We were invited to the Ceridian Analyst Summit in San Francisco earlier this week, and the vendor organized a great event. The event itself was extended from one to one and half days, with the first half day kicked off onsite at a customer location (a major retailer, name under NDA), that gave an insightful update on how and why they use Ceridian.
As usual with analyst briefing events – here are my top 3 takeaways:
A new UI – Ceridian has created a new version of the user interface for Dayforce, which addresses shortfalls of the previous user interface. In the last 20 month’s Ceridian has moved off a very Microsoft centric user interface, to a HTML5 based user interface that was and looked like a first version to now a good looking, dense enough for their heavy users and still visually appealing modern user interface. Sliders, guiding points, one consistent menu are some of the new design elements. And as usual, once you have a great new user interface in place, vendors need to make sure it becomes consistent across all products, which is Ceridian’s next milestone in the near future.
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| Ceridian Recruiting |
Ceridian doing the ‘hard stuff’ – Ceridian keeps focusing on the hard compliance and software architecture issues that not many vendors tackle, in the areas of payroll, workforce management and overall compliance. Legislative and statutory changes overwhelm enterprises across the world, and it is good to see that Ceridian is a vendor that focusses in helping enterprises to address these challenges. As such the vendor invests and walks the extra mile – now it has to show value from that work, which is quickly apparent to the practitioner, but Ceridian now needs to find a ways to demonstrate the value on a CxO level, too. The ROI case studies shown on the first day of the analyst summit are impressive and form a compelling base for such a sales pitch and positioning. Ceridian also keeps showing the value on one integrated HCM system, which runs on a single schema, set of APIs etc. And it is a good point to emphasize for Ceridian, as long as Workforce Management is in the picture. Luckily that is 80% of the vendors customers, but it will be interesting to see how well Ceridian can create and maintain marketing momentum beyond the workforce management requiring industries. Or in other words, how well can Ceridian compete when the scope is only HR Core, Talent Management and Payroll.
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| Ceridian Performance Management |
Ceridian adding some ‘soft stuff’ – The Ceridian team surprised the attending analysts with the unveiling of the acquisition of RelatedMatters. Founded by two former Ultimate execs, RelatedMatters has focused on how well people do relate (and with that work with /) to each other, a key psychographic element that is under represented in today’s HCM software. As Ceridian CEO David Ossip stated, RelatedMatters is an acquihire – not only does Ceridian get some interesting software and methodology on the psycho-analytic side, but also two HCM industry veterans. As for the RelatedMatters functionality, Ceridian had the guts to have the analyst use the tool, and most of them complied. The analyst crews can now see how well we relate to each other on a personality side – will be interesting to see how real we think it is. And that’s where all attempts of the HCM software vendors using personality and psychographic information stand right now, it intrinsically makes sense, but the methodology has to show its value for business uses day in and day out. Too early to tell for Ceridian / RelatedMatters – but kudos to Ceridian for the move, we will see how well it works in every day use.
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| The TeamRelate product |
Analyst Tidbits
- Global remains a focus – Ceridian keeps investing into becoming more global HCM system provider. It has made a major push on the compliance side, which for a vendor with Workforce Management capabilities is a little more complex. With the adoption of the EU Work Directive in the product, Ceridian now has the common set of legislative requirements available in Dayforce to run compliant workforce management across the EU. Moreover the vendor now supports 12 languages in the product, making Ceridian a viable vendor option for global HCM system rollouts.
- New Payroll for the UK – Ceridian is in a strong market position in the UK, being the #2 payroll provider, albeit its payroll is an older, legacy product. Last week at Ceridian UK’s user conference, the vendor already shared that it will build a new UK payroll, definitively a good but gutsy move. But if Ceridian succeeds, adding modern payroll techniques (and best practices) like continuous payroll execution, ad hoc payroll results for payees, instant overtime calculation etc,. it has a shot at the #1 market position in the UK.
- Talent Management build out continues – It was good to see that Ceridian keeps building out Talent Management as announced a year ago at the Boston analyst meeting. The vendor is on track with Recruiting being available today, Onboarding and Performance Management coming this year. At this point we can certainly say that Ceridian is on track to have a complete Talent Management suite in 2016, as the vendor announced in spring 2014.
- Loyal to the roots – On many occasions during the one and half days Ossip repeated that Ceridian – despite all the work on Core HR, Workforce Management and Talent Management – is committed to its Payroll and compliance business. That is a message that is good to hear for the existing customers, and certainly can be read as ‘protecting the core’ strategy. But Ceridian has the DNA and capability to make sure that other functions have a compliance value add, too – a differentiation that Ceridian needs to keep highlighting in the market place and should keep educating audiences about.
- Improved Finance situation – Thanks to the sale of Comdata, Ceridian’s financial position has much improved, namely the debt the vendor carries from its past. CFO Lois Martin presented a favorable outlook in regards of debt due dates, which should give Ceridian the opportunity to invest into product and go to market activities in the next year. [Note I am not a financial analyst, check colleagues who are more in tune with that matter].
MyPOV
A much improved analyst summit by Ceridian from an agenda and venue perspective, again with tons of information and a well received focus on product. Marketing, Sales, Services and Support are all important functions and give ample room to hamper a successful product, but in the SaaS age it is the product capability, attractiveness and roadmap that sets up the success trajectory for a vendor. It was good to see Ceridian giving product so much ample room. Likewise it remains clear that Ossip is the intellectual driver behind Dayforce on a strategic level, very few CEOs of a 5000 FTE enterprise know their products on that detail level.
The good news for Ceridian, its customers and prospects is that the vendor shows solid execution on the product roadmap, and deserves respect for being the first major HCM vendor to lay out a multi year roadmap for product in general and e.g. the Talent Management completion in specific. Given the product progress, that of course Ceridian needs to maintain, the focus shifts to partners, mainly to address implementation capacity and know-how. Good to see Ceridian has the plans in place to address this, but it needs to execute to have more Dayforce implementations run by partners, to reach better economies of scale. The same is key on the go to market side, where Ceridian needs to create traction in Europe – beyond the UK. And an APAC strategy does not seem to be on the drawing boards yet (or I missed it). But having to focus on go to market issues and service delivery capacity is a good sign and a good problem to have, these will be the key areas to watch on how Ceridian makes progress throughout 2015.
Also on Ceridian
- Event Report - CeridianINSIGHTS 2014 - Ceridian innovates and adds key functionality - read here
- First Take - Ceridian INSIGHTS Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
- Progress Report - Ceridian makes a lot of progress - but the road(map) is long - read here
- 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