduce a ‘digital wallet’ solution called Payroll to Payout (P2P), offering its clients and their employees alternative mobile payment capability for receiving payroll disbursements. The P2P solution leverages the combined technology of Excelity and that of its digital wallet partners to enable a seamlessly integrated UX for employees to manage their compensation and spending through the digital wallet marketplace, while providing employers with greater flexibility in supporting the growing demand for digital payment solutions.  

PaySure is currently being piloted with clients in Singapore and the Philippines, with plans to expand availability across its APAC country scope in the coming 12 to 18 months.  

Daily Pay

To round out its digital marketplace offering offering, Excelity will introduce (Q2 2019) an on-demand payroll functionality branded as Daily Pay. The Daily Pay solution, which is integrated into Excelity's payroll platform, provides clients with the ability to support and offer on-demand payroll capability. In particular, the capability aims to support the growing gig worker populations in APAC, allowing for payment requests to be submitted, processed, and paid as and when work occurs.

Outlook

With a well-established workforce management (WFM) capability which includes technology and services to support payroll, time, and benefits, coupled with the launch of an integrated HCM platform offering, Excelity is now able to provide a holistic, cloud-based HR solution to the emerging small and middle market APAC buyer. While I expect Excelity to continue to drive new business by leaning on its strength and brand awareness in the payroll space, the ability to now engage buyers with both enabling technology and services creates an attractive option for emerging APAC businesses seeking to advance their HR capability. 

Since its launch in 2018, Excelity HCM adoption has been primarily by small market buyers; however, Excelity is already seeing its client sizes gradually increase with middle market buyers.  The addition of new digital solutions like PaySure, P2P, and Daily Pay, creates further opportunity for Excelity to engage larger, more sophisticated buyers, particularly those seeking to enable more ‘future of work’ capabilities. 

Excelity remains focused on advancing its offering to deliver more digital HR solutions and capability to its clients in the coming year, with a roadmap that places heavy emphasis on maturing its HCM functionality, advancing its platform integrations, and further enhancing and supporting new digital HR offerings.