Catching Up with ADP

Linda Merritt, HRO Research Analyst, NelsonHall

The recent passing of long-term U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg reminds us of his early role in the formation of what became ADP, a founding member of HR outsourcing. In the early 1950s he was engaged in selling insurance and sold a policy to two young New Jersey businessmen, Henry and Joseph Taub. The Taub’s were pioneering a then new concept; payroll outsourcing. The brothers knew payroll processing and Lautenberg knew sales and marketing. Lautenberg took a risk and joined the Taub brothers and together they created a new industry.

Establish Operating Principles

By the time the company incorporated in 1961 the three leaders established principles that still guide the company some 60 years later. Following are a few of the principles they put in place.

Focus on Business Markets that Offer Significant Growth Opportunities

ADP has always pursued growth through new market opportunities, both by expanding it service lines and by entering new geographies. Much of the early growth was through acquisitions, as well as organic growth. Lautenberg retired as CEO from ADP in 1982 having made over 100 acquisitions!

Over time, ADP became a global player. An early acquisition was GSI, a large payroll and HR services company in Europe. The latest 2013 acquisition is Payroll S.A. to expand LATAM payroll capabilities to Chile, Argentina, and Peru. In the last few years major acquisitions included Workscape (benefits), The RightThing (RPO) and SHPS (benefits).

Embrace Technological Change to Enhance Product and Service Offerings

By the early 1960s ADP had moved from manual operations to the pre-computer punch cards and on to leasing its first computer: an IBM 1401 mainframe. That willingness to continue to embrace the new is seen in ADP’s successful launch of a series of cloud-based SaaS HR technology and BPO service platforms, including Workforce Now (1k-20K employees), Vantage HCM (50-3k employees), and GlobalView for multi-nationals. Together, the three services support more than 40k clients.

The company has also launched extensive mobility options, including RUN powered by ADP for small business mobile payroll and ADP Mobile Solutions for access to a broad range of information and transactions spanning time and attendance to benefits and pay cards.

Attract and Retain Motivated and Talented People

ADP has grown into a $10bn global outsourcing business with one of only four remaining AAA credit ratings in the U.S. With ~570k clients across 125 countries, we know customers support its line-up of services and proprietary developed technologies. What about people? A few recent awards tell the story:

• Ranked second on Fortune’s 2012 list of America’s Most Admired Companies in Financial Data Service
• Ranked in the Top 50 on IDG’s Computerworld 2012 list of the 100 Best Places to Work in Information Technology (IT)
• Named to the 2012 Working Mother 100 Best Companies, for the third time.

We therefore need to ask the question of prospective purchasers: does your prospective or current HRO service provider have long-term guiding principles and can you see evidence of them in action? Because ADP does.

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ADP’s Meeting of the Minds, not just an Ordinary Event

I attended ADP’s Meeting of the Minds (ADP MOTM) that happened last week March 11 to 14 in Dallas. This was my first time attending, and I didn’t quite know what to expect until I arrived—well, how about ~900 enthusiastic ADP clients. This is an annual event of which ~30% of attendees were first timers.

Sure, there were a few ADP presentations and demonstrations on ADP’s latest products and services, but many of the sessions were not conducted by ADP and were instead facilitated by HR practitioners and clients. Professional development would be a good way to summarize it. As they say, everything is bigger in Texas—how about ~170 sessions that you could attend to learn about everything from Healthcare Reform to Payroll taxes, to RPO, to best practices across a number of services, and functions including shared services, recruiting, change management, etc. There were also hands-on training sessions, of which I attended Learning, part of ADP’s Talent Management.

I could write my entire blog talking about the keynote speaker, Emmitt Smith, and the fun social events, but I’ll shift gears to talk about HRO to keep with our blog focus.

To begin, it’s important to share ADP’s three priorities, as stated by CEO Carlos Rodriguez, that are important to advance ADP as a:

• Technical leader
• Service leader
• Global leader.

Regina Lee, president of ADP’s national and major accounts, GlobalView, and ADP Canada, spoke about four key areas of investments that were made by ADP:

• Integrated Human Capital Management: including Vantage HCM and Workforce Now
• Talent Management: including the integration of performance management, succession planning, and learning. ADP’s talent management platform has over 100 clients
• Benefits Administration and Healthcare Management: having acquired Workscape in 2010 to strengthen ADP’s benefits administration capability, in addition to Workscape’s talent management and compensation capability. On March 8, ADP announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire SHPS Human Resource Solutions (rationale is below)
• HR BPO, including the acquitisition of The RightThing in October 2011 (further details below).

I’ll finish my blog focusing on Benefits Administration and RPO.

The Workscape acquisition has proven to be a success, with ADP adding ~100 additional benefits clients annually. SHPS will further strengthen ADP’s benefits administration offering with capabilities including:

• Eligibility and enrollment
• Spending accounts administration
• COBRA administration
• Absence management
• Benefits advocacy.

SHPS will strengthen ADP’s leave administration and reimbursement account administration capabilities, including HSAs and HRAs, which have become increasingly important as more employers offer high deductible benefits plans to their employees. You can read about this in my recent blog.

The RightThing – coming off its best year in 2011 – was ranked by NelsonHall in its 2011 RPO report as the top U.S. RPO provider in terms of North American revenue, bringing in ~80 clients. Prior to the acquisition, ADP provided recruitment administration and technology, but it is now a full end-to-end RPO services provider. Expect an RPO contract announcement soon and much more to come as RPO will continue to be provided as a standalone service and now also in combination with ADP’s multi-process HRO services.

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

Interested in reading the latest HRO news from NelsonHall? Subscribe to our newsletter by emailing amy.gurchensky@nelson-hall.com with “HRO Insight” as the subject.

ADP has a Platform for HRO Success

Last week, many of us covered announcements from the HR Technology conference.  Among the new service news was ADP’s Vantage HCM SaaS and BPO platform, which was formally launched on October 3^rd at HR Tech.

Vantage HCM covers HR administration, benefits, payroll, time and attendance, and talent management. It is an enhanced version of ADP’s successful Workforce Now platform, which was launched in October 2009 and already has more than 10,000 clients. ADP is estimated to have invested 18 months and $600m in the new platform. General availability is slated for March 2012 to allow time for full testing of critical high volume HR activities such as annual open enrollment and end-of-year payroll with 12 pilot clients from a variety of industries with 1,200 to 20,000 employees.

I see a bigger story here: ADP has built a business platform to support execution of its strategies. Here are several elements I see in play.

Support the core. ADP is adding new services while protecting and enhancing payroll, its single largest revenue generator. Payroll is built into the core package of each multiple process HR (MPHRO) system.

Serve your main markets. In payroll, ADP supports every size organization. Now, it offers MPHRO platforms for nearly every size organization: Workforce Now provides core HR needs for less than 3,000 employees; Vantage HCM covers more robust HR needs and talent management for up to 20,000 employees; and Global View supports large, multi-country organizations typically with more than 20,000 employees.

Leverage acquisitions.  Vantage HCM talent management services include succession planning, performance management, and compensation management as the fruits of collaboration between ADP and Workscape, which was acquired last year.

Reuse development investments.  Vantage HCM uses “plug and play” design for fast and easy additions, integration of new modules, or preferred partners, such as Cornerstone for learning.  Access will be immediately available from multiple devices including smartphones, another benefit of development reuse.

Roadmap development and growth. Workforce Now and Vantage HCM are U.S. services. Both will be expanded to Canada, with Workforce Now ready in 2012. In the future clients will be able to choose the basic benefits module or Workscape services for more complex benefits needs.

Buy, build, and go. ADP prefers to buy or build for strategic growth services. It chose to build its own proprietary MPHRO systems. It acquires complementary service lines and players in geographies to quickly establish a beachhead with top tier players. Once it identifies a target, it moves fast, integrates new acquisitions and captures synergy savings.  (ADP just announced acquisition of The RightThing for RPO. Acting fast indeed!)

Go your own way. Most MPHRO providers offer HR analytic packages as an added cost option. ADP is building in related data views, dashboards, metrics, and integrating workforce analytics use right at the point of need.

Do you have a business platform as broad and consistently used as ADP’s?

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

Interested in reading the latest HRO news from NelsonHall? Subscribe to our newsletter by emailing amy.gurchensky@nelson-hall.com with “HRO Insight” as the subject.

Weathering the Weather in HRO

I am weary of Winter and ready to get on with Spring! A record setting Winter snow storm just blasted the East Coast of the U.S. this past weekend, and more snow is heading this way by mid-week. London has also seen the heaviest snows in twenty years. Some areas are prepared for lots of snow and can handle it with aplomb and as an economic boom. But in cities like London, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., big snow is disruptive, dangerous and a budget buster.

At least we are seeing signs of the coming Spring in HRO, with a generally upbeat tone to most of the earnings calls, even as most vendors continue to report revenue declines and offer guidance of relatively flat revenues for 2010.

Winter is not yet over

For example, last week ADP announced that its Employer Services fiscal Q2 2010 revenues were down two percent compared to 2009. ADP saw client payrolls down five percent leading to a drop of seven percent in payroll and tax filing revenues, reflecting continued workforce reductions at the end of 2009.

ADP’s Employer Services revenue growth will be constrained until payroll volumes increase, which are expected to start improving in the first half of 2010.

An expected thaw is on the way

HRO vendors reporting results that are less bad compared quarter over quarter and the universally reported increased pipeline activity are indicators of a thaw.

For example, for ADP, the view beyond payroll revenues, which includes HRO services, remains more optimistic based on three percent increases in each of the last two quarters. And ADP’s small business sales have increased, largely due to the successful introduction of Workforce Now, a new payroll, benefits and HR services SaaS platform for the less than 100 employee market. Workforce Now has already added 2,000 clients since its introduction in October 2009.

According to ADP, larger employers are starting to reengage in new services discussions, but remain slow to make contract commitments. Even with the uptick in the small market and the beyond payroll services, the overall decline in revenues driven by smaller payroll pays and lower client fund balances keeps the forecast for FY 2010 ES as flat to down one percent.

With some signs of the coming Spring

ADP is confident enough that the economic recovery is starting that it plans to begin modest hiring to have more sales and service personnel onboard and trained to take advantage of increased opportunities.

The truth is, Winter is still not over. We need to see an increased rate of contract signings Then we need to see positive revenue gains not clouded by currency exchange rates. And a few larger HRO deal announcements would help warm us up nicely.  

For awhile yet we will continue to see mixed signs of recovery and there is likely another Winter storm or two to weather. Still, I can almost hear the birds of Spring chirping…can you?

Linda Merritt, Research Director, HRO, NelsonHall