There are 3 core reasons why moving from PICOF to PECI is more than a name change
As any Workday user with a global workforce knows the HCM comes with “marriage” to Payroll Integration Common Output File (PICOF), Workday’s certified cloud connector for third-party payroll vendors – until now!
This year, Workday has introduced a new format – Payroll Effective Change Interface (PECI), and this new technology has brought with it far more than a name change.
What’s new in the marriage of HCM and payroll?
This new integration allows you to extract the full stack of transactions in a pay period rather than just those that are top-of-stack. Instead of only seeing the latest changes, you now see the full visibility of all changes made in any given pay period, sorted and grouped chronologically.
What does that mean in the real world of payroll?
If, for example, you have an employee who went on leave and returned from leave in a single pay period, or worst nightmare scenario, you forgot to input them as “on leave” in the system and now they are back from leave already.
Since PICOF only sent the last transaction, or “top of stack”, in each batch you wouldn’t know that they went on leave, only that they returned. Now that you can see ALL the transactions, you don’t have to worry about “cheating the system” by entering staffing events over different days and you can add that leave and the return in one fell swoop.
PECI also captures those indirect data changes that, in the past, were overlooked in PICOF.
Remember that time when you updated the benefits plan with a new rate and it was not reflected in the integration at the employee deduction level? Or when you changed the FTE % against the position but the integration didn’t reflect this in the Compensation section? These are things of the past with PECI.
Some mistakes made in PICOF can't be put right
As you know, there are a lot of details surrounding payroll with employee data management and payroll data, so there is bound to be a correction needed from time to time.
With PECI, these corrections are labeled as rescind(R) or correction(C) in the data file passed to the payroll processor. That means an automated correction process, a process that no longer requires you to open a ticket to update payroll.
Imagine a world with less tickets! Less opening, less tracking, less answering, and by all means, less reporting on those silly little things which are so simple to just “undo” in Workday.
Ride into the sunset with PECI and together to make innovation happen
So far, you might be thinking that you don’t need to change to PECI because you aren’t really affected by the top two features.
It’s true that the impact will vary and it’s possible that your stellar payroll team doesn’t make multiple transactions in a pay period and they never make mistakes. But now, you may want to think about building your payroll with the future in mind.
As a Workday user, you know that they are always working hard to look at new innovations in the HCM world, including payroll. In fact, their theme this year for Workday Rising is “Go Further Together” so why not incorporate the latest and greatest technology they have to offer?
For example, have you heard of Visual Presentation Services (VPS)? It utilizes the Workday look and feel while leveraging the content of the underlying Payroll Service(s) to capture local data directly in Workday and provides a seamless and transparent experience with all data capture in one place.
At NGA HR, our Payroll Exchange tool (PEX) allows you to connect Workday to payroll capabilities in 188 countries and currently collects local data entry through the use of PEX forms.
With Workday VPS, you can visualize those same PEX forms in the Workday user interface, allowing the HR Professional to enter local payroll data directly in Workday. Also, it has a real time validation with the underlying payroll service, highlighting errors at the point of data entry. No need to log into a separate system!
What about Event Driven Integration (EDI)?
This will complement VPS (starting with WD30) and provide real time integration to the payroll service for key staffing events. This will allow VPS to be embedded as part of the New Hire business process, capturing the employee and payroll data in the same process.
But alas, this VPS and EDI capability is only available when PECI is the integration technology, not PICOF.
NGA HR is one of few vendors who support both PICOF and PECI and our collaborative goal with Workday is for you to gain complete, global visibility and maintenance of your workforce within Workday HCM. We have committed our resources to ensuring that our Payroll Exchange is certified in PICOF and PECI interfaces.
Currently, we have 37 certified countries on PECI and this number is expected to rise to 60 before the end of the year. Our first VPS countries will be announced soon and EDI developments are aligned with the forthcoming WD30 release.
In short, upgrading to PECI now will provide a stable foundation for these innovative features that will streamline your global payroll experience in Workday.
I hope this helps you understand a little more about PICOF v PECI. There’s the old adage, “why fix it if it’s not broken?” and that certainly applies to anytime payroll is involved. But we encourage you to take a closer look at PECI and see if this new relationship could be the perfect fit for your organization.
