Computerworld

Microsoft partnership pays off for PayGlobal

'Intense' interest at gathering of Microsoft partners

PayGlobal of Christchurch has seen the potential of partnership with Microsoft with intense interest being shown in its GlobalPay product at a gathering of Microsoft partners in Toronto earlier this month.

And a significant “European opportunity” with a company of 250,000 employees has emerged, says PayGlobal chief Donald Hastie.

When he spoke with Computerworld last week he was readying a webcast demonstration for the prospect assisted by the company’s representative in the Netherlands, who fronted the demonstration locally.

GlobalPay, the company’s pure payroll product (the PayGlobal product itself incorporates human resources) will be offered as the standard payroll module in Microsoft’s Axapta ERP suite. GlobalPay has aspirations to enter a full OEM agreement with Microsoft which will see the payroll application branded with the Microsoft name.

"At that point, all our sales will be controlled by Microsoft,” Hastie acknowledges with some regret. But he is confident of the continuous improvement in Microsoft’s venture into the enterprise business market and thinks the collaboration comes at the right time. “We’re going to be around when they [Microsoft] finally get it right," he says.

In the earlier stages of the partnership Hastie says his company is happier operating with some degree of independence. “We’d like to have more influence at the beginning because we’re the ones who understand what’s special about the product and we want to be able to communicate that to the [channel] partners.”

Following the work with Axapta, PayGlobal is writing a version of GlobalPay to work with the Great Plains suite, now a Microsoft-owned product, and with Sharepoint, Navision and Solomon.

A version to slot into Peoplesoft is also on the way and there is large Australian-based prospective client in the offing with offices all over the Asia-Pacific region. "They will be using Peoplesoft for human resources, but don’t think the payroll meets their needs," says Hastie.

The Toronto presentations were followed by three days on a stand at a Microsoft expo where four or five other strong prospects emerged.

PayGlobal is now starting work on establishing offices on the east and west coasts of the US to complement their presence in Australia and Hong Kong. “That’s not as daunting as you might think, because it all operates through channels,” he says.

Experience of the .Net environment has “turned me into an evangelist for it”, says Hastie. “The way you can separate and combine components gives you almost the power of bespoke development,” with the additional security of well-tested components.