How RUNPAY™ Revolutionises Payroll Procurement in Australia: Ditch the RFP Grind, End $597-Per-Failed-Proposal Waste, and Unlock Real Efficiency

In today’s competitive Australian business environment, choosing the right Payroll or HR Management solution for your business is really hard. Choosing a system that works for you as a business owner is one of the most critical decisions any company or business owner can make. Getting it wrong means ongoing compliance risks, frustrated both employee/er plus so much wasted money. Getting it right hopefully will deliver ALL Australians accurate payruns, happier teams, and scalable growth for everyone in 2026.

Yet the current way Australian businesses procure payroll solutions remains painfully inefficient: buyers spend months drafting and managing Requests for Proposal (RFPs) and sifting through mismatched options from over 240 systems in the market, while Payroll Providers waste thousands of hours on cold outreach that rarely gets a reply. The result? Delayed implementations, inflated costs, and only real frustration on both sides.

The RUNPAY™ Marketplace is the revolutionary solution Australia has been waiting for. Purpose-built for the Australian payroll and HRMIS sector, RUNPAY™ eliminates the traditional exhausting RFP grind and shotgun sales tactics by directly connecting businesses with vetted, compliant payroll providers. No endless RFPs for buyers - now heavily reduced effort! No cold outreach waste for providers. Just fast, qualified matches that save time for all business owners, slashing costs, and delivering better outcomes.

Compared to the fragmented status quo, RUNPAY™ cuts procurement timelines by 50–70% and dramatically reduces wasted human effort —making it the most efficient way to source and compare payroll solutions in Australia today.

The Hidden Cost of Australia’s Broken Payroll Procurement Process

Australia’s payroll landscape is uniquely complex: Fair Work compliance, Single Touch Payroll, superannuation guarantee changes (including the upcoming 2026 Payday Super mandate), modern awards, and state variations all demand precision. Yet the process of finding and selecting a payroll provider is very much stuck in everyone's past - LUCKY legal providers like Lawpath are leading the way now in the legal sphere, and Australia is finally seeing progress here especially with AI tech now being the chip on all our shoulders to move their teams forward.

Buyers face:

• Weeks of market research across scattered providers.

• Hours (often days) drafting detailed RFPs.

• Slow or irrelevant responses that drag decisions out for months.

Payroll providers face even greater pain: cold outreach response rates hover around 5% [1], meaning 95% of carefully prepared proposals disappear into silence.

This isn’t just frustrating —it’s REALLY expensive and real!

The $597 Cost of JUST 1 Failed Payroll Sales Outreach

Using 2025/26 average Australian salaries (sales ~$80,000, medium-level admin support ~$70,000) [4][5] :

Proposal Preparation (1x FTE 7.6-hour day):

Sales research & customisation ($308) + admin data support ($135) = $443

ADD No Response

With ~5% response rates, most efforts end here —$443 LOST [1].

Follow-Up (ONLY half-day chase to purpose):

Additional sales time (~$154) = Total per failure: $597 (and this is JUST an average estimation).

Scale this across a typical payroll sales team sending 20 proposals per month, and 19 failures cost $11,343 monthly —over $136,000 wasted annually per rep. To land one new client, providers may need 100 proposals, burning ~$56,715 in salary costs alone on JUST LOST EFFORTS IN RESPONSE.

This waste doesn’t stay with providers —it flows through to higher pricing for Australian businesses and slower innovation across the payroll sector. The heartbreak is real: good, honest people pouring effort into work that goes unseen, teams feeling demotivated, and businesses missing opportunities to grow.

At its core, inefficient procurement isn’t just a process problem —it’s a human one, shaped by the environments we create and why RUNPAY™ is the Revolutionary Answer Australia Needs.

RUNPAY™ was created specifically to fix this broken out-dated process and elevate payroll system procurement to a strategic advantage.

As Australia’s dedicated marketplace for payroll solutions, it delivers:

1. Instant Qualified Matching: Buyers easily can seek high level payroll requirements once ( —no RFP required) and receive direct access to compliant and vetted providers —complete with transparent pricing, features, integrations, and reviews (as provided).

2. No More Cold Outreach Waste: Payroll providers can then seek out only genuine, high-intent opportunities, boosting win rates and eliminating the $597-per-failure drain.

3. Built for Australian Compliance: So decisions are faster and safer, helping businesses know what systems meet current regulatory changes.

Your impact as a business owner is displayed and proven immediate

Procurement timelines drop from months to weeks, internal effort falls by up to 80%, and total human costs plummet from $5,000–$15,000 per switch to under $2,000. In an industry where non-compliance penalties can exceed $50,000 per breach [3], choosing the right payroll partner quickly has never been more valuable —freeing leaders to focus on elevating payroll as a strategic function rather than a back-office burden.

Executive Action Considerations for First Quarter:

Shift from the outdated RFP-heavy status quo to RUNPAY™’s smarter model with these simple steps:

• Audit Your Last Payroll Switch: Calculate the hours your team spent on RFP drafting and compare against RUNPAY™’s 50–70% time savings.

• Checkout the RUNPAY™ Marketplace interface.

• Redirect the Savings: Channel reclaimed time and budget into employee experience, compliance confidence, or business growth.

• Join as a Provider: If you’re a payroll vendor, contact us to ensure you are listed.

• Stay on Top of Key Dates: Complement RUNPAY™ with Tools like our Paymaster Executive Calendar for Payroll Deadlines — all while using RUNPAY™, as always, as your primary payroll resource.

It’s Time for a Better Way to Source Payroll in Australia

The old RFP-driven procurement model wastes talent, money, and opportunity. The RUNPAY™ Marketplace changes that —delivering the fastest, most cost-effective way for Australian businesses to find, compare, and select payroll solutions.

Join the revolution today: Explore providers or contact us to list your services. Let’s build a stronger, more efficient payroll ecosystem together —one that supports good people doing meaningful work for all.

References:

[1] Belkins and various 2025 B2B cold outreach studies (average 1–6% response rates).

[3] Fair Work Ombudsman – serious contravention penalties (up to $469,500+ per breach for corporations as of 2025).

[4] SEEK/Indeed/Glassdoor 2025 salary data for sales representatives in Australia.

[5] SEEK/Indeed 2025 data for payroll/administrative officers in Australia.

Payroll Systems are one of the most critical decisions any company can make. Getting it wrong means ongoing compliance risks, frustrated employees, and Australian economic wasted money. Getting it right though for us, delivers accurate payruns, happier teams, and scalable growth.