IBM Software
Business Analytics
Professional Services
ADP extends its lead in
human capital
management solutions
Revolutionizing the market by embedding analytics
technologies into its cloud-based solutions
Overview
When you are already the leading service provider in your industry,
where do you go from there? How do you maintain your advantage
over the competition and stay ahead of the game?
The need
When you are already a leader in your
field, how do you keep moving forward?
ADP decided to develop new solutions
that would help clients transform
their understanding of human capital
management by embedding analytics into
the company’s cloud-based solutions.
The solution
ADP built a standardized analytics
platform based on scalable, extensible
IBM technologies that can be easily
integrated with a wide range of its
products. Users access the new analytics
tools via their existing ADP web-based
product solutions.
The benefit
Clients gain a quick view of key metrics
that help them understand and better
manage their human capital. Ultimately,
ADP will be able to harness big data
analytics techniques to detect trends and
patterns, and offer recommendations as
to best practices across its client base.
This was a challenge facing ADP – a leader in human capital
management (HCM) solutions. The company’s HCM solutions are
used by more than 620,000 companies in more than 125 countries,
and its leading role as an HCM solutions provider in this space is
impressive. Approximately one in six US employees are paid via
ADP’s payroll services. This market-leading position has contributed
to ADP’s seven consecutive years as one of the top five financial data
services companies on FORTUNE magazine’s “World’s Most Admired
Companies” list, and three top rankings within its category in the last
four years.1
Marc Rind, Vice President of Product Development for ADP,
comments: “We offer a very robust set of solutions across the spectrum
of Human Capital Management, and we have built a very successful
business around them. But we have to keep innovating if we want to
continue to meet the needs of our clients.”
Continuous innovation
ADP wanted its solutions to offer more than just highly efficient ways
to manage HCM transactions. The company wanted to give clients
greater insights into their workforces and help them make smarter
decisions.
“Take payroll, for example,” says Rind. “To process millions of
paychecks each week, we utilize a great deal of data about our clients’
employees, job roles, pay scales, compensation agreements, tenure, and
so on.
“Of course, this data is necessary for the transactional side of payroll
management. But it’s also potentially very interesting from an analytical
point of view. If we can reveal trends and patterns in the data that give
our clients new insights, we can be an even more valuable business
partner.”
IBM Software
Business Analytics
Professional Services
Embedded analytics
Solution components
Software
•
IBM® Cognos® Business Intelligence
10.2
The company decided to build an analytics platform that could be
embedded into its existing solutions, giving clients the ability to view
key metrics in real time whenever they log into the ADP web portal.
Rind comments: “We have a suite of solutions aimed at our mid-size
clients, with more than 50 employees to our largest global clients often
with more than 100,000 employees. Finding a single analytics platform
that was flexible enough to support all these solutions, and scalable
enough to support hundreds of thousands of companies with potentially
millions of users, was a major challenge.”
“We needed a proven, enterprise-class solution from a major player
with a viable long-term roadmap. Once we saw the versatility,
extensibility and full feature-set offered by IBM Business Analytics, we
realized that IBM was the best fit for this part of our business.”
Single point of access
ADP developed an offering that enables its solutions to access specific
metrics from an analytics engine based on IBM® Cognos® Business
Intelligence 10.2. These metrics are then displayed within the existing
customized web portal and applications. Each user can decide which
metrics they want to see, which helps them to focus on the most
relevant and useful information for their particular role.
Each metric is displayed on a “tile” which initially shows a simple
trend line with red or green indicators to indicate whether overall
performance is improving or declining. If the user wants more
information, they can click on the tile to expand it and reveal more
detailed insights.
“The user interface is extremely important because most of our users
are HR professionals, not business analysts,” explains Rind. “They
need a quick, clear way to get relevant information, so the flexibility of
presentation is very important. Cognos 10 gives us a good foundation
for presenting data in intuitive ways, and we are working with the
IBM Center for Advanced Visualization to develop our capabilities
even further.”
The road ahead
Rind sees comprehensive analytics as a powerful tool for helping to
answer customers’ key questions: “What are the characteristics of
companies that keep their employees for a long time, compared to
those where turnover is high? What salary and benefits should you
offer a new employee in a particular role? What effect does overtime
have on total productivity? How can organizations retain staff while
adhering to compensation policies?”
IBM Software
Business Analytics
“Going forward, we will
continue to innovate by
helping individual clients
gain insights into their
own data while providing
broader analyses across
other HCM data. With
IBM as our partner, we
are confident that we
will be able to continue
to innovate and develop
new services to meet our
clients’ ever-increasing
demands.”
— Marc Rind, Vice President of Product
Development, ADP
Professional Services
ADP’s volume of clients gives them an extra advantage, according to
Rind. “Our clients are very excited about ADP providing them with
growing capabilities in our analytics platform. The breadth of data to
which ADP has access enables us to provide an amazing opportunity for
our clients to see how they compare to other organizations.”
“We have already taken a significant first step by embedding analytics
into our solutions,” says Rind. “Going forward, we will continue to
innovate by helping individual clients gain insights into their own data
while providing broader analyses across other HCM data. With IBM
as our partner, we are confident that we will be able to continue to
innovate and develop new services to meet our clients’ ever-increasing
demands.”
About ADP
With more than $11 billion in revenues and more than 60 years of
experience, ADP (NASDAQ: ADP) serves approximately 620,000
clients in more than 125 countries. As one of the world’s largest
providers of business outsourcing and human capital management
solutions, ADP offers a wide range of human resource, payroll,
talent management, tax and benefits administration solutions from a
single source, and helps clients comply with regulatory and legislative
changes, such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). ADP’s easy-to-use
solutions for employers provide superior value to companies of all
types and sizes. ADP is also a leading provider of integrated computing
solutions to auto, truck, motorcycle, marine, recreational vehicle, and
heavy equipment dealers throughout the world.
For more information about ADP or to contact a local ADP sales office,
call 1.800.225.5237 or visit the company’s website at www.adp.com
About IBM Business Analytics
IBM Business Analytics software delivers data-driven insights that
help organizations work smarter and outperform their peers. This
comprehensive portfolio includes solutions for business intelligence,
predictive analytics and decision management, performance
management, and risk management.
Business Analytics solutions enable companies to identify and visualize
trends and patterns in areas, such as customer analytics, that can have a
profound effect on business performance. They can compare scenarios,
anticipate potential threats and opportunities, better plan, budget and
forecast resources, balance risks against expected returns and work to
meet regulatory requirements. By making analytics widely available,
organizations can align tactical and strategic decision-making to achieve
business goals.
For further information, please visit ibm.com/business-analytics
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2013
IBM Corporation
Software Group
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Produced in the United States
October 2013
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Footnotes
1. See money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/most-admired/2013/list/
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