Case study

High growth firm outsources payroll function to free up resources

DesignerSofas4U was established as an online furniture retailer in 2007. Following an unprecedented response to the service they offer, they have built an excellent reputation as a quality retailer that’s projected to become one of the UK’s leading online furniture stores. This is because they treat every customer as though they’re family; their particular brand of personal customer service teamed with the high standards of handmade furniture and value for money they offer guarantees a service like no other.

Executive Summary

As a fast-growing company, Designer Sofas for You were overwhelmed when it came to processing the payroll for their staff at the end of each month. It didn’t help when new auto-enrolment legislation came into force in 2008. They knew it was time to bring someone in who could help. Intelligent Payroll stepped in and within the first three months, the benefits to using Intelligent Payroll were clear:

Management time spent on payroll reduced by over 90%
Monthly cost savings of 80%
Peace of mind for the business owners

Challenges

Sajid Bohra, Senior Manager at Designer Sofas for You was frustrated by the limitations of their in-house software, this impeded their ability to complete the payroll task quickly and accurately. The software they used to carry out the payroll task was a familiar brand that they found to be inflexible, slow, and not user friendly. “The software package was very basic with little or no support especially if we had a question…it became something I dreaded logging into come payroll time,” says Bohra. The whole management team believed that the payroll task was taking too much time away from day to day running of the business so when the opportunity came up to outsource to Intelligent Payroll, Bohra jumped on it.

How Intelligent Payroll Helped

He required a provider that would grow with the business; this eliminated many vendors. His decision came down to Intelligent Payroll and a well-known accountancy firm. “We felt that Intelligent Payroll was the most complete payroll solution available in the market, much more competitively priced and more importantly, would continue to disrupt the payroll market.

Outsourcing the payroll has allowed us to focus on growing our business and not worry about keeping up to date with new legislation as we know it will be taken care of by Intelligent Payroll”.

Results, Return on Investment and Future Plans

More time for management to focus on growing the business.
Massive cost savings
Guaranteed peace of mind

Designer Sofas for You now use an online portal that includes an employer dashboard that enables management to access all of their data, print reports, and make changes remotely. It also reduces paper wastage as there is no need to print any payslips or reports. The data is held securely in the cloud in the Microsoft Azure with end to end enterprise-grade encryption. It also includes an employee self-service option; feedback from employees has been great, especially on how easy it is to use and the ability to access the service on any internet-connected device.

With their auto-enrolment staging date coming up, Designer Sofas for you are well prepared. Intelligent Payroll has provided a full cost analysis of how automatic enrolment will affect the company. The pension provider has been chosen and the payroll software has been fully integrated, they are well on their way to complying with the newest payroll legislation.

Cost of Payroll

This graph shows the difference in cost, considering cost of software and the labour hours it takes to keep up with new legislation, training costs, correcting errors and calls to HMRC. The benefits are not just the positive cost difference but also the wealth of experience and knowledge that comes from outsourcing the payroll.