You are receiving this message because you are, have been or might become a customer of Strada Global and or Alight Solutions. This message is to inform you of the mismanagement that took place around the NHS payroll project that went horribly wrong due to mismanagement. Given that the people involved in that project are still in prominent positions at Strada Global it is possible that similar mismanagement is still happening there. To protect your interests, you may want to contact your supplier and ask them for explanations to make sure to continue to provide you adequate services. You may also want to review your relationship with Strada Global and or Alight Solutions.
My goal is to inform the HR services market to make sure there is accountability.

I hope this is of interest to you and will help you with your company’s business activities.

Do feel free to contact me should you have questions or would like to know more.

The $1 Billion Payroll Blunder: The NHS, Alight, and the Rise of Strada Global
The story of the NHS "Our Journey to Cloud" payroll project is one of the most cautionary—and costly—tales in the history of large-scale IT implementation. The project, intended to modernize HR and payroll for over a million UK healthcare workers using SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll (ECP), collapsed in a catastrophic failure that led to underpayments, lawsuits, and a financial reckoning that could cost the original implementing partner, Alight Solutions, over $1 billion USD.

However, the narrative doesn't end with Alight's failure. It is also a story of corporate maneuvering, specialized expertise, and the curious absence of individual accountability, culminating in the sale of Alight's UK payroll business to Strada Global and the promotion of the very architects of the failed solution.

NHS Alight payroll image

Excerpts from news articles about the NHS payroll project

Combines insights from nine different news articles and reports (The Guardian, BBC News, Computer Weekly, National Audit Office, UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee, The Register, TechMarketView, Alight's official news release, and Law Gazette).
The NHS's "Our Journey to Cloud" program—a £300 million initiative to modernize payroll for over 1 million staff using SAP software implemented by Alight Solutions—ended in catastrophic failure, causing widespread payment errors, severe financial and emotional hardship for workers, operational chaos, and ongoing lawsuits from tens of thousands of staff.
The project was ultimately scrapped in early 2024 amid intense media scrutiny, auditor criticism, and parliamentary accountability, with Alight selling its troubled UK payroll business to Strada Global later that year.

Core Financial Narrative from ➡️ Alight to ➡️ NHS UK payroll debacle to ➡️ new company Strada Global: A Story of Value Destruction

It looks like Alight Solutions's failed NHS payroll project led to a $1.338 billion goodwill impairment in Q3 2025, triggering a sharp decline in its stock price from over $8 to around $2 after divesting the troubled payroll division to H.I.G. Capital (forming Strada Global) in February 2024. This sequence of events has sparked serious concerns over disclosure timing, corporate governance, and shared legal liabilities, leaving shareholders bearing significant financial losses while both companies face ongoing litigation and reputational damage.

The NHS Payroll Debacle: Alight’s Billion-Dollar Failure and the Unseen Accountability at Strada Global

The NHS’s ambitious cloud payroll project, led by Alight Solutions using SAP SuccessFactors, collapsed into one of the UK public sector’s largest IT failures, causing widespread pay errors for staff and an estimated $1 billion loss for Alight. Despite the disaster, the key architects of the failed solution, Johan Bosschaerts and Boris Vanrillaer, escaped accountability and were promoted at Strada Global after it acquired Alight’s troubled UK payroll business.

The Alight-NHS Payroll Disaster: A £1 Billion Failure and Its Unanswered Questions

The article investigates the catastrophic failure of Alight Solutions' implementation of the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll system for the UK's National Health Service, which led to widespread payroll errors affecting over 1.2 million staff, operational chaos, a costly abandonment of the centralized program in 2023, and potential liabilities up to $1 billion, including lawsuits against Alight and SAP. It further exposes a lack of accountability as Alight sold its troubled UK payroll business to Strada Global in February 2024 via an asset sale, transferring key personnel like Johan Bosschaerts and Boris Vanrillaer—who designed the flawed solution—into leadership roles at Strada, while leaving ongoing liabilities with Alight and raising concerns for future clients about repeated risks.

The NHS Payroll Collapse: What Really Happened, Who Is Responsible, and What HR Leaders Must Learn From It

The NHS NHS’s £300M+ “Our Journey to Cloud” SAP SuccessFactors payroll programme, led by Alight Solutions collapsed, causing widespread under/over/non-payments for over 1 million staff. Blamed on poor governance, inadequate testing and unrealistic scale, the project was abandoned in 2023. Alight sold its UK payroll arm to Strada Global in 2024 while retaining all liabilities; 35,000+ staff are now suing NHS England, Alight and SAP. Estimated losses exceed $500M–$1B.

What Happened to the NHS Payroll Project Alight Was Supposed to Implement?

The NHS England's "Our Journey to Cloud" program, aimed at centralizing HR and payroll for over a million employees using SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll implemented by Alight (following its acquisition of NorthgateArinso), failed due to the extreme complexity of NHS pay rules, limitations in cloud configuration, and the immense scale across diverse trusts, resulting in widespread payroll errors, underpayments, manual workarounds, staff hardship, legal claims, and the program's abandonment in 2023.

Rather than a full technical fix, the crisis was managed through decentralization—allowing trusts to revert to legacy systems or choose alternatives—ongoing manual interventions, financial settlements, and parliamentary scrutiny, while Alight absorbed significant commercial and reputational costs without public litigation from SAP.

In 2024, Alight sold its payroll and professional services business to H.I.G. Capital for up to $1.2 billion, rebranding it as Strada Global, where several senior leaders from Alight's product and technology teams transitioned into prominent roles; the article raises concerns about limited accountability for decision-makers and urges HR buyers to scrutinize providers' past performance in complex implementations.

What happened to the NHS payroll project Alight was supposed to implemented in the UK?

This is the first most extensive article I wrote with the aid of DeepseekAI. This fact checked article alleges a major failure in the UK's NHS "Our Journey to Cloud" payroll and HR modernization program, involving SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll implemented by Alight Solutions (after acquiring NorthgateArinso), resulting in widespread payroll errors, a program shutdown in 2023, lawsuits against SAP and Alight, and estimated losses up to $1 billion for Alight. It further claims that key individuals responsible (from Alight's Product Business Unit) transferred to Strada Global after Alight sold its UK payroll business in 2024, retaining or gaining prominent roles despite the debacle. While Alight's global payroll business sale to Strada (backed by H.I.G. Capital) is factual and positioned as a strategic focus shift, the detailed NHS-specific catastrophe—including cited news articles, parliamentary inquiries, staff lawsuits, and personal accountability—appears unsubstantiated by public records, with no matching reports found in major UK media or official sources.

The text warns HR professionals and customers to scrutinize dealings with involved parties, noting no responses to pre-publication inquiries, and frames the situation as evidence of industry contempt, amplified by perceived lack of accountability.

Fact-checking across multiple AI models yields conflicting views (some affirming, others denying evidence), but independent searches reveal no corroborating coverage of this scale of failure tied to SAP/Alight, suggesting the narrative may be exaggerated, hypothetical, or fabricated despite claims of public information sourcing.

This is a first newsletter that I’m sending out. There will likely be more that I will be sending out to you with more revelations that should help you make informed business decisions.