ADP MOTM 2017 Event Report

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend ADP’s Meeting of the Mind (MOTM) conference in San Diego, held March 19th till 22nd 2017, and the Manchester Grand Hyatt. The conference was well attended with over 1000 attendees, good partner representation and influencer selection.

So take a look at my musings on the event here: (if the video doesn’t show up, check here)
 

 

No time to watch – here is the 1-2 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):

Event Report - ADP Meeting of the Minds 2017 - ADP steams ahead - all customers on board!? from Holger Mueller

 

Want to read on? Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:

ADP has Momentum – For a long time it seemed as if ADP was stuck and not moving beyond payroll. 4-5 years ago it became clear this would be changing and we reported on the changes from different MOTM (2014, 2015, 2016). By now it is clear that the investments done into innovation centers, new platforms, a new user experience, big data etc. are now paying off. 10 million users of ADP’s mobile app are telling a good adoption story, adding 300k per month is impressive growth. The number of Vantage clients is now North of 550. And the big data investments around the ADP DataCloud are paying off as ADP can now launch products on top of the platform, like at this MOTM the ADP Pay Equity Explorer (see next).

 

Rodriguez shares ADP response to today's Workforce Challenges

New Apps powered by ADP Data Cloud – Two years ago, ADP launched its big data offering, the ADP DataCloud. The first focus was on not so flashy, but essential reporting needs for ADP customers. But by now ADP is using its in depth knowledge of payroll and salary data to build new applications. The newly launched Pay Equity Explorer allows the ad hoc analysis of payment disparity between e.g. gender and ethnicity. But not only the gap is identified, ADP can pull in performance data (when using ADP Talent Management products, but my assumption here) and market data. So HR professionals don’t have to spend nights and weekends to put a highlight and analysis on the issue of pay disparity, they can also correct the issue in a competent and efficient matter. A good example of the benefits vendors can create for their customers once they have moved to a big data platform. 

 

Camby announces Pay Equity Explorer

More Services Focus – ADP has always been about services, but comparing to the last 3 MOTMs there was more services messaging at MOTM this year – starting with CEO Rodriguez, President Flynn – all the way to product presentation with Ghauri. I asked all if something has changed, and all reiterated that not really – customers care about the services. We learnt that ADP is opening three more services centers, so certainly the vendor is doubling down in the direction. 

 

Demo of ADP Pay Equity Explorer

The TMBC Opportunity – ADP (surprisingly) acquired The Markus Buckingham Company in January (see here for my commentary). Buckingham was at hand with a passionate keynote on addressing the performance management malaise in the overall client base with empowering the team leaders (no surprise – TMBC Standout was built for that). With TMBC Standout ADP has a unique talent management creature (from a product stand point perspective) – that it needs to position right in the crowded engagement, survey, performance management etc. market. It’s only two months, but a key area to watch, stay tuned. 

 

Buckingham on Performance

MyPOV

A good MOTM for ADP, moving in the right direction on many fronts. Customers are adopting new and old solutions quickly, an encouraging sign. No surprise the high ground for ADP remains around payroll – and related offerings – like the mobile application and pay disparity analysts which are / are going to be of high interest in the customer base. At the same time the adoption of these products propels customers to the new ADP platforms, so behind the scenes there is some heavy lifting happening, The fact that there is no noise and reports on any issues around these behind the scenes migrations, is a major accomplishment by ADP as a vendor, and of course of substantial value for its customers. The TMBC acquisition is a new opportunity for ADP for differentiation, but we have to stay tuned on how ADP will position Standout.

On the concern side, ADP may not be moving fast enough. Payroll is super sticky, the average attendance at MOTM was 14 years, few vendors can show that. But ADP should move aggressively into domains like Machine Learning (it certainly can, given it has a big data Cloud), it needs to innovate on user experienced (e.g. speech as the new UI) and sell more Talent Management to customers. To be fair I left MOTM on Monday, so stay tuned for more messages, announcements that may address these areas.

But for now, life is good for ADP customers, what a difference 5 years can make. Stay tuned for what’s ahead.

Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

 

Interaction: GroupM’s Take on Digital

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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I am always interested to see how different lenses on the same subject reveal insights. For example, B2B marketers have a particular skew when it comes to digital and social media – it is hard edged, data driven and technology enabled. This is particularly true for large scale tech companies – but is an approach that has been resonating across industries for some time. B2C marketing, on the other hand, operates in a high velocity world that can turn on a tweet – responsiveness is no longer just a customer service issue but one that impacts the entire value chain.

We are, after all, ever closer to our customers than ever before.

Social and digital media, however, often feels like it operates in a bubble. An ever-increasing bubble it seems, but a bubble nonetheless. When I watch Gruen, for example, I struggle to recall even the most popular or widely discussed TV commercials shown – my habits have now been so deeply skewed by on-demand viewing and timeshifting that TV by timetable seems so last century.

But this is merely the bubble that we choose. The lens that we select.

And there are movements and trends that continue in their own parallel universe that operate at different speeds.

The GroupM Interaction 2017 report is interesting particularly because it applies a media lens across everything from ecommerce to fake news, television to bandwidth. I particularly like the section on privacy and the impacts that widespread security breaches are having on consumers’ sense of trust.

The report identifies four creative challenges facing both brands and agencies:

1. Getting the attention of the consumer in a low attention world. As the buyer pushes the seller towards viewability, the consumer is pushing the brand to greater ‘watchability.’
2. Meeting the costs and measurement implications of the constant iterations of formats and functionality.
3. Finding the balance of enough variation to meet the needs of ever finer segments without undermining the overall brand proposition. (The Marriott Hotel Bogota has 57 images on Expedia.com. Marriott / Starwood operates over 7000 properties. That’s a lot of images.)
4. The creation of new classes of content for e commerce environments.

While I can agree on the surface with these challenges, I wonder really whether our attention spans truly are shrinking – do we really have the attention span of a goldfish? And if this is not true, what does this mean for the remaining three challenges?

I have a sense that we are consuming ever-larger volumes of media each and every day – but it’s not necessarily in the format and channel that lends itself to the kind of tracking and measurement that business clients have come to expect.

A recent article from BBC Health questions the notion of the shrinking attention span by unearthing the starting point for this theory – a Microsoft report referencing the Statistic Brain website. Apparently there is no evidence pointing towards a shrinking attention span, nor support for the widely held view that goldfish have attention spans. In fact, Dr Gemma Briggs from Open University suggests that attention is entirely contextual – ”How we apply our attention to different tasks depends very much about what the individual brings to that situation”.

And that brings us back to the question of lenses and touches on the topic of Fake News – a subject also covered in the GroupM report. One of the suggestions in the report points towards the emergence of a “purpose driven media” and an incentive structure created to drive this:

The most shared and most monetized stories come from authentic news sources. A way of decreasing the incentives to the bad guys is to increase the incentives to the good guys. A simple adjustment in the revenue sharing model would go a long way.

And that’s where the future of media becomes extremely interesting. Given the emergence of organisations like Sleeping Giants, a purpose driven media may be a necessary development to help restore trust, authenticity and – dare I say it – respect in the media and advertising industry.

Download the Interaction 2017 report here.

New York SportsBiz Networking Event on May 4th

Russell Scibetti

Founding Editor, The Business of Sports
The Business of Sports

My name is Russell Scibetti and I have an extensive background in sports business, including CRM and database marketing, interactive and digital marketing, social media, corporate sponsorships and activation, and applied market research. From 2007 to 2014, I worked for Arizona State Athletics, Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers) and the New York Jets to manage and implement CRM, database marketing, market research and other technology-based sales and marketing initiatives. In 2014, I joined KORE Software as their VP of Product Strategy, where I am responsible for the strategic vision, planning and development of the KORE ProSports Ticketing, Sponsorship and Suites/Premium software products. I earned my MBA in Sports Business from the W.P. Carey…...

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Microsoft Teams - What Office 365 Has Been Waiting For

Alan Lepofsky

Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Alan Lepofsky - VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research. With almost two decades of experience in the collaboration software industry, Lepofsky helps organizations improve the way their employees work together to get their jobs done. Lepofsky’s primary research area The Future of Work, focuses on: integrating collaboration and business processes (Purposeful Collaboration), structuring work via Social Task Management, leveraging analytics and digital assistants to work more productively, the strategic impact of mobile computing on business transformation, and measuring workforce culture based on Digital Proficiency instead of age. Twitter: @alanlepoLinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alanlepo     , Title: Big IdeasIntelligent Collaboration: The Intersection of…...

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Microsoft first introduced their new collaboration tool Microsoft Teams (they call it a chat-based workspace) back in Nov 2016 as a preview release. Four months and over 100 product enhancements later, this week they made the first official version available to Office 365 business subscribers. Microsoft says there are more than 85 million active users of Office 365, and since the November preview, more than 50,000 organizations (they don’t report how many users) have started using Microsoft Teams, which is available in 181 markets and 19 languages.

You can read the blog post from Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Office team for all the details from the launch, and below is a collection of my observations that you can scroll through.

Choices. Choice. Choices.

The Group Messaging market, or as Constellation Research calls it Conversational Business Platforms (CBP) is highly competitive. In the last 3 months alone there have been launches of Cisco Spark, Slack Enterprise Grid, a preview release of IBM’s Watson Workspace and an early adopter program for Google Hangouts Chat. Next week at the Enterprise Connect conference the traditional Unified Communication vendors such as Ring Central/Glip, ALE Rainbow, Unify Circuit, and others will be announcing their latest news. Add to that products including Convo, Flock (which just raised another $25M), HiBox, Intellinote, Ryver and Zinc and, let’s not forget about Workplace by Facebook and you can see that organizations have a wide variety of choices.

Microsoft Teams Starts Off Strong

For an initial release, Microsoft Teams is already very robust. It provides:

• Threaded conversations with rich text including custom gifs (make your own cartoons)
• Voice and video calling (I believe up to 80 people in a meeting)
• Integration with Office 365 apps such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Planner and SharePoint
• Calendar integration and meeting scheduling
• Highly customizable, add your own tabs along the top of each channel for the applications you want
• Lots of security and compliance standards: SOC 1, SOC 2, EU Model Clauses, ISO27001 and HIPAA, as well as support for audit log search, eDiscovery and legal holds.
• Accessibility features including support for screen readers, high contrast and keyboard-only navigation
• There are already 150+ 3rd party integrations and bots

That’s quite an impressive list for a 1.0 product and shows that Microsoft is taking Teams very seriously. I view Teams as what Office 365 should have been from the start… a single user experience that brings together multiple Microsoft (and partner) products/features allowing people to focus more on the work and less on what product they are in.

Still Need: Deeper Integration and Polish

While Teams is very good for an initial release there are still several areas where it needs more functionality or polish. 

• The OneNote and Planner integrations are quite rudimentary. You can not convert (or copy) a threaded conversation into a note, nor create a note and broadcast a link into the channel. You can’t create a Planner task from the conversation stream nor are updates to Planner tasks broadcast into the stream. In the current incarnation, these apps are simply tabs in a channel that allow you to access the applications, but there is very little integration and they operate as silos.
• I don’t see a way to mute or hide conversations, so busy channels can get quite full
• While you can save favourite conversations, I don’t see a way to get a permalink to one so that you can send a link to someone in email or chat, or add it to a calendar invitation.
• YouTube videos launch into a separate window instead of playing inline
• There are no hashtags for grouping similar messages
• Currently Microsoft Teams is limited to internal use only, meaning you can not invite people outside of your organization into a team. For external communication, Microsoft still recommends using a Yammer community. Microsoft expects to have external guest access available at the end of Q2.

My main issue with Microsoft Teams is that while it is built using Office 365 Groups, conversations across Yammer, Outlook Groups, are Teams are not overlapping. What I mean is, if you have an Office 365 group named Marketing, you can't post in a Microsoft Team named Marketing and have that same conversation appear in Yammer and in Outlook Groups. This will lead to confusion over which application to use and when. I would like to see a more consistent experience across all of Microsoft's communication and collaboration applications.

Becoming An Intelligent Workspace

Microsoft is making good strides in adding Artificial Intelligence (AI) features to Office, but I’ve yet to see anything added to Teams. Compare that to IBM’s Watson Workspace which uses AI to classify posts by type (such as question or task) as well as provide a daily summary of key conversations. I look forward to seeing what Microsoft does with their Cognitive Services and Cortana to automate workflows, filter information, provide intelligent recommendations, classify images and files, etc.

What This Means for Customers

Two years ago Slack gave the enterprise collaboration market a wake up call. Despite the availability of enterprise social networks such as Yammer, Socialcast, Jive, IBM Connections and others, it was clear that small groups of people (teams) wanted an easier way to collaborate. Slack’s popularity led to several “clone products” as well as forced IBM, Google and Microsoft to answer back with products of their own. Integration with the Office 365 portfolio, the huge Microsoft partner ecosystem, and the fact that it’s included in their license makes Microsoft Teams a compelling product for Microsoft customers. However, that’s also its weakness. Being part of Office 365 is not what everyone is looking for. Customers who want a simple chat client without the overhead or complexity of Office 365 may opt to look at one of the other Conversational Business Platforms solutions.

Event Report - Workforce Vision 2017 - After restart and takeoff, time for the boosters

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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We had the opportunity to attend the Workforce Software Vision 2017 user conference held in New Orleans from March 13th till 15th 2017. The even was well attended with over 260 attendees, managing a collective 500k workers. 

 

 

Here is my event video of the event:

 

No time to watch – here is the 1 slide update:

 

Event Report - Google Next 2017 - Good progress by Google - but is it enough? from Holger Mueller

If you want more details – read on:

Focus on Product and more – Always good to see vendors focusing on product, in the case of Workforce Software, CEO Morini shared that the vendor will add 80 more developers. For a 600 employee company a substantial investment. Likewise Workforce Software has shown progress on the partner side (more large SIs are on board), it appears the reseller relationship with SAP is going well, and lastly the vendor unveiled a new implementation methodology to help customers go live quicker.

 

Morini introduces the connected Workforce

Roadmap Transparency – In the past Workforce (like many other HCM vendors) was not a poster child for transparency, luckily for customers, this has changed. And Workforce shared a three year roadmap, with the usual caveats, but quite a difference to what was shared two years ago (the last user conference I was able to attend). No surprise – unification is a key theme across the coming release, with some vertical capabilities and most importantly a much needed UI improvement. 

 

Workforce Software 2016 in review

Hard work – will it be enough? – No question Workforce has made a lot of progress, but the question remains, can the vendor catchup with the 800 pound gorilla of the industry, Kronos. In general the speed of vendors in Workforce Management is increasing, with a strong focus on innovation, so Workforce’s task is not getting easier. But plenty of room to differentiate, but the vendor now needs to get accelerate in delivery across the board, hence the blog post title.
 

Broady opens Workforce Vision 2017

 

MyPOV 

Good progress by the new Workforce Software management team, no doubt. With more investment into product, focus on implementation speed, more partners, successful reseller relationships, and more – the vendor is executing the right strategies. Now they have to materialize and make a difference in the near future.

On the concern side, Workforce Software has to bring together multiple platform at different levels, from architecture, data centers all the way to UI. And it needs to deliver the next generation of its product, taking advantage of cloud, microservices etc. and for all the talk on engagement, it must improve its user experience. The days of clumsy screens for power users are counted. To be fair, the vendor has realized that and plans a UI overhaul, architecture change and other improvements.

If it all will be enough to change the distance to the market leader, it is too early to tell, with no doubt Workforce Software has positioned itself much better than where the vendor was a few years ago. We will have to check in again, stay tuned


More on Workforce Software:
 

• News Analysis - WorkForce Software Announces Global Reseller Agreement with SAP - read here
• Progress Report - WorkForce Software powers into more Workforce Management - but needs to watch the Fundamentals - read here

More on Workforce Management:
 

• Event Report - Kronos KronosWorks - Solid progress and big things loom - read here
• Progress Report - Ceridian makes good progress, the basics are done now its about next gen capabilities - read here
• Event Report - Kronos KronosWorks - New Versions, new UX, more mobile - faster implementations - read here
• Event Report - Ceridian Insights - Momentum and Differentiation Building - read here

 

Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.

2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

Mar 22: Join Microsoft CIO Jim Dubois and Mott Macdonald’s Simon Denton on how to achieve success with Office 365

Working with various organizations worldwide, I’ve had the great opportunity to help facilitate sustainable Office 365 adoption. On March 22, I’m excited to host a webinar along with Microsoft CIO Jim Dubois,  Mott Macdonald’s Simon Denton and Microsoft Fast Track Sharon Liu as we unpack what it takes to achieve success with Office 365.

Jim will share advice on how to enable digital transformation with Office 365 and Simon will walk through how he helped his colleagues boost productivity by moving to Office 365. Lastly,  Sharon will demo the Fast Track resources for starting your adoption and achieving your goals.

What are you waiting for? Register now!