Outsourcers: This is a rather boring category as there are only 2 traditional outsourcers worth mentioning. However, the last several years have been interesting for both of them, but I’ll back up an entire decade since many people I talk to are pretty far behind on their news (the below in alpha order):
ADP
Global Payrolls: We’ve talked about ADP GlobalView here a few times. ADP is using the SAP system to provide a single database instance for global payroll. Anywhere that SAP has a pre-configured “script” for payroll, ADP can do it with pretty quick implementation. With GlobalView, and a host of in-country ADP systems to leverage, ADP is the leader for global payroll.
HRO: The king of the mid-market, nobody has penetrated the 2-15K employee space like ADP has. It makes sense since they can transition traditional outsourcing payroll clients to HRO fairly easily (pretty much slapping on a service center and self service) and they do have the largest HR salesforce in the world. (I have no stats to back that up, but hey, they’re ADP).
Enterprise v5: I know nothing about it, but it’s time for a new release, and each release has had some fairly major product enhancements. ADP has changed it’s self service direction several times, but seems to be committed to the new ADP Self Service platform. Let’s hope it sticks. The ERP’s have gone towards much more configurability outside of the customization toolkits they traditionally provided. For ADP to keep up with this platform marketed to larger employers, they’ll need to make the UI greatly more configurable.
Benefits Outsourcing: Old news, but again many of you don’t know that ADP is more than HR/Payroll. Count ADP as one of the largest benefit vendors out there.
Ceridian
HRO: Ceridian also entered HRO at about the same time that ADP did. Why they haven’t caught on is a bit of a mystery to me. The problem with their application suites is that Ceridian eSource HRMS has not been viewed nearly as scalable as PeopleSoft, ADP Enterprise, eCyborg, or SAP. When your target HRO market is 2-10K employees, not nearly as many of these companies are going to take you as seriously if you can’t scale the product well. That said, Ceridian should be doing better, and I gather they lack good commitment and direction form the top.
Partnerships: What Ceridian does a marvelous job at is forging alliances with many organizations. For example, the alliances with Ultimate Software and others have brought in steady streams of business where they might otherwise have lost anyway. What the partnerships also do is broaden the suite of products available to clients, which is something ADP can’t say. While Ceridian can offer a full talent management suite (SoftScape I think?) ADP is a bit behind.
Benefits Outsourcing: Same story as ADP. They’ve been doing this for a long time. In terms of comparative scale, they are a great competitor. Given ADP being much larger, Ceridian does pretty well.
Any of my readers from ADP or Ceridian (or anyone else), I appreciate corrections and opinions.
