Datacom’s operations began in 1965 as Computer Bureau Ltd (CBL) by two Christchurch accountants, offering a shared outsourced computer service for Canterbury regional clients. In 1967 CBL established a bureau based payroll service. Due to a high level of success within the shared outsourced computer service in the Christchurch region, CBL (and its associated payroll divisions) shifted northwared to Wellington in 1968, Hamilton in 1969, and Auckland in 1970. In 1971 CBL integrated nationally in the Datacom group that exists today.
Datacom’s solution has developed considerably since the first manually calculated pay packets, typed reports, and cash payments. Datacom has leveraged considerable value from our internal development networks to provide highly automated and consistent payroll applications.
In 2000 Datacom became the first provider in New Zealand to offer a web based payroll solution. NetPay was developed out of a need for a simple, inexpensive, and reliable web based payroll application for small to medium businesses (1-30 employees). NetPay was an early success and provided a valuable learning experience with how payroll and employee information can be solely managed in an online environment.
After a legislative change prompted by IRD, in 1999 Datacom offered the IRD e-Filing and PAYE intermediary services, an extension of our core service to manage the IRD reporting and payment process on behalf of our clients. This reduced the hassle and time associated with managing this process internally. Subsequently this service also reduces the liability associated with a late and incorrect filing.
In 2003 Datacom made a conscious decision to develop a new payroll application for use within our external clients and our bureau based pay clerks. A significant capital expenditure of approximately 3 million dollars was allocated to the project. Datacom aimed to provide a solution that offered a significant number of efficiency gains, completely cloud based, was date driven, and could be easily customized with in product configuration to meet the various requirements that come with Datacom’s large client base. Datacom’s benchmark for a successful product was to increase the processing capacity of our bureau service to 1000 employees per 1 FTE (37.5 hours a week). Datacom’s intention was to build a centralized database from which a payroll, self-service, and HR information system could access and utilize information from.
In 2006, Datacom completed the first live pay run with this new payroll application, the first clients selected were from within our bureau based payroll service. Clients noticed no negative effects and commented about an increase in the quality and quantity of our reporting information. Datacom noticed a marked increase in productivity of our bureau based pay clerks, with the processing target of 1000 employees smashed with an average processing capacity of 1300 employees.
April 2009 marked the first external client to use our solution with a non Datacom pay clerk. This 1000 employee company was also the first to utilize our web based self-service application, a tool designed to empower employees and their managers with the ability to access and control information relevant to their payroll and HR processes.
Since 2009 Datacom has worked through a process of migrating the remainder of our clients from an existing legacy system onto our new and improved platform at no cost to our client base.
2011 saw the public release of our final component of our solution, a web based Human Resource Information System (HRIS). Our HRIS platform acts as an extension of the core self-service application and follows the same design principles and user interface that exist across the rest of our solution. This significantly improves the user experience and increases the rate of utilization by often change adverse employees.
The HRIS is based on a forms builder, allowing for Datacom to configure a module to meet your exact HR requirements. There is the ability to define what information is captured, how it is accessed, what work flows are applied, what documents are attached to it, and how this information is reported upon.
Today Datacom is New Zealand’s largest cloud based payroll provider, over 15,000 New Zealand and Australian organisations ranging from single employee entities to Enterprise level corporations in the public and private sectors utilize a Datacom solution to process their payroll, over 10,000 of those utilize the IRD e-filing and PAYE Intermediary services managed by Datacom, Information is securely housed in two 30 million dollar data centers and close to 100 New Zealand based employees support our Payroll and HRIS solutions, with a further 3900’s within the group provide supporting services.
Datacom has grown from a 2 man band into New Zealand’s premier Payroll and HRIS provider. No other organisation can offer the consistency, reliability, support and functionality that is available from Datacom Payroll.