The Unique Value of ADP ReThink.
ADP recently wrapped its annual ADP ReThink client event, where over 300 attendees came together in London, England for the largest turnout in ADP ReThink’s 15-year history. If you haven’t had the privilege of attending this unique global HR event, ADP ReThink differentiates itself from other HR technology provider conferences in subtle yet high-value ways.
ADP ReThink is not the firm’s flagship customer event; ADP is largely known for its ADP Meeting of the Minds event, held annually across major U.S. cities and targeted to its historically smaller/mid-sized North American-based firms, where ADP ReThink is targeted to larger, multinational enterprise HR and payroll executive leaders and practitioners.
Both audiences are equally challenged by the same modern workforce challenges and solving them with ADP technology and services. Where the audiences differ is on the solutions required to meet their needs and the sector-specific and localized variables that shape their buying decision ‘lenses.’
Take notice of the attendance size of 300. Where most big tech firms typically invest in massive annual gatherings of their loyal adopters, where unveiling new products, networking, learning, celebrating (and much more) occur in a positive and uplifting and certainly value-added setting. ADP takes a more intimate, targeted approach that provides all the tangibles of a mega tech conference (keynotes, breakouts, product updates, client stories, knowledge sharing, and networking) and carves all that out into a smaller, more ‘digestible’ slice.
What is very apparent is how much more comfortable this approach enables networking, connection, and learning. Interestingly, it feels like you had (or have had) the opportunity to engage with almost everyone in attendance.
The guest speakers are premier, and the content is thoughtful and engaging. Again, take notice of the timing in late January. The World Economic Forum wrapped just prior, meaning it's ‘Davos season,’ and those speakers often stop at ADP ReThink. This year, the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand, The Rt Hon Dame Jacinda Ardern, stole the show and touched attendees with her resiliency, empathy, and strength.
What’s New and Next at ADP
No HR technology conference is complete without roadmap and innovation updates. While ADP has surprised ReThink attendees with acquisitions ahead of the conference in 2017 and 2018, this year was all about ADP technology, with AI and global payroll being front and center.
Global payroll UI/UX updates:
ADP demonstrated its refreshed global payroll UI/UX (coming in Q2). The new solution provides a unified experience with multiple features and functions that guide the practitioner, provide AI-enabled support, facilitate team collaboration, and provide compliance learning all ‘in the flow of payroll,’ including:
Global Payroll Dashboard for ‘orchestrating payroll globally,’ providing a heatmap style view of all payrolls globally, including the ability to integrate 3rd party solutions and data
Heatmap style integration dashboard, with real-time drill-down details for issue resolution
In-platform collaboration tools for teams to quickly share information and ensure coordination for timely payroll processing
ADP Assist, a GenAI and NLP-enabled virtual assistant to provide compliance and localization inquiry support to practitioners on demand
In-platform learning for country-specific compliance training.
Looking ahead, expect to see further unification of ADP’s global payroll technology offering and expanded GenAI use cases to augment the payroll practitioner, leader, manager and employee. Of course ADP DataCloud will play a key role in fueling its GenAI capabilities and future solutions. ADP is also keeping its foot on the pedal with its ADP Next Gen Payroll Engine development, which is powering payroll calculations (or will soon power them) across its suite of HCM and payroll solutions globally.
ADP Assist and Generative AI (GenAI):
Possibly, ADP’s biggest announcement was the launch of ADP Assist, a GenAI-enabled virtual assistant available across ADP’s various platforms. The virtual assistant leverages ADP’s impressive HCM dataset (derived from 1M+ customers in 140 countries and 41M workers globally) to support decision-making and streamline common HR tasks for users.
ADP Assist augments users by anticipating their needs and surfacing actional insights in simple-to-understand terms through its conversational UI. It supports use cases across HR, payroll, time, talent, benefits, recruitment, analytics, reporting, and compliance.
Below are example use cases, all of which are underpinned by ADP’s deep dataset and compliance knowledgebase and enabled by GenAI:
Sending personalized notifications to employee mobile devices for timely issue resolution by empowering employees and reducing the need for HR to intervene
Validating payroll data by checking for and surfacing errors and anomalies
Identifying and resolving missing tax information
Answering user payroll inquiries
Conversational analytics for simplified report generation through contextual understanding to enable workforce insights on demand.
Expect to see more AI, especially GenAI, addressing key use cases across the HR and payroll spectrum. ADP’s ability to tap the ADP DataCloud and its deep compliance expertise and knowledgebase will feed its LLMs (Large Language Models), creating a differentiated capability for infusion across its suite of technology platforms toward its goal of making their products more “easy, smart, and human.” Expect to see deeper user augmentation, surfaced insights, nudges, and guidance throughout the UX and across solutions.
The ADP Customer Lens
Given the ease of networking at ADP ReThink, I had several robust conversations with current and prospective customers. What stood out to me was that of the leaders I spoke to, all are underway with investment decisions for multi-country payroll transformation or large-scale change for payroll operations, each was actively seeking the best-fit solutions for their future. ADP is either an incumbent or on the shortlist in their selection process.
What was more noticeable this year was the number of firms making similar buying decisions for their core HCM technology (all middle-market sized and having a multi-country payroll requirement), and again, ADP played prominently in their shortlist amongst the leading HCM technology brands globally. This is a direct result of the HCM technology and innovation strategic bets ADP has made during the past decade to drive innovation and reposition itself as a global HR and payroll technology and services provider, not just a payroll services bureau.
Overall, the existing ADP customers I spoke to were all sorting various levels of challenges, change, and transformation, and ADP played a role in solving and enabling their ambitions. ‘More ADP’ was a common theme amongst customers, reflected in the years of engagement most had with ADP as a partner and the range of solutions offered to meet their needs.
One key takeaway from my conversations is how often agile talent strategies (hiring the right mix of full-time, freelance, and IC) and global mobility came up. This is not surprising to hear amongst a crowd of multinational HR leaders, as these are common themes that come up regularly in global buyer conversations.
A key market opportunity for ADP is to bring its WorkMarket by ADP solution closer to its global payroll and HCM technology to meet the growing talent trend. After acquiring the cloud-based contingent workforce platform just ahead of ADP ReThink in 2018, the solution has somewhat disappeared despite being well ahead of its peers in establishing the capability to manage freelance and independent contractor (IC) talent pools. With C-suites increasingly pointing to increased IC engagement to source required skills and talent, the solution and capability are well-timed amongst ADP’s broader portfolio of HCM solutions.
The Outlook for ADP at 75
This year, ADP turns 75, and by every measure, it is obvious this is no longer ‘your parent's ADP,’ as the global firm has doubled down on technology and innovation, investing heavily in recent years to ready itself to become ‘your kid's ADP.’ The MyADP app is a perfect example of the modern ADP; with 100M downloads and a 4.7/5.0 rating, it is one of the most downloaded mobile apps available and certainly amongst its HCM technology peers.
ADP CEO Maria Black spoke to the audience about what it's like to be in the driver's seat heading into the firm's 75th year. She pointed to the resiliency of ADP to lead the American workforce through many phases of growth and uncertainty, each time innovating to move the industry they created forward. She also pointed to the wisdom and experience of those years and that agility has provided ADP with a differentiated ability to solve the most complex workforce challenges.
Once again, they have positioned themselves by pivoting toward an HR technology and services company rather than a payroll services-only provider and an aggressive technology investment strategy, resulting in ADP holding its own in the crowded and competitive HCM technology marketplace.
This HCM marketplace momentum is met with a newly appointed President of Global Product and Innovation, Sreeni Kutam, who brings a CHRO lens from five years of heading ADP’s HR strategy (and also a former ADP customer). This shrewd move affords ADP a differentiated vision and lens to support future product design and innovation.
The new head of product has already put that vision to work, sharing plans to streamline a historically confusing menu of solutions. While ADP aims to and does support firms of every size and location with HR and payroll technology and services globally, the cost to maintain that much technology and varying UX/UIs is expensive and straining on resources supporting multiple solutions for 1M customers globally.
Next, he highlighted his plans to invigorate ADP Next Gen HCM, which was somewhat slow out of the gate and underperformed on adoption expectations. The refreshed ADP Next Gen HCM vision is highly intuitive, flexible, and personalized, not to mention augmented and insight driven. Expect to see GenAI and ADP DataCloud play a bigger role in ADP Next Gen HCM and any ADP products across the user experience, compliance, predictive analytics, user augmentation, and more. Additionally, the ADP Next Gen Payroll Engine will continue its native country calc engine development, eventually becoming the single underlying payroll calc engine for ADP Next Gen HCM and all of ADP’s payroll technology.
ADP is also seeking to push further upmarket to target larger enterprise buyers with Next Gen HCM as well as targeting buyers with more than 1K employees in new locations and sizable growth markets like China, India, and Mexico. This will increasingly open up more ‘shots on goal’ for ADP’s flagship Next Gen solution.
Looking ahead, ADP is in a solid position to maintain its historically steady growth and adoption of its technology and services, which are growing more robust and integrated with each release and now have a unified UI/UX for its MyADP app and platforms.
With its wide range of global HR and payroll solutions, ADP has a unique ability to support and retain existing customers within the ADP ecosystem by flexing and scaling as their needs shift. This should create more opportunities for ADP to engage customers with its HCM technology and keep them in the ecosystem.
Partners will also play a central role in getting more of ADP to an even wider audience of buyers globally. Recent partnerships with Workday, for example, means that all roads still lead to ADP by providing its payroll and HR services in concert with Workday HCM technology as a strategic GTM. This means that if ADP isn’t selected for its HCM technology, it can still support that buyer with managed services and compliance.
With ADP’s managed services well entrenched with the most notable HCM technology providers, an opportunity lies in activating ADP DataCloud as an integrated product. The ability to pair its data with that of other major platforms could make for a differentiated analytics and benchmarking offering for both parties.
Innovation aside, where ADP must remain keenly focused is on the daunting task of retaining, supporting, and growing 1M customer accounts. Its U.S. down-market competition loves to boast about ADP client wins, but with its portfolio more focused and capable across the HCM spectrum, ADP has everything required to retain its base.
Through its expertise, innovation, and products, ADP can simply offer ‘more’ than its competition while meeting clients at every phase of growth and location their journeys take them. However, ADP must continue innovating while also doubling down on its CX and ROI. Its 75 years of evolving with the workforce give it a tremendous advantage in the hyper-competitive market it pioneered.
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