Monthly ICP Performance Scorecard for Italy: A KPI Set for Vendor Reviews

A vendor review is only as good as the data behind it. Many global EOR and payroll platforms review their Italian in-country partner (ICP) with anecdotes. A support escalation here, a late payslip there. That does not scale, and it does not give you leverage in a commercial conversation.

This article gives you a scorecard you can use as it is. It covers the areas that matter in Italy: payroll accuracy, onboarding, compliance, support and data quality. Each KPI has a definition, a source and a reason to track it. Set your own targets with your partner. We deliberately do not publish thresholds here, because they depend on your contract, your volume and your client mix.

How to use the scorecard  

Run it every month. Use the same definitions each time. Ask the ICP to send the raw data, not a summary. Keep one owner on your side, usually the partnership or operations manager, and review trends rather than single months.

Three rules keep it honest:

• Every KPI has a written definition that both sides have signed off.
• Every KPI has a named data source, such as the payroll system, the ticketing tool or the filing log.
• Every miss gets a root cause and an owner, not just a red cell.

1. Payroll quality  

Payroll is the part your clients feel first. Italian payroll has many moving parts: collective agreement rules, contribution calculations, allowances and year-end items. Errors are visible and costly.

• Payroll accuracy rate. Share of employee payslips issued with no correction needed after release. Source: payroll system and correction log.
• On-time payroll delivery. Share of payroll runs delivered to you by the agreed cut-off. Source: delivery timestamps.
• Correction cycle time. Time from a reported error to a corrected payslip. Source: ticketing tool.
• Input rejection rate. Share of your payroll inputs sent back by the ICP as incomplete or unclear. This one points at your own process as much as theirs.

2. Onboarding and offboarding  

Slow onboarding costs you deals. Slow offboarding creates risk.

• Time to contract-ready. Time from a complete hire request to a contract ready for signature.
• Time to first payroll-ready. Time from signed contract to a complete employee record in payroll.
• Right-first-time rate. Share of onboardings completed without a request for missing documents after the ICP has accepted the file.
• Offboarding completeness. Share of terminations closed with final pay, filings and records completed as agreed.

Track the median and the slowest cases. The median shows normal performance. The slow tail shows where clients complain.

3. Compliance and filings  

This is where the ICP carries the local obligations on your behalf. You need proof, not assurance.

• Filing timeliness. Share of statutory filings and payments submitted by their deadline. Source: filing log with submission evidence.
• Filing evidence completeness. Share of filings for which a receipt or confirmation is stored and available to you on request.
• Notices from authorities. Count of notices or queries received from authorities, with status and time to resolve.
• Rule update response. Time from a change in collective agreement terms or contribution rules to the change being applied in payroll. Ask the ICP to name the source for each change.

For any rule-based KPI, insist on a stated source and an effective date. If the ICP cannot say where a rate or a rule comes from, treat that as a finding.

4. Support and responsiveness  

Support data tells you how the ICP behaves when something goes wrong.

• First response time. Time from ticket creation to a substantive reply, not an automatic acknowledgement.
• Resolution time. Time from ticket creation to confirmed closure.
• Reopen rate. Share of tickets reopened after closure. A high rate means fixes are cosmetic.
• Escalation count. Number of tickets that needed escalation, grouped by cause.
• Language coverage. Whether replies reach your team in the agreed language without delay.

5. Data quality and exchange  

Most scorecard disputes come from data, not from service. Fix this layer and the rest becomes easier.

• Data completeness. Share of required fields populated in the monthly data file.
• Delivery timeliness. Whether the file arrives on the agreed day.
• Reconciliation variance. Difference between the ICP’s reported totals and your own ledger, with explained items listed.
• Format stability. Number of unannounced changes to the file structure.

6. Commercial and relationship health  

Keep a short section for the points that never fit in a dashboard.

• Open improvement actions and their owners.
• Clients that raised a complaint naming the ICP.
• Capacity: can the ICP absorb your forecast volume next quarter?
• Open commercial questions, such as pricing for new services.

Running the monthly review  

Send the data request early in the month. Hold a short review call with the same attendees each time. Walk through exceptions only. Agree actions, owners and dates in writing. Revisit open actions at the next review before looking at new data.

After a few cycles you will see patterns. Some KPIs will be stable and can move to a quarterly check. Others will keep moving and deserve a closer look. Use the history in contract renewals and in any discussion about service credits or volume allocation.

What good looks like  

A good ICP does not fear the scorecard. It sends the data on time, explains misses and proposes fixes. A weak ICP argues about definitions, delays files or offers summaries instead of records. Both outcomes tell you something useful.

Partnership teams that want to make this operational should agree the data fields up front, so the scorecard fills itself from a structured monthly file instead of manual chasing.

Partnership teams: request the data-exchange specification to run this scorecard with your Italian partner.