Vendor Analysis
published on Jan 14, 2019
Report Overview:
This NelsonHall vendor assessment analyzes Safeguard Global's offerings and capabilities in Next Generation Payroll Services
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall’s Payroll Services Vendor Assessment for Safeguard Global is a comprehensive assessment of Safeguard Global payroll services offerings and capabilities designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of payroll outsourcing and identifying vendor suitability for payroll services RFPs
- Vendor marketing, sales, and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the support services sector
- HR and payroll decision makers.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Safeguard Global’s Next Generation Payroll services offering, capabilities, and market and financial strength, including:
- Identification of the company’s strategy, emphasis, and new developments
- Analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, and outlook
- Revenue estimates
- Analysis of the profile of the company’s customer base including the company’s targeting strategy and examples of current contracts
- Analysis of the company’s offerings and key service components
- Analysis of the company’s delivery organization including the location of delivery locations.
Key Findings & Highlights:
Safeguard Global (Safeguard), is a global managed payroll services, employment outsourcing, and HR services provider, and headquartered in Austin, TX.
Originally formed as part of a U.K. domestic payroll provider, by 2006 it had begun to focus on international payrolls using an aggregator model, supporting multi-country payrolls through a partnership network of local providers.
In 2008, Safeguard World International (SGWI) became independent of the U.K. business following a management buy-out; its first payroll clients included companies such as FedEx and Skype. In 2010 it became a Workday partner and began offering certified integrations to the cloud HCM platform.
In 2018, Safeguard World International rebranded to Safeguard Global and today offers the following payroll and HR services, including:
- Global managed payroll (GMP) services
- Global employment outsourcing (GEO)
- Global HR outsourcing (gHRO)
Today, Safeguard Global supports fully managed payroll services for ~121 clients in 135 countries, producing ~1.4m pay-slips annually. Safeguard Global's goal is to provide innovative solutions to support companies at every stage of the growth curve by being their "Human Capital Growth Engine".
Safeguard Global offers a fully managed payroll services offering, including the following:
- Global managed payroll (GMP) services (121 clients)
- Global employment outsourcing (GEO) (250 clients)
- Global HR outsourcing (gHRO)
- Global professional services (GPS)
Additionally, Safeguard maintains partner banking arrangements in ~70 countries and can provide cross-border payment facilities via its preferred partner. It can also provide clients with system generated bank files to their treasury departments, from the Unity system. 100% of employees are paid through direct deposit.
Safeguard leverages a mix of its proprietary payroll technology (Unity), and in-country providers to deliver and manage its payroll services globally. Safeguard leverages Unity as a Data Management and aggregation platform to manage the countries in scope, with gross to net calculation provided by partner platforms in country. In countries where Safeguard has physical presence it performs gross to net calculations itself using commercially available payroll software, rather than partners.
Safeguard's proprietary cloud payroll technology, Unity, is positioned as a "digital hub for global payroll", providing clients with a central cloud platform for comprehensive payroll delivery and management, including: analytic reporting and dashboards, integration with key platforms, mobile access, and integrated digital enablers, e.g. RPA, AI, chatbots, etc.
Safeguard has been a Workday certified payroll integration partner since 2010 and maintains a comprehensive set of payroll integrations with the cloud ERP platform, to accommodate over 120 countries. Currently, ~53 countries are enabled with the latest PECI Workday integration (117 offered on PICOF) and Safeguard continues to add to this as its client requirements dictate. Safeguard also has certified accounting journal integration with Workday Financials which it helped develop jointly with Workday. Safeguard currently services ~55 clients of the Workday platform paying ~60k employees monthly.
Safeguard also offers integrations to other leading finance, HR, and time and attendance platforms, including SAP/SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft, Kronos, etc. Additionally, custom integrations based on each client’s needs that then leverage Safeguard's proprietary integration system to simplify the build and testing effort for the client, are also available.
Safeguard targets mid to large market, multinational corporations (generally headquartered in U.K. and U.S.) for its Global Managed Payroll (GMP) services and Global Employment Outsourcing (GEO) services. Typical client sizes range from 500-20k+ employees across both offerings, with Safeguard's solution able to scale up and down market to support a range of client sizes with global payroll services.