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Access Group and The Co-operative Bank Shortlisted for CIPP Annual Excellence Award

The Access Group and its customer The Co-operative Bank have been shortlisted in the CIPP Annual Excellence Awards in the Project of the Year category for its Payroll Managed Services Project.

The Co-operative Bank’s project lead was Ruth Clarke, Head of People Delivery who explains:

“Our existing payroll and HCM systems had served us well earlier on, but in recent years the supplier’s systems and services had fallen well behind our needs. We sought a much more cost-effective, reliable and most especially intuitive payroll and HCM set of services and solutions that would require less time to operate and provide a better user experience.”

She continued: “From analyses we’d undertaken, we targeted ourselves and Access People with achieving a minimum 40% reduction in total cost of ownership, together with expectations of a much smoother payroll for our employees.

“The project was a huge success. Despite the complexities of our payroll, the project delivered a quick and accurate transfer of our data part way through a tax year. The subsequent payroll service and support we receive felt like a strong partnership from day one and just goes from strength to strength.”

Charles Butterworth, managing director of Access People commented, “To be shortlisted in the The CIPP Annual Excellence Awards is a real credit to our Payroll Project Management teams, who are adept at supporting our customers on a range of urgent and complex HCM integration projects such as this one. We eagerly await CIPP’s final placing announcement in October.”


Since the project went live at the end of 2020, Co-operative Bank has more than exceeded their 40% reduction in system/service costs, with savings of £1m per annum and reduced payroll query calls from 750-800 per month down to typically zero. They have also extended their suite of integrated solutions from Access People with Access Learning Solutions.

Find out more about the project from Ruth Clarke.