The situation
The client — the Americas operations of a leading global construction and mining equipment manufacturer — had migrated off ADP to a new payroll and HR platform. The migration itself was the primary project. But it left behind a downstream question most HCM transitions underestimate: what happens to the historical data?
Federal and state payroll retention requirements don’t end when a system changes. FLSA runs three years; IRS tax records up to seven; state requirements add layers on top; ERISA adds six for benefit-plan data. Litigation holds, employment verifications, and tax audits can reach back a decade. The retention obligation outlives the source system by a long margin.
The client had three bad options: carry historical data into the new platform (expensive, often infeasible due to schema differences), keep the old ADP environment running indefinitely for read access (license costs, vendor dependency, creeping compliance risk), or accept the gap. None were acceptable. They needed a fourth option: a purpose-built historical archive.
How we approached it
We designed and built an external historical data archive — separate from the client’s operational systems, architected for compliance-grade retention, and engineered so the right people can self-serve answers without engineering support every time.
Architecture: external and federated
The archive sits outside the client’s running HCM and payroll environment. That separation is deliberate — it isolates historical data from operational risk, simplifies security boundaries, and lets the new platform evolve without legacy data dragging on its schema. Access runs through federated Active Directory: permissioned users inside the client’s existing corporate identity system reach the archive with their normal credentials, through their normal access-review process. No new identity stack to manage.
Query surface: Power BI
Historical payroll data is most often accessed one query at a time — employment verifications, litigation holds, tax audits, wage disputes, benefits eligibility questions. We built the query surface in Microsoft Power BI, giving authorized HR, legal, and payroll staff a familiar, self-service way to reach specific records and run ad-hoc reports.
Retention and stewardship
The archive is engineered for 10-year retention — aligned with the most conservative applicable requirements, plus margin. RJR operates and maintains the archive on the client’s behalf: we manage the infrastructure, monitor the integrations, handle access reviews, and keep the platform current. This is ongoing stewardship, not a one-time build.
Why this matters
Most HCM platform migrations ship with the historical-data question unresolved, and the gap shows up later — when a DOL audit arrives, a class action requires 7-year payroll records, or a terminated employee needs verification reaching back further than the new system holds. At that point the options are worse and more expensive than they would have been if the archive had been built into the migration from the start.
Outcome
- Secure, external historical data archive holding 10 years of payroll and employee data for the Americas operations
- Federated Active Directory integration — permissioned users access the archive through their existing corporate identity
- Power BI query surface enabling HR, legal, and payroll staff to self-serve records and ad-hoc reports
- Ongoing operations and stewardship by RJR — the client gets compliance retention without operating the archive themselves
- Legacy ADP environment fully decommissioned — no ongoing license costs, no vendor dependency, no read-only system to support
What this demonstrates
Post-migration data stewardship as a discrete capability — the work most HCM migrations leave undone. Security engineering at the intersection of federated identity, Microsoft Power BI, and compliance-grade retention architecture. And a long-horizon operational commitment: 10-year retention is a 10-year partnership, not a project.