What We're Doing
The Coalition for Payroll Excellence is fielding a landmark study of 200 payroll administrators — 100 from organizations with 100–999 employees and 100 from organizations with 1,000 or more employees. Respondents span roles from sole payroll administrators to executives who oversee payroll functions, representing a cross-section of industries, plan types, and payroll platforms.
The survey examines five critical dimensions of modern payroll administration:
- Payroll platform features and usability — dashboard tools, self-service portals, mobile access, and AI integration
- Payroll/retirement plan data integration — contribution file submission workflows, data fields exchanged, and return file content
- Reconciliation and error correction — who owns it, how often errors occur, and how they are resolved
- Roth catch-up compliance — how organizations are operationalizing the SECURE 2.0 $145,000/$150,000 FICA wage threshold mandate
- HCM platform capabilities — breadth of functions, employee communication segmentation, and retirement plan engagement
What HCM and Payroll Service Providers Will Gain
This study offers HCM and payroll platform providers a rare, ground-level view of how their administrator users actually work — where they succeed, where they struggle, and what they wish existed. Specific benefits include:
Product Intelligence. Understand which dashboard shortcuts, portal features, and self-service capabilities administrators value most — and which gaps create friction. Learn how intuitively users navigate your platform and where guided paths or AI could reduce burden.
Integration Benchmarking. See how the payroll-to-retirement plan data handoff actually works across your client base — file creation, review, submission, and return file utilization — and how your integration compares to administrator expectations.
Compliance Readiness Insight. Gauge how prepared payroll teams are to operationalize Roth catch-up contribution requirements under SECURE 2.0, and where platform-level support could reduce compliance risk for plan sponsors.
Retention and Growth Signals. Understand what makes payroll administrators loyal to a platform and what drives dissatisfaction — valuable intelligence for product roadmaps, client success strategies, and competitive differentiation.
Trusted, Aggregate Findings. All findings are reported in aggregate. Any company-specific data is shared exclusively with that company. There is no competitive intelligence agenda — only industry-wide insight that helps every provider serve plan sponsors better.
Deliverables
Findings will be shared in two exclusive forums:
📍 In-Person Presentation & Discussion EACH Roundtable — Conversion, Implementation, and Payroll Integration May 5–6, 2026 | Jacksonville, FL Space is limited
📍 In-Person Presentation & Discussion EACH Roundtable — Client Services May 19–20, 2026 | Provost, UT Space is limited
💻 Remote Presentation May 14, 2026
📊 Slide Presentation of Overall Results distributed to all participants following the presentation events
For more information or to reserve your seat, contact
Eric Henon
Executive Director
Mobile: +1.860.221.4449
About The Coalition
The mission of the Coalition is to advocate for payroll administration excellence, to define payroll administration excellence, and best practices and finally, to encourage employers and their payroll providers to adopt those best practices. At its Annual Meeting, the Coalition sustains the dialogue between retirement plan service providers and HCM / payroll platforms to fulfill its mission statement. Armed with information from deliberations, members of the Coalition for Payroll Excellence are better able to set themselves apart from other players.
