Published on the 23/05/2013 | Written by Newsdesk

Sydney based company Presence of IT has announced that it will be providing tools and services which will let enterprise scale SAP users move their human capital management systems onto the SuccessFactors cloud and use SuccessFactors’ Employee Central Payroll system. Smaller users with less than 500 employees which still want to move their SAP applications to the cloud could use the same process and have their systems hosted by Presence of IT.

Shane Grobler, director of business transformation and strategy for Presence of IT, said that the tools and services would also support new users looking for a cloud based payroll and workforce management system, claiming it could be up to 60 per cent cheaper than building such a system from scratch.

David Brookes, CEO of Presence of IT, said that the company’s SAP clients had been urging it to develop this capability for some time, reflecting a “structural change” underway in the HR industry which was resulting in fewer enterprises buying software to manage HR and payroll and instead seeking out cloud alternatives. 

Presence of IT, which claims a customer base of around 200 organisations including companies such as Optus, AGL and Suncorp, has been offering a cloud based payroll and HR management system using the Oracle platform for some time.

SAP bought SuccessFactors for $US3.4 billion in 2011 in order to compete with Oracle’s cloud offerings. Brookes said Presence of IT had been working on a six month proof of concept with SucessFactors and was now “at a point where we can run payroll in a virtual environment.”

He predicted that within five years, most organisations with more than 500 employees will want their payroll in the cloud.  The company will focus on supporting the needs of Australia and New Zealand clients initially, with plans to push into Asia before the end of the year.