Real-time wage calculation service from scratch

Barona Logistiikka
Barona

It was a pleasure to see how well the software consultants worked together with our payroll experts and managed grasp the sometimes byzantine rules and regulations of the Finnish collective agreements and employment legislation. The new Virtuaalitulkki-system has over the months revealed itself to be a real business asset that is enabling us to not only do payroll more efficiently but develop new business.

Joonas Lyytinen, Business Development Director at Barona Logistiikka Oy

Our in-house solution

In order to ease the wage calculation burden at the end of the month, we developed a near real-time wage calculation service from scratch - because none of the available product options could meet the needs of the organization.

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Virtuaalitulkki1

The bright idea

Typically, wages are calculated at the end of a wage period, resulting in a peak in payroll work and delays in forecasting. What if wages were calculated in volume in near real-time?

The Virtuaalitulkki project took a leap forward by moving to a model of near real-time calculation. As a result, costs can be tracked as they accumulate and potential errors are addressed as they occur, improving financial planning and the quality and speed of payroll services. What previously took days now takes hours.

Solving the problem at hand with an in-house solution now means the back office systems are no longer the bottleneck of developing the business. Instead, they are the key drivers.

The inevitable challenge

Developing a system for calculating wages in near real-time can seem intimidating - the rules for calculating wages can be complex and employees expect to receive their wages correctly and on time.

From day one, the core Virtuaalitulkki team included payroll experts to ensure full domain knowledge. Together with the development team, an ever-growing suite of automated wage calculation tests were created to ensure that every single change is thoroughly tested and validated using the language of payroll.

Barona virtuaalitulkki
Barona4

So how did it go?

Like most projects, once the actual implementation started, Virtuaalitulkki needed to adapt to changes in the business ecosystem and emergent needs. By including business expertise and decision-making in the core team, the project could quickly re-focus and stay strongly aligned with the business goals.

In the end, the original target of developing an in-house solution for real-time wage calculations was met. Additionally, the development model of Virtuaalitulkki has enabled continuously developing Virtuaalitulkki to meet new types of wages and business requirements beyond the original need. On a strategic level, the Virtuaalitulkki model of near real-time transparency has proved itself as an alternative to more traditional approaches in fields beyond payroll.

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