Mon, 1 Aug 2011

Yell offers payroll support to SMEs

Telephone directories company Yell Group has announced it will provide payroll support services for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the future, among other backoffice functions.

Last month the company announced a four-year plan intended to reverse its falling profits, which included expanding beyond advertising to become the leading provider of SME digital services.

Within the plans’ details is a proposal for a cloud-based eMarketplace platform, where SMEs and consumers can source business support and promote their products.

Yell Group intends to develop this platform with strategic partners, the first of which was announced last month as IT giant Microsoft.

A spokesman at Yell Group told Payroll World how payroll support services might work in the future. ‘The payroll element would involve building up the way we support SME business operations, such as the way we support productivity software and the provision of back-office software,’ he said.

‘Microsoft will help us to build the online platform – eMarketplace. At the core, this online platform will provide Microsoft with another channel where it can push out its SME products, and it is likely some of those will provide help with payroll.’

The spokesman said payroll support was likely to be accompanied by accounting and customer relationship management (CRM) products, but confirmed Yell Group would not be developing its own payroll software or enter the market as a new supplier.