I had the opportunity to attend Equifax Workforce Solutions yearly user conference in New Orleans this week. The event was well attended, similar to last year’s event in Scottsdale (see my event report here). Most attendees are on customer advisory boards and have a direct influence on the product roadmap, so it creates a unique atmosphere of ownership under attendees. Certainly a smart setup by Equifax.
Here are my top 3 takeaways from the event:
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| Dann Adams open Keynote at EFX Forum |
Insights are the Mission – Equifax is on the journey to become an insight company. It was good to see how honest executives were on what challenge this was and to a certain point remains to the vendor. Beginning from a working definition on what an insight is for Equifax, over training employees, changing and adapting product architectures – this is a long way for any vendor. Good to see the honesty and transparency of the management team – something not found often in enterprise software these days.
Affordable Care Act (ACA) – The ACA is the gift that keeps giving to vendors in the compliance space. And Equifax is no difference, helping customers to master the complexity and taking out fears and concerns around this statutory topic. Equifax shared that there is an expectation that close to 8B fines will be send out to employers, definitively a good argument for any enterprise legging on their ACA plans to get going. The ACA solutions is available and has well known blue-chip customers already depending on Equifax for ACA compliance and reporting.
Compliance – This is the key area where Equifax plays today and is known for. We learnt that Equifax will re-platform its I-9 solutions, a good move that will future proof the offering. The vendor has to go through the challenge of doing this ‘in flight’ – but has split the roadmap (under NDA) as such that it is realistic to get done in the next 18+ months.
The other strategic aspect that Equifax needs to make a decision on is how much the vendor wants to be on the enterprise desktop – or be a data provider (or API) being called by other vendors who have the eyeballs and clicks of the enterprise user. Not an easy decision as it changes go to market and positioning.
The good news for customers and prospects is that Equifax is working hard to help solve compliance pains across the board. The link to credit and TALX give Equifax tangible differentiators over the competition and a strong ‘true’ analytics DNA help in the effort. .
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| Great overview slide of ACA interactions |
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| Signficant TCO rerduction on adding Work Numbers |
Compliance – This is the key area where Equifax plays today and is known for. We learnt that Equifax will re-platform its I-9 solutions, a good move that will future proof the offering. The vendor has to go through the challenge of doing this ‘in flight’ – but has split the roadmap (under NDA) as such that it is realistic to get done in the next 18+ months.
MyPOV
Equifax is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the compliance tsunami that is rolling towards enterprises. But like their competitors in the compliance space, Equifax is building software solutions, that clients still need to understand, implement and operate (from a business perspective). Any presentation I have attended on compliance, mainly ACA these days, shows the concern and high level of discomfort in the audience. In my view this literally screams for a service. And Equifax is familiar with the model e.g. in the unemployment space where the vendor acts as agent for enterprises. So the market is ripe for Equifax (and competitors) to take over compliance for their customers. No more stories to who all the exchange notices maybe sent or not sent – they all go to the vendor, who for e.g. a % of salary cost will manage all government interactions. Timing is ripe as enterprises now need to ramp up on ACA knowledge, define processes, select software etc. A ‘CaaS’ (Compliance as a Service) offering would be highly welcome.The other strategic aspect that Equifax needs to make a decision on is how much the vendor wants to be on the enterprise desktop – or be a data provider (or API) being called by other vendors who have the eyeballs and clicks of the enterprise user. Not an easy decision as it changes go to market and positioning.
The good news for customers and prospects is that Equifax is working hard to help solve compliance pains across the board. The link to credit and TALX give Equifax tangible differentiators over the competition and a strong ‘true’ analytics DNA help in the effort. .
More on Equifax
- Event Report - Equifax Worforce - Preventive Medicine for the HR departrment and a silver lining of DaaS - read here
More on general HCM topics
- Musings - Is Transboarding the Future of People Talent Management? Read here
- Musings - How technology innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the laggards - read here
- Musings - What is the future of recruiting? Read here
- HRTech 2014 takeaways - Read here.
- Why all the attention to recruiting? Read here.
And more on Payroll:
- Could the paycheck re-invent HCM – yes it can – read here.
- And suddenly, payroll matters again! Read here.