AI offers huge potential for anomaly detection in payroll, says KeyPay co-founder
The adoption of artificial intelligence will only accelerate faster in the payroll industry over the coming years, according to the general manager of payroll at Employment Hero.
Employment Hero general manager of payroll, Phil Bernie, said the development of AI applications within payroll continues to pick up pace and is transforming how many of the processes with payroll are performed.
"I think one of the unique things about payroll is that it's very well suited to lots of the tasks that AI is useful for," Bernie said.
"For example, AI is well suited for performing things like anomaly detection and detecting errors as and when they come up. It's able to look at large volumes of historical data and then understand where the anomalies are and then identify them so that you can then begin an investigation."
Bernie said there are many innovative ways that AI technologies can be used in payroll.
"It's making it a lot more interesting for people coming into the industry because [these technologies allow] them to focus on actually solving the problems rather than sifting through hundreds of thousands of weeks worth of data to find what's ultimately a needle in the haystack," he said.
Bernie while he previously didn't see a huge amount of potential for AI in the payroll space, in the past two years it's advanced in leaps and bounds.
"The use of machine learning is only going to increase in payroll and while it makes some people nervous and it's still very new, there's a lot of work being done to bring the efficiencies of AI into payroll processes," he said.
"In the next three to five years I would be very surprised if we don't see a significant shift towards using AI, particularly around anomaly detection."
Bernie said Employment Hero is currently looking at how AI can identify errors more efficiently or analyse overtime shift patterns and other situations.
"It looks at both the fresh data but also the historical data and I'd be really surprised if we don't see a significant increase in the use of AI within the payroll industry," he said.
Now more than ever, Bernie said software systems for payroll are significantly streamlining processes and it's important for businesses to look at how they can make all their processes more efficient.
"Payroll is one of those areas where you can make a couple of small changes and you can get some really big increases in efficiency."
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