We had the opportunity to attend the Ceridian yearly user conference, Insights, held at the Aria in Las Vegas, from the 3rdtill 5th of October 2017. The conference had record attendance with almost 3000 participants and was very well attended from influencers and analysts.
Here is the video summary of the event - with a surprise guest (pardon bad quality - I blame it on the bad Aria Wifi):
Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
Good start in Compensation Management, more innovation in Talent Management– Ceridian has been consistently filling the gaps it had in Talent Management, this year’s turn was Compensation Management. A Talent Management capability that is predominantly measured by how well it can replace the mostly Microsoft Excel based previous solution, is key to manage the biggest cost factor for most enterprises, Compensation. The first version from Ceridian is a good first version, that should allow most enterprises to automate Compensation Management with Dayforce. Ceridian also unveiled its new Learning capability, partnering with Docebo for the content management side of Learning. It’s a good Learning solution, and likely good for Ceridian to partner for his Talent Management area. Overall Talent Management is now pretty complete for Ceridian, a key functional area the vendor has filled in the last 3-4 years, remarkably delivering to the announced roadmap (as it should be – but not always happens in the industry).
Partnership with Microsoft– The probably long term most remarkable announcement at Insights was the partnership with Microsoft. And while it is good to see that Ceridian partners with Microsoft to bring payroll capabilities to Microsoft Dynamics 365, the more key announcement was that Ceridian will use Azure for its international Dayforce deployments. This is key as it allow Ceridian to spend less on CAPEX going to data centers and servers, and likely invest more R&D in product. All SaaS vendors are moving to standard IaaS platforms, so it is good to see that Ceridian is doing the same.
UK Payroll– Not so prominent at the conference, as not so relevant for the North American audience, Ceridian has delivered a UK payroll on Dayforce. But a key event from a good housekeeping perspective, as Ceridian replaces older, legacy systems… and a proof point that the Dayforce payroll architecture can serve not only North America, but also the UK. And while the UK is one of the easier payrolls in the world, it still is a key milestone.
Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn’t show up, check here):
Want to read on? Here you go:
Ceridian Voice– There is not a conference without a voice demo these days, but it looks like Ceridian is ahead of the competition: The vendor showed the most advanced, longest running voice demo of 2017 so far, using an Amazon Alexa and involving a shift swap / trade by an employee. By itself a complex process the demo showed how well suited voice is to make such a process much more intuitive (and likely more efficient) than a traditional enterprise software UI.
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| David Ossip on the core Dayforce rationale |
Much improved, now competitive UI– Ceridian users have in the past not been spoiled by their vendor when it came to UI. But to give credit to the vendor, Ceridian has not stood still and has kept incrementally improving usability and by now completed the move of Silverlight. The last and tricky component was the Scheduler in Workforce Management, and it has now been replaced by a fully functional, intuitive to use and fully browser based scheduler. Well done. Ceridian’s UI is now competitive in the market place.
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| Insights in proving times #VegasStrong |
Good start in Compensation Management, more innovation in Talent Management– Ceridian has been consistently filling the gaps it had in Talent Management, this year’s turn was Compensation Management. A Talent Management capability that is predominantly measured by how well it can replace the mostly Microsoft Excel based previous solution, is key to manage the biggest cost factor for most enterprises, Compensation. The first version from Ceridian is a good first version, that should allow most enterprises to automate Compensation Management with Dayforce. Ceridian also unveiled its new Learning capability, partnering with Docebo for the content management side of Learning. It’s a good Learning solution, and likely good for Ceridian to partner for his Talent Management area. Overall Talent Management is now pretty complete for Ceridian, a key functional area the vendor has filled in the last 3-4 years, remarkably delivering to the announced roadmap (as it should be – but not always happens in the industry).
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| Ceridian is Cloud Company |
Partnership with Microsoft– The probably long term most remarkable announcement at Insights was the partnership with Microsoft. And while it is good to see that Ceridian partners with Microsoft to bring payroll capabilities to Microsoft Dynamics 365, the more key announcement was that Ceridian will use Azure for its international Dayforce deployments. This is key as it allow Ceridian to spend less on CAPEX going to data centers and servers, and likely invest more R&D in product. All SaaS vendors are moving to standard IaaS platforms, so it is good to see that Ceridian is doing the same.
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| Dayforce Scheduler |
UK Payroll– Not so prominent at the conference, as not so relevant for the North American audience, Ceridian has delivered a UK payroll on Dayforce. But a key event from a good housekeeping perspective, as Ceridian replaces older, legacy systems… and a proof point that the Dayforce payroll architecture can serve not only North America, but also the UK. And while the UK is one of the easier payrolls in the world, it still is a key milestone.
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| Dayforce Activate |
MyPOV
A good user conference for Ceridian, that is scaling its Dayforce HCM suite from both a depth and breadth perspective. At his very moment, Ceridian has the most complete HCM Suite in North America, owning almost all pieces of automation, except for Learning and Benefits. And while the latter does not make sense to be built by a mainstream HCM vendor (it makes more sense to partner with the many benefits providers), the former can be (and is being) addressed by a partner solution. Deeply integrated Workforce Management and Payroll capabilities remain the strong differentiator for Ceridian.
On the concern side, Ceridian must successfully transition to the new era of AI, that has a deep impact on enterprises software. Ceridian itself showed that voice is the new UI. It now has to deliver a successful deep learning strategy. And it has to transition to public IaaS vendors for deployment, as is the rest of the industry. Lastly it may have to revisit the commercial position of a payroll vendor (that gets paid when paychecks are cut) vs. that of a software vendor (that gets paid when the customer gets possession of subscription – in most cases). Delaying that move puts Ceridian at a commercial / cash flow disadvantage.
But overall, great progress by Ceridian, a vendor that was on a bad path 5-6 years ago and has now been successfully turned around on the product side, and now needs the sales, marketing and channel side to ramp up as well. All good news for Ceridian customers and prospects, not so good news for the competition.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).
Also on Ceridian
And unrelated to Ceridian - but how important payroll can be for HCM innovation:
Also on Ceridian
- Progress Report - Progress Report - Ceridian pushes onward across the board - read here
- Progress Report – Ceridian executes on product, next challenge – implementation capacity, then sales …read here
- Event Report - CeridianINSIGHTS 2014 - Ceridian innovates and adds key functionality - read here
- First Take - Ceridian INSIGHTS Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
- Progress Report - Ceridian makes a lot of progress - but the road(map) is long - read here
- Ceridian transforming itself and with that the game – read here
And unrelated to Ceridian - but how important payroll can be for HCM innovation:
- Could the paycheck reinvent HCM - yes it can - read here
- And suddenly... payroll matters again - read here
- Musings - How Technology Innovation fuels Recruiting and disrupts the Laggards - read here
- Musings - What is the future of recruiting? Read here
- Why all the attention to recruiting? Read here.
- Musings - Is Transboarding the future of People Talent Management? Read here