Payroll vs. Productivity: The Role

Payroll vs. Productivity: The Role of Information Technologies (IT)

Project Description

Payroll often costs companies tens of thousands of productive hours per year and tens of thousands of dollars to process, not counting the correction of errors and the more complex tasks of managing tax reporting (Tinsley, 37, 38). There are many opportunities for using IT to increase the productivity of payroll processing within organizations. The rapid growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) continues to fuel adoption of payroll processing applications in small and medium business (Roberts, 24, 25). The question fo whether using SaaS-based payroll applications to increase the productivity of small and medium businesses has yet to be empirically validated or refuted however. That is the focus on this proposed research. Small and medium company business owners, their financial experts including the Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and accounting managers all are concentrating on how to get more work done at less cost, and are interesting in SaaS as a means to gain access to accounting applications via the Internet (Roberts, 24, 25). The CFOs are the audience or sampling frame of the research effort, specifically those in small and medium businesses with sales less than $25M per year. SaaS has evolved from being tested on pilot programs to being used in mainstream accounting, finance, sales and service functions and has emerged as the fastest growing platform for IT services globally (Kugel, 45, 46).

Outline of Proposed Paper

The following is the outline of the proposed paper:

I. Executive Summary

II. Accounting Processes and Automation: Gaining Productivity From IT

III. Software-as-a-Service in Accounting: Current Best Practices

IV. Research Methodology

V. Analysis of Results

VI. Conclusion and Recommendation's

VII. Appendices and References

Literature Sources

The following are the literature and secondary research sources that will be used for completing this analysis. ABI Inform, Data Monitor, EBSCO Host, Hoover's, Lexus/Nexus and IBIS Research are the secondary sources of data, which will be used for this analysis. Additionally, research from Forrester Group, Gartner Group, International Data Corporation and Ovum Research (UK) will be used for completing the analysis as well.

Scope and Methodology