Key Findings & Highlights:

Excelity Global (Excelity), headquartered in Singapore, is a provider of HR services and technology in the APAC region, formed in 2015 following Everstone Capital’s acquisition of Aon Hewitt ’s payroll business for $60m.

Below is a brief timeline of Excelity's growth:

• (1997) Hewitt Associates launched a payroll operation in India
• (2003) Hewitt established a joint venture with India Life to focus on human capital 
• (2004) India Life was acquired by Hewitt and payroll services were expanded to China, and shortly thereafter services were launched in Singapore
• Until 2010, the business was exclusively focused on payroll, but subsequently expanded its offering to include workforce administration
• (2011) Aon Hewitt signed its first workforce administration client
• (2012) Aon Hewitt incorporated regional payroll (equivalent to multi-country payroll outsourcing) as an offering
• (2013-2014) Launch of the myPay app for accessing payroll on mobile, and was certified as a Workday Global Payroll Cloud Partner 
• (2016) Launched India Cloud Services
• (2017) Excelity launched ezpayroll, a proprietary cloud-based payroll platform
• (2018) Excelity launched an integrated cloud-based HCM platform: Excelity HCM

Today, Excelity is one of the leading payroll service providers in Asia Pacific, in terms of payroll revenues and offers one of the most extensive geographic coverages in the region through its proprietary platform. With ~650 clients, Excelity now services ~1.2m employees across 20 countries.

Excelity’s HR service offerings include:

• Payroll administration
• Tax processing
• Benefits administration: including mandatory and supplemental flexible benefits
• Regional payroll
• Core HR (Employee Data Management)
• Workforce administration: full employee lifecycle administration including employee data management, learning and performance management, and recruitment.

Excelity offers single-country and multi-country payroll services specifically for the countries in the APAC region. In India, it also provides all tax details/tax processing for employees.

Excelity offers both partial (SaaS/PaaS) and fully managed payroll solutions, its client adoption is as follows:

• Fully managed payroll services: 95%
• Partial payroll services: 5%
  • Generally software only, either Epay (PaaS) or ezpayroll (SaaS)

Excelity's managed payroll solution is inclusive of the following scope:

• Gross to net calculation/management
• Time and attendance
• Leave administration
• Calculations and reporting
• Statutory compliance
• Year-end activities
• Reimbursements
• Employee and manager self-service
• Salary disbursement
• Compliance support
• Tax processing
• Legislation monitoring
• Employee data management (EDM)
• Mobility

The majority of its current payroll contracts include both payroll services and time and attendance modules. ~44% of clients have adopted payroll services, time and attendance, plus at least one other multi-process HR services offering, with the remaining ~56% adopting payroll only services.

Excelity's payroll services are priced on a per employee per month (PEPM) basis with implementation priced as a flat, onetime fee, with contract lengths ranging from three to five years. Single country implementations take, on average, ~1 week for SaaS only, ~90 days for managed services. Where Excelity provides multi-country payroll and multi-process HR services, implementation tends to be phased, and rollout can take between six and eight months, with a staggered implementation for each of the different modules.  The average payroll deal for Excelity includes six countries in scope. 

Excelity leverages its proprietary platforms in the delivery of its HR services, and each can be leveraged as a standalone SaaS or PaaS offering including:

• Excelity HCM: integrated cloud-based HCM platform
• EPay (PaaS): payroll platform, configured for gross to net calculation in 13 countries, including:
  • Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Philippines, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan
  •  to clients with over 500 employees
• Offered as on-premise or cloud
• Ezpayroll (SaaS): cloud-based payroll platform, configured for gross to net calculation in 11 APAC countries, including:
  • Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, and Taiwan, with plans to add Vietnam in (~Q3 2019)
  • Targeted to clients with under 500 employees
• Wi-Fi TimeSheets:
  • Wi-Fi TimeSheets (launched in 2017) is a SaaS-based, automated time and attendance tracking and compliance systems, that offers comprehensive reporting and analytic capability to identify hidden cost and track project performance through its forecasting and benchmarking capabilities.

Excelity is a certified Workday partner, and therefore offers certified integration from its systems to the Workday platform.  It also maintains prebuilt integrations to leading platforms such as SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle, etc. although these are not currently certified partnerships.

Across all of its cloud platforms, Excelity maintains a mobile-first development strategy, striving to extend the platform's full capability to support mobile self-service functionality. 

NelsonHall estimates that ~55% of Excelity’s payroll services clients are using a cloud-based HR system.

In 2017, Excelity launched ezpayroll, a cloud-based payroll platform targeted for small market clients seeking next generation payroll technology. Although primarily suited for payroll technology-only clients seeking to process in-house, payroll BPS services can also be included as needed. 

In May 2018, it launched the core HR module for Excelity HCM, a single, cloud-based, end-to-end platform for human capital management. The core HR module is integrated with all of Excelity’s existing solutions including leave, time and attendance, payroll, etc. Like all of its solutions, Excelity HCM follows a mobile-first development strategy.

Excelity remains focused on delivering technology-enabled managed services and will continue investing in capabilities that drive efficiency through the use of automation and artificial intelligence.

Excelity launched its automation program, "Excelity 2.0" in 2017 which aims to leverage RPA and AI technology to achieve "fully automated" processes across its range of HR services offerings. Because Excelity process payroll leveraging proprietary technology it purposes builds and supports its automation capability within the payroll platform. Therefore, its current capability centers on automating payroll specific, manually intensive tasks, and will expand this through its roadmap in the coming 18-24 months.

Excelity has ~785 employees across its delivery centers, distributed approximately as follows:

• HR BPaaS: 67%
• Implementation services: 5%
• AMS support: 18%
• Other 10%.

Excelity leverages an onshore/nearshore mix in the delivery of its HR and payroll services and therefore has multiple delivery centers throughout the APAC region.

Excelity offers its payroll services and solutions in over 20 countries and leverages a select set of partners to support coverage in APAC countries where its platforms are not currently configured. Excelity currently processes ~97% of its pay slips internally, with the remaining 3% processed by partners.

Excelity primarily targets small and mid-sized, multinational organizations based in the APAC region of countries. However, its HR services and technology are scalable by designed to support clients in the large enterprise segment as well; its largest payroll client is over 125k employees.

Excelity has ~650 payroll clients all of which are based in the APAC region and supports ~1.5m employees.  Excelity’s client base primarily consists of small to mid-size businesses, the vast majority of which are based in India.