ADP strikes all the right notes for Live Nation
Background
Live Nation’s mission is to maximise the live concert experience. Its core business is focused on promoting, producing, marketing and selling live concerts for artists via its global concert pipe. It is the largest producer of live concerts in the world, annually producing over 22,000 concerts for 1,600 artists in 33 countries. During 2008, the company sold over 50 million concert tickets and drove over 70 million unique visitors to LiveNation.com. Live Nation is transforming the concert business by expanding its concert platform into ticketing and building the industry’s first artist-to-fan vertically integrated concert platform.
The decision to outsource
Prior to 2005, Live Nation’s payroll sat within the finance department. However in 2005, it was moved into the HR department due to the complex employee relations issues that accompany the function such as absence management and benefits, plus the diversity of its employee types, including many casual staff and a recognised trade union agreement in its Venues business. Having done this, Live Nation then looked to outsource to an external provider. It did so for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the HR department was keen to benefit from the specialist expertise that could be provided by an external payroll provider. For example, increased legislation and regulation meant that staying on top of compliance was becoming increasingly difficult and outsourcing payroll would mean this was all taken care of.
Due to the nature of the business, Live Nation’s payroll is also complex and can change almost daily due to variable shift patterns, weekly and monthly payroll runs, high staff turnover, a number of different collective agreements and venues across disparate locations. This made the management of payroll time consuming and the company hoped that by outsourcing, it would free up valuable time to spend on more strategic activities and projects.
There was also a need to increase accuracy, efficiency and introduce best practice to the payroll. Before Live Nation took Payroll into the HR function, there was an error rate of about 52% at venue level and 13% on the final payroll. The company was keen to streamline the process through outsourcing.
"Its crucial that payroll works effectively and accurately because if it doesn’t then we won’t have a show on the road,” comments Brian Newman, the Head of HR for Live Nation. The decision to outsource was made to ensure it would run as smoothly as possible so that every employee would receive the right pay at the right time and so the HR team could focus on its core role.”
Outsourcing to ADP
Following a detailed tender process, Live Nation decided to outsource to ADP on a managed service. The HR team was impressed with ADP’s UK web based service, ADP freedom, which would enable them to keep track of staff data from any location at any time, but also gave them the reassurance that the payroll would be run by a team of experts behind the scenes.
The Results
ADP freedom has revolutionised how payroll is managed at Live Nation. The expert payroll team quickly grasped the complexities of the monthly and weekly payrolls as well as the regularly changing staff numbers caused by seasonal fluctuations. The weekly payroll needs to be turned round in a matter of days which previously made life difficult, but ADP has designed a clear process for Live Nation’s managers to ensure this happens as smoothly as possible, and in line with internal authorisation procedures. In addition, there are frequently last minute changes to be made on the sign-off date each week or month but this is managed effectively and efficiently.
Live Nation is also impressed with ADP’s customer service, as Newman explains: “Our account manager, David, has outstanding customer service skills, it is clear that we are important to him and he has an incredibly calm and capable manner in every circumstance. He is very aware how emotive payroll can be and how important it is for people to get paid on time. He’s the person my staff will call in the knowledge that he will deal with their question promptly and will always go the extra mile.”
Live Nation’s account manager visits the company regularly to discuss and tailor processes to suit them. He conducts quarterly meetings with a team of managers from across the UK, at which he advises them on processes he has designed in order for them to take these out to their regional managers for implementation. These processes have been designed in a bespoke way for Live Nation, due to the unique nature of the business. Weekly timelines are used to ensure that both payrolls are administered effectively and a process to take union pay increases into account has also been built in – these can happen at any time in the year.
“At Live Nation, we appreciate straightforward honesty. If there has been an issue, our account manager will be honest and work hard to avoid disruption,” comments Newman. “This commitment has resulted in ADP being a respected and trusted client partner.”
ADP freedom has also been useful to Live Nation in providing data to support the business, as Newman explains: “We have outsourced our payroll to ADP for four years now and we have been able to use the system to see specific headcounts and overtime costs, and follow employee activity across all areas of our business. To be able to give the operations team the information needed to plan for future business and budgeting purposes, is a great experience. It was also enlightening for them to be able to see the function actually giving them information that they could use for this purpose.”
The fact that ADP freedom is web based has also been really useful for Live Nation, as the HR team can access the system from anywhere at any time. “I can access ADP freedom on my laptop and feel I’ve got complete control of what’s in my payroll, which I didn’t have when we had it in-house,” comments Newman.
Newman concludes: “The experience of outsourcing payroll to ADP has been positive one; it came with a number of challenges that working closely together we have overcome. We are now able to let the payroll run reliably, knowing the data is accurate and tightly controlled. This allows us more quality time to focus on our day jobs of creating an environment where our people feel valued and are encouraged to do what they are best at every day in work!”
Live Nation’s mission is to maximise the live concert experience. Its core business is focused on promoting, producing, marketing and selling live concerts for artists via its global concert pipe. It is the largest producer of live concerts in the world, annually producing over 22,000 concerts for 1,600 artists in 33 countries. During 2008, the company sold over 50 million concert tickets and drove over 70 million unique visitors to LiveNation.com. Live Nation is transforming the concert business by expanding its concert platform into ticketing and building the industry’s first artist-to-fan vertically integrated concert platform.
The decision to outsource
Prior to 2005, Live Nation’s payroll sat within the finance department. However in 2005, it was moved into the HR department due to the complex employee relations issues that accompany the function such as absence management and benefits, plus the diversity of its employee types, including many casual staff and a recognised trade union agreement in its Venues business. Having done this, Live Nation then looked to outsource to an external provider. It did so for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the HR department was keen to benefit from the specialist expertise that could be provided by an external payroll provider. For example, increased legislation and regulation meant that staying on top of compliance was becoming increasingly difficult and outsourcing payroll would mean this was all taken care of.
Due to the nature of the business, Live Nation’s payroll is also complex and can change almost daily due to variable shift patterns, weekly and monthly payroll runs, high staff turnover, a number of different collective agreements and venues across disparate locations. This made the management of payroll time consuming and the company hoped that by outsourcing, it would free up valuable time to spend on more strategic activities and projects.
There was also a need to increase accuracy, efficiency and introduce best practice to the payroll. Before Live Nation took Payroll into the HR function, there was an error rate of about 52% at venue level and 13% on the final payroll. The company was keen to streamline the process through outsourcing.
"Its crucial that payroll works effectively and accurately because if it doesn’t then we won’t have a show on the road,” comments Brian Newman, the Head of HR for Live Nation. The decision to outsource was made to ensure it would run as smoothly as possible so that every employee would receive the right pay at the right time and so the HR team could focus on its core role.”
Outsourcing to ADP
Following a detailed tender process, Live Nation decided to outsource to ADP on a managed service. The HR team was impressed with ADP’s UK web based service, ADP freedom, which would enable them to keep track of staff data from any location at any time, but also gave them the reassurance that the payroll would be run by a team of experts behind the scenes.
The Results
ADP freedom has revolutionised how payroll is managed at Live Nation. The expert payroll team quickly grasped the complexities of the monthly and weekly payrolls as well as the regularly changing staff numbers caused by seasonal fluctuations. The weekly payroll needs to be turned round in a matter of days which previously made life difficult, but ADP has designed a clear process for Live Nation’s managers to ensure this happens as smoothly as possible, and in line with internal authorisation procedures. In addition, there are frequently last minute changes to be made on the sign-off date each week or month but this is managed effectively and efficiently.
Live Nation is also impressed with ADP’s customer service, as Newman explains: “Our account manager, David, has outstanding customer service skills, it is clear that we are important to him and he has an incredibly calm and capable manner in every circumstance. He is very aware how emotive payroll can be and how important it is for people to get paid on time. He’s the person my staff will call in the knowledge that he will deal with their question promptly and will always go the extra mile.”
Live Nation’s account manager visits the company regularly to discuss and tailor processes to suit them. He conducts quarterly meetings with a team of managers from across the UK, at which he advises them on processes he has designed in order for them to take these out to their regional managers for implementation. These processes have been designed in a bespoke way for Live Nation, due to the unique nature of the business. Weekly timelines are used to ensure that both payrolls are administered effectively and a process to take union pay increases into account has also been built in – these can happen at any time in the year.
“At Live Nation, we appreciate straightforward honesty. If there has been an issue, our account manager will be honest and work hard to avoid disruption,” comments Newman. “This commitment has resulted in ADP being a respected and trusted client partner.”
ADP freedom has also been useful to Live Nation in providing data to support the business, as Newman explains: “We have outsourced our payroll to ADP for four years now and we have been able to use the system to see specific headcounts and overtime costs, and follow employee activity across all areas of our business. To be able to give the operations team the information needed to plan for future business and budgeting purposes, is a great experience. It was also enlightening for them to be able to see the function actually giving them information that they could use for this purpose.”
The fact that ADP freedom is web based has also been really useful for Live Nation, as the HR team can access the system from anywhere at any time. “I can access ADP freedom on my laptop and feel I’ve got complete control of what’s in my payroll, which I didn’t have when we had it in-house,” comments Newman.
Newman concludes: “The experience of outsourcing payroll to ADP has been positive one; it came with a number of challenges that working closely together we have overcome. We are now able to let the payroll run reliably, knowing the data is accurate and tightly controlled. This allows us more quality time to focus on our day jobs of creating an environment where our people feel valued and are encouraged to do what they are best at every day in work!”
