Ciphr won CIPP’s Software Product of the Year in 2025 for Ciphr Payroll – its fully cloud-based, API-first payroll solution. Now Ciphr’s true real-time payroll and HR integration has been shortlisted for the same award. It’s also in the running for Software Innovation Product of the Year.
This double recognition highlights Ciphr’s commitment to developing powerful HR and payroll solutions that address the key challenges that HR and payroll teams face. Many historic payroll issues have been caused by poor integration, with inefficiencies and friction driven by manual processes and disconnected systems not being able to share data in sync.
Ciphr’s new payroll and HR integration eliminates the data gaps that create compliance risk and gives HR and payroll teams one consolidated, real-time view of their people and pay data – a single, connected source of truth.
HR admins can maintain their live system unhindered by pay cut-off dates, while payroll admins have full selective processing capabilities and control over the flow of data. So vital updates (such as late pay or bank detail changes) don't create extra work or record errors. Admins can pause and restart real-time data syncs between Ciphr’s HR and payroll systems any time, with no data lost, and the real-time pay calculations give instant net pay feedback on the changes made.
It is the payroll and HR integration that the market has been waiting for and further enhances Ciphr’s highly differentiated customer proposition.
Sion Lewis, CEO of Ciphr, says: “We’re delighted that Ciphr Payroll’s new HR integration has been shortlisted for two prestigious CIPP Awards.
“We know that the judges are looking at the whole package when they make their considerations – not just the software and its benefits, but the customer experience, service delivery, resilience and team expertise that goes with it: how we support our customers through implementation, keep them compliant with regulatory and legislative changes, like the Employment Rights Act, help them power their day-to-day operations, and deliver efficiency gains.
“The CIPP Awards celebrate the payroll and pay professionals driving the industry forward. We're proud to be recognised among them the best of them.”
Simon Witkiss, chief product officer at Ciphr, says: “While tech continues to evolve, one thing remains a constant – and that's the criticality of paying employees accurately and on time. It's the unsung hero process of organisations. And Ciphr’s game-changing HR and payroll integration is helping our customers to get it right first time. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve developed and the recognition we’re receiving for it.”
CIPP’s Annual Excellence Awards will take place on 8 October 2026.
A special webinar featuring Simon Witkiss, and Ciphr’s regulatory analyst Claire Warner, discussing the key advantages of HR and payroll integration from a compliance standpoint, is available to watch on demand at www.ciphr.com/webinars/hr-payroll-compliance.
In other award news, Ciphr was recently named Thames Valley Tech Company of the Year – winning the coveted top prize at the Thames Valley Tech and Innovation Awards 2026. Reflecting the Group's strong performance over the past year, it also won High Growth Tech Company of the Year, and was a finalist in three other categories; including Large Tech Enterprise of the Year, Tech Leadership Team of the Year and Tech Employer of the Year.
More than 1,400 organisations use people management solutions from Ciphr Group, including Natural History Museum, Haygrove, Amaze Hotels, Barnardo's, University of Cambridge, CitySprint, Crisis UK, Greater London Authority, the Irish Universities Association, Lebara, Action Against Hunger, Eversheds Sutherland, the Church of England, Evri, Allpay, Jonas, Taylor Wessing, Newcastle University, Bunzl, Bluelight Commercial, Prudential, University of Oxford, Together Housing, AND Digital, Knauf, Aptos, and Crest Nicholson.
Ciphr is the UK specialist in HR, payroll, benefits, learning and recruitment software for mid-market organisations (200–2,000 employees). Its integrated platform brings the whole employee lifecycle into one place so HR, L&D and payroll teams can work from the same up-to-date people data.
For more information, please visit www.ciphr.com/payroll-software.
