Here are my top 3 takeaways from the briefings:
- Steady roadmap execution – It is 2 years ago now that Ceridian acquired Workbrain and with that a very good workforce management product and a talented management and product development team. And those 2 years have been used well – Dayforce today is a complete HR Core system, with very good payroll support for Canada, UK (here through its Horizons product) and USA, maintaining and extending its strong Workforce Management DNA.
Moreover, Dayforce now has a good first version of recruiting, with all the benefits of being integrated with its core HR system. More importantly even, Ceridian has delivered what it promised last year, a key achievement to create confidence in the market and its install base that the transformation from a venerable payroll and benefits player to a global HR application vendor is in full progress.
Ceridian also deserves kudos to share the roadmap of Dayforce till 2016 – a common best practice in the enterprise software market – but no other vendor has given that long of an insight into their plans. The main additions between now and 2016 will be functional deepening (e.g. Absence Management for HR Core) of all modules, more global support (e.g. adding Payroll support for more countries), and the addition of all Talent Management functions (next to Recruiting, Performance Management, Compensation Management, Succession Management and Career Pathing).
Additionally Ceridian plans to add a fully statutory compliant Document Management capability for HR purposes, an improved Business Intelligence product and (very soon) an improved user interface. So the work is carved out for the next two handful of calendar quarters.
- Payroll Innovation – Less than a handful of payrolls have been built from scratch in the 21st century – and Dayforce is one of them. The interesting news is, that Ceridian did not go for a simple re-write but put a lot of experience and some of the Workforce Management DNA into the new product. So payroll runs instantly, whenever e.g. time data changes. It can run on end user request, interactively. Dossip even mentioned the vision to change payday loans. All important payroll innovations for the more flexible, project based workforce that will be key for the 21st century are with that considered in the foundation of the Ceridian payroll. Additionally incentivizing work decisions (e.g. do people want to take a shift when they see what they have earned till today – or not) becomes possible.
It is always exciting to see when enterprise software capability exceeds current practice requirements. But only what not is - can be, and in this use case I think Ceridian is very close to future payroll best practices.
- Global Focus – While Ceridian was always known to work beyond North America, e.g. with a strong presence in the UK – there is now a clear ambition to go beyond these countries, with a goal to reach 15 priority countries. Ceridian is confident to be able to tackle more complex European payrolls such as Germany and France in a matter of few months. Thanks to object oriented inheritance mechanisms as part of the inherent payroll (and overall system) architecture on the technical side and a slowly increasing standardization by the European Union on the business side - there is a good chance Ceridian can deliver to this.
Beyond the priority countries Ceridian will do what all vendors do once the product coverage is exhausted – partner with the payroll aggregators and local payroll vendors. The company seems committed to some best practices – as e.g. always having at least two partner options per country. And in the global team, close to 50% of resources are only dealing with selecting, managing and testing partner solutions. Kudos to Ceridian to go after these markets – as it pits them against larger and more established competitors beyond its traditional three strong markets. The market dynamics around adding local payroll support and global payroll capabilities is only unfolding now.
It’s is important to notice that Ceridian is more than a HCM software vendor – as it provides not only its traditional payroll and tax services, but also benefits and EAP, Work-Life products. That makes Ceridian a vendor with interesting co-opetition relationships in the market place, something to keep in mind when looking at Ceridian.
Time ran out to quiz Dossip and team around programming language, customizing options, end user configurability, localization, databases uses, scalability and data center strategy – all topics that Ceridian needs to master successfully in order to keep executing successfully. All not trivial challenges. More briefings and reports back to you to come – hopefully soon.
MyPOV
Remarkable progress by Ceridian in the last three quarters. The company keeps deepening existing functionality and has established its first functional beachhead into Talent Management with a solid Recruiting module. That is timely as the fight for talent has heated up for most enterprises and competitive talent acquisition is a key selection and operating criteria for HCM enterprise products. Kudos to Ceridian for delivering and for presenting a roadmap to complete Talent Management and adding some differentiating products like (PII and other HR legal statutory compliant) Document Management by 2016.
If Ceridian executes equally well on refreshing its user interface and on the global functional and infrastructure extension – it will be an even more formidable competitor and a very attractive partner for HCM executives - than it already is today. Ceridian’s strong WFM DNA in Dayforce should play into its hands with expected changes in the future of work – moving to more project based, hourly engaged, often contingent workforce.
Also on Ceridian
- Ceridian transforming itself and with that the game – read here
And unrelated to Ceridian - but how important payroll can be for HCM innovation:
- Could the paycheck reinvent HCM - yes it can - read here
- And suddenly... payroll matters again - read here
