Benefits of a single source for your total rewards data

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February 06, 2026

The talent market and global economy continue to provide employers with new challenges.

It’s safe to say that no market is the same as it was five years ago. The world is continuing to change rapidly. With high inflation eroding real incomes and companies battling to recruit and retain talent, it has never been more important to find a reliable, comprehensive source for total rewards data and insight.

How the rewards and mobility functions interact can vary from company to company. Historically, different partners have been used to gather the data. Successful multinational organizations, however, realize that sourcing data for compensation, benefits, and mobility decisions from one provider offers benefits on many levels, however the two biggest benefits are clearer communications and an efficient use of budget and time.

Connecting the dots with streamlined communication

Get a clear view of how to reward your employees by choosing a single provider for your compensation, benefits, and workforce mobility data. Working with a single vendor can enable conversations between the functions within an organization that may not be happening now. These discussions are even more important when conditions differ across markets.

Here’s how:

A single provider can make connections and spot opportunities for collaboration between the functions — for example, an account manager may take part in a conversation about compensation and benefits and suggest how mobility can contribute.
The more time an account manager spends on understanding your business, the greater awareness they have of the company’s ambitions, culture, and history, thereby leading to better outcomes.
When compensation, benefits, and mobility function as one team — as they often do — it makes sense for their shared view of the rewards program to be communicated to one provider.

Saving you time and money

There are a number of practical advantages linked to budgets and processes:

Contracting

Reduced costs as a result of bulk purchases from one provider
More streamlined contract negotiations and alignment with procurement teams
Technology compliance checks carried out on the spot during negotiation

Methodology

Once you understand a provider’s data research and terminology, it is easy to expand the contract to more data types instead of sourcing elsewhere.
Familiarity with the technology that accesses your data gives you a better user experience and enables you to access and use the information quickly.

Are you overlooking crucial insight?

Just as there are advantages to consolidating compensation, benefits, and mobility services under one provider, there are also risks and drawbacks to maintaining fragmented support. This is especially relevant in today's context, as the workforce mobility function holds valuable insights into the broader HR strategy.

Here are some disadvantages to using separate providers for total rewards data and employee mobility data include:

Contradicting data from differing methodologies.
Less connection and limited conversations within your team or with suppliers.
Diminished comprehension of the challenges and solutions.
Repetitive trainings to learn about different providers’ services and terminology, wasting time and money.
Use of different measures for inflation among providers, making calculations difficult at a time when rising prices are having a significant impact on pay packages.

Next steps to creating total rewards data efficiency.

From our experience, employers seem to be increasingly aware of how taking a comprehensive view of compensation, benefits, and mobility can help meet these challenges. It’s not an all-or-nothing decision and many companies prefer to try certain additional solutions to test the waters.

Here are some factors to consider if you are thinking about switching to a single provider for your total rewards and global mobility data.

1. How much do you spend across multiple partners? There may be scope to reduce this expense with one provider.

2. Does your business trust all vendors equally or do you have a preferred provider that could cover both total rewards and mobility?

3. What is your relationship with your partners? Could you achieve more together if the supplier were more fully integrated into your organization?

Need help?

Mercer offers a range of products and services that can streamline and link up your compensation and mobility functions. These include:

Workforce mobility strategy development, implementation, and optimization services for both domestic and global mobility programs.

The Mercer Total Remuneration Survey — the most comprehensive employee compensation and benefits database in the world featuring data for more than 140 countries and 400,000 positions.