Like all previous Dayforce user conferences (Ceridian Insights previously) I would make a point to talk to Dayforce customers and prospects to get their perspective. On the customer side, I only heard glowing reviews (which is not always normal at these kinds of events) and from the prospect side, I saw many excited people who were planning to move from their current cloud provider to Dayforce. What surprised me most was that most prospects and existing customers that I spoke to were going all in with the suite (as in most if not all modules). It seems that the notion of using a system that is built on a single data model really resonated with these buyers. Many said that they were tired of integration difficulties with their current provider/providers and wanted a solution that would eliminate that headache which led them to Dayforce.
Growth
The last time I attended Insights they had 6,272 customers live and now they have 6,730 customers with a 97%+ gross revenue retention rate. That is 458 new live customers in the past 12 months! On top of that it was interesting to me that over 46% of the new customers signed up for the full suite – a number that was quite impressive. The revenue goal that they stated last year was to get to $2B in annual revenue in 2025 – last year they were at $1.2B and this year $1.7B so it looks like they will achieve that goal. All of this is very impressive when you understand that Dayforce is the newest HCM, WFM, and Payroll solution in the market.
Their customer base is broad ranging from small and mid-market clients (up to 1,000 employees) to many more with employee counts in the thousands. One of its largest customers Henkel has over 50,000 employees and operates in 60 countries.
Dayforce was conceived as a single application and a single database to run across the entire employee experience. In 2011, they started to build out the application starting with the highest value and most frequently used features. With each one of the features, they were specific about identifying which KPIs at an organization they could impact and how they could measure those KPI’s so that they could quantify in hard dollar value the benefit to the organization.
The product started with Time and Attendance, Payroll and HR Self-Service, and a small amount of customers. Modules and features we continually added and customer adoption grew exponentially.
The Dayforce Promise
Dayforce recognizes that the world of work is extremely complex. With competing priorities like complex compliance issues across multiple jurisdictions, employee health and wellbeing, the gig/contractor/freelance economy, multigenerational teams, virtual work and the complexity of paying a global workforce, AI, and more, it is just a mind-boggling set of priorities that all need to be balanced. Trying to balance things like Employee Flexibility with Rigorous Compliance, or Employee Empathy while needing Worker Productivity, or trying to balance Employee Expectations with Budget Realities, the task at hand it very difficult.
Dayforce’s promise is “Makes Work Life Better”. Their goal in developing this system is to be able to provide a more productive and efficient workforce while conquering complexity to deliver quantifiable value for the customer. They have tools to measure how the solution brings down costs while improving the work-life experience.
What’s New in Dayforce for 2024/2025?
In 2024, they have added Dayforce AI Agents, Dayforce Strategic Workforce Planning, Dayforce Communications, Dayforce Integration Studio and more. They also went live with Dayforce Co-Pilot.
The new product innovations announced at Dayforce Discover were intended to provide simplicity at scale focused on 3 areas:
- Smarter intelligence to help realize quantifiable value
- Stronger workforce planning and compliance support to operate with confidence
- Better experiences to unlock people potential
Smarter Intelligence
At last year’s event, the big announcement was Dayforce Co-Pilot (which is a Large Language AI Model) was coming to Dayforce in 2024. While many vendors have been speaking about new AI capabilities, Dayforce is unique for these reasons:
- Clean – Dayforce is built on a Single Data Model meaning that your data does not have to be moved to a separate module which keeps all of the data intact.
- Private – Dayforce features Secure Data Isolation.
- Secure – Dayforce has always done the difficult stuff first by focusing on Strict Data Governance.
Each instance of the AI model is specific to each customer to ensure there is no data intermingling which alleviates the compliance concern.
Co-Pilot is now available to all Dayforce customers globally.
Dayforce expands its Intelligence Platform
Dayforce has added two other elements to their Intelligence capabilities, AI agents to automate tasks and AI driven Predictive Insights.
AI Agents
Autonomous agents are the next level of sophistication with AI. AI agents perform multiple steps to complete complex tasks automatically for a user. During the Innovation Keynote at Discover, they showed a task where a simple PowerPoint deck was presented to the agent. The agent then took the content of the deck and created a complete training course on its own. They cited another example where the agent helped an employee identify other workers who had free time in their schedule and had similar skills so that they could swap shifts. Not only was the agent able to identify qualified workers who were available to take the shift, it took care of the communication process and scheduling. These are just a couple of samples of what is possible. In Dayforce they will have a host of agents across the suite that will cover a number of areas, these will include:
- HR Agents
- Pay Agents
- Time Agents
- Analytics Agents
- Talent Agents
According to the Dayforce Press Release: “From swapping shifts to creating new learning and development courses, Dayforce AI Agents will provide hyper-personalized and intuitive work experiences that will drive quantifiable value for employees and HR managers alike,” said Joe Korngiebel, Chief Strategy, Product, and Technology Officer, Dayforce, Inc. “With our deep expertise in compliance and commitment to ethical AI principles, Dayforce is paving the way for intelligent systems that not only help streamline operations and drive efficiency but also make work life better for people.”
In addition, Dayforce AI Agents will help transform organizational operations by:
- Driving workforce productivity: Dayforce AI Agents proactively anticipate scenarios such as a paid time off request, HR case creation, or other common business processes. By understanding employee intent through natural language processing, they can initiate actions to achieve desired outcomes swiftly and efficiently.
- Simplifying complex tasks: Dayforce AI Agents effectively handle time-consuming, multi-step tasks like writing job descriptions or swapping shifts, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives that drive growth.
- Orchestrating intelligent agent flows: The Dayforce platform smoothly coordinates multiple Dayforce AI Agents, helping to address customers’ unique needs and conduct tasks with precision – all while keeping people in the decision-making loop.
These will be rolling out in 2025.
Strategic Workforce Planning
This is an AI-based solution that looks into Dayforce data to make the complex task of future workforce planning simple.
According to the Dayforce Press release: Strategic workforce planning is a challenging task for organizations due to the multitude of influencing factors, including local legal requirements, global compliance complexities, skill and competency scarcities, talent supply and demand needs, and a variety of company-specific labor considerations. Organizations today often turn to disparate vendors, but – without a single source of truth – crucial information can get lost or distorted, making it difficult for leaders to see the full picture of their business. Fragmented user experiences and manual processes from these disparate and other legacy systems make this critical work time-consuming, keeping leaders from staying agile.
With Dayforce Strategic Workforce Planning, customers will benefit from:
- Centralized real-time data: Access accurate real-time pay and employee data – such as the supply and demand of worker skills, absence and overtime trends, and fluctuating labor demand – and combine it with third-party sources, giving one holistic view when analyzing problems with both internal and external inputs.
- Automation: Assist with reducing the cumbersome task of manually compiling data from various areas – including collective bargaining agreements, employee seniority, skilled workforce details by region – and help customers draw deeper insights from this data with machine learning-enhanced demand forecasting.
- Elevated user experience: Help accomplish goals and associated KPIs with a conversational user interface, which makes manipulating data, crafting workflows, and creating visual data representations simple when modeling out different scenarios.
- Agility and accuracy: Keep track of variances in costs and see a clear line of sight into the plan through AI-enhanced predictions and “what if” scenarios.
This will also be available in 2025.
Dayforce Communications
This offering is designed to help consolidate and automate communications with past, current, and future talent.
According to Dayforce: HR teams are burdened by the manual creation of communications with candidates, employees, and alumni talent. Many legacy communication tools in the market serve niche purposes, requiring companies to repopulate written materials to each platform and hold multiple, costly licenses for disparate systems.
By contrast, Dayforce Communications caters to the full employee journey by enabling smooth, scalable multi-channel communications. For example, customers can create engagement-building communities and peer-to-peer chats, notify frontline workers about annual performance via AI-enhanced Dayforce Hub messaging, or alert prospective employees about upcoming job fairs via email. It will empower Dayforce customers to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time while helping streamline work, reduce time spent, and lower system ownership costs.
“The nature of today’s workforce accelerated the need for efficient, effective, and secure communication across the entire employee lifecycle,” said Joe Korngiebel, Chief Strategy, Product, and Technology Officer, Dayforce, Inc. “By using an AI-enhanced approach, Dayforce Communications will fill that need by helping streamline and automate a crucial yet time-consuming process, expanding on the Dayforce promise to deliver simplicity at scale.”
Dayforce Communications will benefit companies across all sectors and sizes, especially frontline industries as they often face more challenges communicating in deskless workplaces where mobile devices outnumber computers. According to Dayforce research, nearly four in ten surveyed frontline workers cannot communicate with their team through a dedicated work app and 23% do not have a central place to get information about what is happening in the company. Reaching employees where they are is essential for driving engagement, retention, and productivity. Dayforce Communications will help ensure communication is equitable and accessible by providing a centralized, easy way to share information with a high volume of people.
Dayforce Communications will be available to Dayforce customers starting in 2025.
Dayforce Integration Studio
Dayforce Integration Studio allows users to integrate other platforms like their CRM or ERP right into the Dayforce platform in simple ways that do not involve heavy lifting by IT to build custom integrations. Dayforce provides 150+ prebuilt connectors or their “build your own” studio tools to allow for fast and reliable integrations in a very short period of time.
Talent driven scheduling
The new scheduling capabilities combine scheduling of employees while keeping an eye on their current development. Once a manager has completed the schedule, the system will look into their as well as their employee's development plans and will determine if either they or their employees are falling behind on their learning plans. If they are, the system will suggest training sessions inside their schedule and even assign mentors if applicable. They say that this enhanced scheduling with learning will be a key way for companies to keep their workforce skilled for the future.
Shift Marketplace
In the current economic environment, workers require options to improve their income by picking up more work either with their current employer or by taking on a second job. Employers who can offer the ability for their employees to pick up extra shifts within their own company are therefore a much more desirable option to employees. In fact, recent Dayforce research indicates that 90% of employees would leave their current employer if another would offer better scheduling flexibility and opportunities.
Dayforce now offers employees the ability to browse available open shifts either at their current location or nearby locations to enhance their schedule. Not only does this help the employee’s needs but it also helps employers fill open shifts with their own talent.
New Dayforce User Interface (UI)
Dayforce is introducing a new user experience that they say is modern and adaptive, and can anticipate users' needs by creating more personalized interactions that can improve accessibility and inclusivity. The user experience will allow end users to switch between the old and new versions to help them learn the new system while allowing them to find things easily while they adjust to the new interface.
Dayforce Flex Work
This solution was announced last year and it is now live in a number of states and will continue to expand. The problem this solves is to help companies find short-term contingent workers who have the right skills for the job quickly and efficiently.
Contingent workers sign up to the Dayforce Flex Work application where their skills get vetted by Dayforce. They then become W2 employees of Dayforce.
When a company needs to fill a shift or more with vetted workers, they simply post a shift on the platform and Dayforce fills the schedule. The employee completes the shift and is paid immediately by Dayforce through the Dayforce Wallet. This is an attractive proposition for workers who would like to pick up more work quickly as well as employers who have an immediate need whether that be to fill some open shifts, gear up for a busy season or anything else.
My Take
I have been covering the Dayforce solution since the early years (2013) when they were still yet to introduce recruiting and other basic modules. Here we are, 11 years later and not only is this a complete suite, it is filled with innovations such as Strategic Workforce Planning, Flex Work and so much more. They are truly developing around their vision of making work life better with very sophisticated AI now in production, and more to come with their AI agents due to be released very soon. They have truly developed a suite that does the hard stuff very well and most importantly, very efficiently allowing the end user more time to focus on their job instead of being bogged down with menial tasks.
