Can an 800-pound gorilla become agile!

For the first time since publically being taken private in 2007 by private equity, Ceridian finally opened up to the analyst community about what they have been doing in the HCM space for the last 4-5 years.

With most of the executive relatively new to Ceridian (none with the exception of the Canadian president Dave Mackay have over 10 years of tenure with Ceridian), they claim to have solidified the management team that has seen significant turnover since 2007 (4 CEO’s alone in 4 years). The present management consists of many HCM leaders including Bart Valdez ex First Advantage and Howard Tarnoff (Workforce Management Sales Guru).

What they have managed to do in the quiet time is consolidate the product line (eliminating versions of payroll), move products more to SaaS offerings and realign the sales force so you do not have different sales people calling on the same account for different products. The Health and Productivity Solutions, Benefits, HR / Payroll/ HRO and Tax business has all been combined into one business unit called HRS (Human Resource Services).

Although the HCM product offering accounts for approximately 50% of the 1.5 B they logged in sales , the other divisions (Stored Value Solutions - loyalty cards and Comdata – predominately fleet management ) account for the 34% with international ( Canada and UK accounting for the remaining 16%).

Their Canadian operation has always had strong leadership and positioning in the market playing 1 in every 5 Canadians. This line of business has also taken responsibility for their workforce management launch and their RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) line of business, which is positioned for growth when the US economy turns. As one of Canada’s top employers, based on several independent ratings, they share a unique culture and workplace that needs to be replicated in the US marketplace.

Although traditionally slow to innovate, Ceridian is banking on their relationship with Dayforce to drive innovation and change the game. The Dayforce product for time and attendance, scheduling, budgeting, task management and workplace optimization has private labeled as Inview Workforce Management and is in the process of being integrated to their core payroll / HRIS and entire HRS business line. Ultimately, Ceridian will consolidate all products to the Inview product line (Inview workforce management, Inview Payroll etc.. )

The Inview product line is seeing incredible market traction and adoption which is very exciting. It clearly shows that the market can accommodate another 800 pound gorilla like the WFM leader Kronos and that both Kronos and Dayforce / Ceridian are doing something really essential in the marketplace. They have both spent considerable effort in the last few years making workforce management simpler and easier to use. These have significantly impacted the install times, simplified the user experience and improved the reporting.

Inview is currently averaging 3-5 weeks from a client signing a contract to having them go live. In older platforms this can take months or on some ERP players even years. This is a game changer because integration and implementation used to count on 3-4 dollars from implementation consultants for every dollar spent on licensing fees. Now the consulting fees are up front in loading data in for testing, configuring and pushing the systems live and consulting revenue is minimal. This will have an impact on total cost of ownership (making it more feasible) and also impact the large WFM consulting firms like Knightsbridge / Axsium). Seeing this writing on the wall, we suspect was the main reason that Ceridian recently acquired Versult. Moving more into upfront business planning they are able to identify client needs in advance, configure a live demo (i.e. 10 stores) and then help convert them to a client. This proactive process also significantly shortens the sales cycle.

One gaping hole that still exists in the Ceridian solution is the lack of an integrated talent management system. With both ADP and Ultimate having fairly complete and robust suites, Ceridian will be playing catch up in this space as well. Look for them to partner ( like they did with DayForce ) or buy .

David Ossip and Dayforce continue to be the thorn in Krono’s side. With the relationship with Ceridian they also become a thorn to ADP ( who is a Krono’s partner) . With David’s third start up in the WFM vertical, every HR vendor should be looking at how this product is changing the HCM landscape and admire the innovation, the time to market , the ability to make partnership works ( no one else has done this nearly as successful as DayForce) and his pure passion for the space.


So can an 800 pound Gorilla be agile…. Looks like Ceridian is … we can wait and see what comes from Kronos and ADP who currently own the space.