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As payroll becomes a strategic priority for CHROs in APAC, here is how leaders can leverage a payroll strategy that is insight-led, compliance-ready, and employee-centric.
This article is brought to you by BIPO.
Amidst a tumultuous global business environment, there is one segment that continues to grow robustly – the payroll management software market. With over 78% of large enterprises and 64% of mid-sized businesses indicating a preference to implement digital payroll solutions, per November 2025 data, there has been a clear shift towards digital efficiency and a streamlined employee experience.
The payroll function has undergone a makeover, as CHROs across APAC are now viewing it beyond an administrative responsibility, and more as a strategic lever for workforce planning, compliance, and business growth, thanks to its role in expanding cross-border operations. Yet many organisations remain stuck in outdated, fragmented systems, which makes it difficult for HR teams to truly have visibility into workforce data that they need for a seamless process.
As 2026 workforce planning begins, payroll continues to be a major pressure point for HR, with recurring challenges coming back into focus. Here’s what leaders should watch – and how to stay ahead.
Payroll pain points to tackle on priority
1. Compliance and governance across jurisdictions
With different labour laws, tax regimes, social security requirements, and payroll regulations across APAC markets, compliance remains the #1 concern – in fact, a global payroll survey earlier this year showed that 57% of organisations ranked “ensuring local compliance” as their biggest challenge.
This risk is amplified by fragmented payroll setups that tend to misclassify employees, hand out non-standardised contracts, or operate on inconsistent pay policies.
2. Fragmented data limiting strategic workforce insight
Despite the growing importance of payroll data, many organisations continue to rely on Excel spreadsheets for manual reporting. This was cited in a 2025 payroll outlook report where just one in four (25%) of organisations had reached a ‘Strategic’ or ‘Optimised’ level of payroll maturity; the majority remained in ‘Managed’, ‘Reactive’, or even ‘Ad-hoc’ mode.
Fragmented payroll data significantly limits the visibility of people leaders into workforce cost drivers and future liabilities. Ideally, CHROs need a single source of truth to make informed decisions.
3. Payroll experience impacts employee trust
Payroll errors, delays or lack of transparency don’t just cause administrative headaches – they impact employee trust, retention, and erode the employer brand. As timely and correct pay is a pillar of the broader employee experience, CHROs must ensure payroll processes reinforce, rather than undermine, the organisation’s people strategy.
4. Limited scalability and flexibility
As organisations expand across borders or evolve operating models (that blend FWAs, part-time roles, and contingent talent), existing payroll setups often buckle under the complications. Payroll systems struggle to scale, leading to increased risk of errors, compliance gaps, and inefficiency. To make matters more challenging, HR leaders are struggling to find the right balance between equitable and transparent pay strategies, that align with broader talent strategies.
5. Staff and skills shortages in payroll operations
Many APAC firms struggle to find payroll-specialist talent, especially in a climate of business restructuring, where firms are being tasked to do more with less. Increasingly, HR teams look towards automation and AI to ease reliance on manual payroll work, and support with the headcount pressures.
From compliance to strategy using HRMS
BIPO’s unified HRMS platform and payroll outsourcing service are designed to remove the complexity of multi-country payroll and HR operations, transforming these common pain points into strategic gains. Here are some of the features that enable this:
- Built-in compliance, by country: BIPO HRMS automatically embeds local payroll rules, statutory deductions, tax codes, and compliance logic for each jurisdiction, reducing legal risk and avoiding manual reconciliation.
- Unified analytics for better workforce insights: Integrated analytics via Athena BI offers CHROs real-time visibility into headcount, compensation cost, overtime, resource utilisation, and workforce distribution. Clean, consolidated data lays the foundation for predictive workforce planning, scenario modelling, and AI-readiness across APAC markets.
- Enhanced employee experience: Employees can access payslips, track expense claim payments, and view real-time updates via self-service portals and on their mobile devices, boosting their confidence and reinforcing pay reliability as part of the employer brand.
- Scalability and flexibility for growth: From SMEs expanding regionally to large enterprises managing multi-country operations, or diverse workforce segments (full-time, part-time, contractors, and contingent workers), BIPO HRMS provides consistent payroll workflows, audit trails, and dashboards that scale with organisational complexity.
- Automation and AI-driven operations: BIPO’s platform applies automation and AI to eliminate manual payroll tasks, enhance accuracy, and strengthen compliance across markets. This commitment to innovation and operational excellence earned BIPO the Gold Award for 'Best HR Automation Solution' at the HR Vendors of the Year 2025 (Malaysia).
Looking forward to 2026
Albert Liew, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, BIPO, emphasises that payroll is a core driver of business performance - it must deliver accuracy, build employee trust, and safeguard compliance.
He adds:
“Payroll data provides a strategic lens into workforce performance, costs, and risks – empowering CHROs to make informed, evidence-based decisions across multi-country operations.”
As organisations define their plans for the year ahead, integrating payroll, HR, time-attendance, and finance systems into a single platform has become critical. A unified system creates a “single source of truth” for workforce data and frees payroll teams from administrative tasks. It also delivers insights that help forecast labour costs, model workforce scenarios, and align workforce structures with business objectives.
With this shift, payroll can move beyond a back-office process and become a strategic advantage.
Contact BIPO for your HR solutions needs
BIPO is a leading global HR and payroll provider, offering HRMS, global payroll outsourcing, and EOR services across 170+ countries – ensuring compliance, efficiency, and actionable workforce insights. To find out more about BIPO’s award-winning suite of HR and payroll solutions, visit: http://www.biposervice.com.
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