After a meaty and memorable Ceridian Insights conference in Vegas, Pat and I are crammed onto our Southwest Air flight heading home. (At least we scored the exit row – many thanks to the illuminati for arranging that!) After countless sessions and a myriad of product demos, Ceridian ended the conference incredibly well today and let us all fade away from the city of Lost Wages, NV. (See the recap of our day one adventures at Insights.)
The identity of Ceridian is certainly in transition from Service Bureau to Technology Shop. None of the executives I talked to (and we got some great c-suite access!) thought they’d end up as far on the Tech Shop end of the spectrum as some of their competitors like Workday or Ultimate Software. Instead, I consistently got a ¾ Tech, ¼ Service Bureau response for two reasons: 1) Ceridian still has a significant installed client base that needs to be serviced and 2) this creates an institutional ability to repurpose that DNA towards insulating their HCM clients from the shaper edges of high-end technology.
The best quote of the conference came from Kim Hasler, Sales Manager out of Chicago, in trying to summarize the meme of our senior executive meetings: “We’re SaaS with Service, not Service with sass.”
Here’s what’s interesting – this means they’re not taking the predictable SaaS path that I expected when they completed their divorce from the Signature mainframe. According to the folks we spoke to, this is more closely aligned in my mind with the old Application Service Provider (ASP) model but with a SaaS twist. I know this statement will be controversial, so I invite anyone who has better data to set me straight (come on, I double-dog dare you!) Here’s where my view comes from:
1) ASP: Every client has their own database. This isn’t co-mingled, true multi-tenant as I understand it.
SaaS: This does not mean they are allowing customization. That’s off the table.
2) ASP: There will be multiple versions of the application in production at any one time. We heard they will support up to three versions back.
Saas: Releases are cumulative, so if someone’s three releases back, they can take the latest one and not have to step through three separate upgrades (ERP Hell, this is your 1st sin)
3) SaaS: All new functionality is released dormant and users activate what they want (except compliance related stuff, naturally)
4) ASP: Implementation resources grab pre-configured database “templates” from the shelf based upon a client’s industry and requirements and then install from that “starter-loaf.” (Does that reference even make sense? All I can think of is that stupid Friendship Bread I kept getting back before I stopped answering my doorbell.)
5) Saas: General Ledger runs in memory. Okay, that’s not really a SaaS vs. ASP thing, but you’ve got to admit, it’s pretty cool to see that render real-time. (Yep, I’m a geek!)
Here are some more interesting developments from the second and third days of Insights:
Document Management:
Following a bit behind ADPs 2012 innovative product launch, Ceridian has now thrown their hat in to the Document Management arena. This is such a smart solution to a serious problem that’s not even on the radar of many an employer. After all, since our employees are also consumers, they’re quickly becoming aware of their risks and rights with PHI and other sensitive data. The regulations are only breeding like rabbits on many levels: state, federal –and most aggressively– internationally.
This will dramatically change how employer HR teams will have to operate. Here are Ceridian’s 7 recommended rules. (The passionate Product Manager was moving rather fast with the slides, so my transcription may not be verbatim!)
1) Collect only required information
2) Restrict distribution methods and access
3) Provide only the minimum data required when requested
4) Ensure data is up to date and relevant
5) Provide individuals with access to their information for review and updating
6) Retain information only for as long as it’s needed and dispose of it safely
7) Ensure that information is protected from unauthorized access
So, here’s what comes next:
It’s going to be really fascinating as my team gets to help Jimmy Carter the inevitable debate at our employer clients on the why the million dollar IT Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions they’ve just installed are not sufficient or efficient for this particular data set. With both groups typically being shared service groups within employers, it could quickly turn into a political turf war!
Here’s a brief outline of why HR tech may be the answer to what has typically been seen as an IT problem:
– HR data typically is exposed reporting relationship as opposed to role. As a director, I see my department’s salaries, but not all departments’ compensation data.
– For data that’s exposed by role, it’s often also exposed to the data owner as well. Think marriage certificates. I need to be able to see, upload or change mine and someone in HR must have access as well. So a security setup based on role, such as Benefits Manager, needs to more accurately be: Benefits Manager +1. But, as one more twist, perhaps a summarization of data may need to be provided to layers of leadership such as a live dashboard of Incomplete Enrollments in Benefits due to missing documentation. (Benefits Manager +1 w/ dash?)
– Most importantly, in almost every organization I’ve worked, there is often a lag between the freshness of the data in an IT security environment and what’s happening in HR. After all, who’s closer to the termination events, promotions, etc. than HR (since they’re usually holding a very scared manager’s hand throughout those crucial conversations)?
– However, it’s totally legitimate for IT to push back on this replication of security rights management into another department. Perhaps this will firmly bring back our long missed, HRIT job-pathing!
Not surprisingly, Ceridian is looking to charge for this service based on a PEPM (per employee per month) fee tied to certain data storage limits. It will be interesting to see organizations try to split their compliance budget between ECM and HR Document Management while seeking the Rosetta Stone of CapEx to PEPM conversion. I pity the CFO who has to referee this fight.
Dayforce, Dayforce, Dayforce
It might be a slightly sad time to be a legacy Ceridian product owner at Insights. There is so much buzz and momentum around the new flagship product, other products were almost invisible. A lot of that buzz is honestly earned by the SaaS application, Dayforce HCM, especially the closer your needs are to the more foundational and transactional aspects of HRIS. David Ossip has said Dayforce is the first innovation in Payroll in the last 30 years and his hyperbole is not all bravado.
If an employer has complexity around Workforce Management and/or Payroll, they would be well-served with some of the seriously cool integration happening here. I think back to when I was managing a restaurant to pay for my undergrad and I never had all the data needed when I tried to calculate payroll. There were always missed punches, but more importantly, there were major compliance issues that I just whiffed covering. For example, since a lot of my cooks worked overtime each week, (such a hard role to fill well!) when someone got a spot bonus for taking an extra weekend shift– if I had even had a clue about labor law– I “should” have gone back and re-calculated their overtime wage and the store payroll to include the diluted extra earnings over the periods it was being paid and then retro-ed any previous periods. Yeah, not happening. Totally ignorant. I was 19 and already a coffee addict trying to stay awake during classes at Mizzou. Yesterday, my team saw that same scenario demoed in a live system where everything was addressed automatically and in real-time. No server calls. No mainframe special processing. It was pretty sharp. If this is your battlefield, there’s a new warrior.
Of course, there’s some more work to be done or released around Talent Management, Benefits and the more strategic areas of HRIS. Some of it is just waiting to be released like the PPACA module arriving in Q3. (Stay tuned! We’ll be hitting other upcoming Q3 vendor innovations in an upcoming blog a couple weeks from now for you, our faithful and true believers!)
We’ll continue to watch the development of this application and all other HR Technology so you have a sounding board for those super-important decisions you’ll need to make. If you have any specific questions or want to monitor our education as it happens, please follow us at @HRTechKaiser or hit the subscribe button nearby to have this content pushed to your inbox. If there are questions we can help research for you, please shoot them our way (mkaiser@lockton.com) or comment to this posting.