Get the RFP Right or Pay the Price: A Payroll Leader's Guide to Choosing the Right Vendor with Miranda Humphries

Miranda Humphries has spent her entire career inside payroll. Not on the edges of it, not adjacent to it, but deep inside the complexity, the pressure, and the transformation of it. And along the way, she learned something most organizations only discover too late. The vendor is rarely the problem. The process that chose them is.

In this episode of @thepayrollpodcast, Nick Day, CEO of JGA Recruitment, sits down with Miranda Humphries, experienced global payroll leader and transformation specialist, to go deep on the one phase of payroll transformation that is most often rushed, most often misaligned, and most often responsible for implementations that fail before they even begin. The RFP process.

This is not just a conversation about vendor selection. It is a conversation about what it really takes to make the right decision for your business. Miranda and Nick explore the full spectrum of procurement tools from direct award to RFI to RFP, why the RFI is one of the most underutilized tools in the payroll space, how to build questions that actually drive decisions, why hidden costs in your current vendor contract can completely distort your comparisons, and why no payroll leader should ever run this process alone.

It is not just about finding the best vendor.

It is about finding the right one for your business.

And if your organization has ever gone live with a new system only to find the problems were already baked in, this episode will show you exactly where it went wrong and how to make sure it never happens again.

Whether you are a payroll leader preparing to go to market, an HR or finance stakeholder being pulled into a vendor selection process, or a transformation professional who wants to understand what a truly rigorous RFP looks like from the inside, this episode is essential listening.

This episode is sponsored by Deel

Managing a global team is complex, Deel makes it simpler with payroll, HR, IT, and compliance all in one place. That's why over 35,000 businesses trust Deel to hire, pay, and manage their teams worldwide.

See how Deel works at www.deel.com/nickday

Guest and Host:

Connect with Miranda Humphries: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miranda-humphries-538aa72/

Connect with Nick Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday/

Find your ideal payroll candidate with our job vacancy system: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/919cf6b9ea

Sign up to the Payroll Podcast Newsletter: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/23e7b153e7

Stay tuned for the next episode of The Payroll Podcast, brought to you by Nick Day, CEO at JGA Recruitment, landing soon!

Enjoyed this? Check out our sister podcast @thehrldpodcast for more great content!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Why Most Payroll Transformations Fail Before They Start

(01:29) - What Payroll Really Means: Miranda's Story and Identity

(04:32) - How Miranda Found Her Way Into Payroll

(07:58) - What Is an RFP and What Is It Designed to Achieve

(10:31) - RFP vs RFI vs RFQ: Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

(17:42) - Who Should Own the RFP Process

(22:06) - How to Handle Misalignment Between Payroll, HR, and Procurement

(28:38) - Preparation: Knowing Your Current State Before You Go to Market

(33:45) - Crafting the Right Questions and Scoring Your Vendors

(44:21) - If You Could Redesign the RFP Process From Scratch

(48:51) - The One Thing Every Payroll Leader Must Do Before Starting

(51:23) - The Payroll Vault: Rapid Fire Advice for 2026