by Gary Bragar & Pete Tiliakos

This past week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Ceridian held its 31^st annual client event, Ceridian INSIGHTS. The event attracted ~3k attendees and consisted of 150 sessions, many presented by clients highlighting the capabilities of the Dayforce HCM platform and the outcomes achieved following its adoption. In this blog, we highlight a few of the HCM modules showcased along with results reported by clients, as well as considering the outlook, opportunities and challenges for Ceridian and Dayforce.

2018 so far

Dayforce, which Ceridian acquired in 2012, now has ~3.3k customers live, with hundreds more going live every quarter. Ceridian serves clients of all sizes ranging from ~50 employees up to its largest customer with 186k employees in 20 countries in the U.S. and Europe. However, its sweet spot remains the middle to lower end of the mid-market, with the majority of its clients falling in the range of 500 to 5k employees.

2018 has been a big year for Ceridian and Dayforce so far. In April, the company went public on both the NYSE and TSX stock exchanges and indicated that its Dayforce Q2 18 revenues were up ~40% YoY. With a growing North America presence, and the platform now capable of supporting WFM in 50 countries and 21 languages, Ceridian now has its sights on international expansion (see Dayforce new developments & priorities below).

Recruiting

Client cases include a Denver-based yoga company with 185 studios and 11k employees who implemented Dayforce recruiting, saving $224k annually in system costs while reducing turnover. In another case, a global high-tech company headquartered in Portland, Oregon who implemented several Dayforce modules including recruitment, went paperless “overnight” (including generation of offer letters), saving recruiters ~2 hours’ per candidate offer.

Employee engagement

A high-growth global logistics company already operating on Dayforce added a performance management module, including the ability to measure employee competencies related to corporate values and culture. They also added “Conversations” in the module to enable employee feedback and adopted Ceridian’s TeamRelate solution to help managers better communicate with team members. One team in the organization reduced turnover from 72% to 5%. Other teams had at least a 5% reduction in turnover just from using the performance module. In addition, internal promotions increased 110%.

In terms of its own employee engagement, Ceridian uses Dayforce as its HCM solution, leveraging the platform to continuously survey its ~4.5k employee population – and has achieved a 92% rating for employees willing to recommend Ceridian as an employer. Further, its awards include being certified by Great Places to Work, it was recently ranked in the Working Mothers 100 Best Companies list, and its Chief People and Culture Officer, Lisa Sterling, was also named a Working Mother of the Year.

Onboarding

Onboarding features include online access to forms to be completed prior to start date, learning company culture, and meeting fellow team members and other key colleagues, all of which aim to improve employee engagement and productivity. A wide range of client benefits were reported, including reducing employee turnover by up to 33% YTD in one case. Another client making 50 hires per week saved 800 hours’ administration time on new hires each year with Dayforce Recruiting and Onboarding.

Other client cases

Across modules, a North American hospitality company with ~5.5k team members, mostly unionized, was fully automated with Dayforce. It realized better data quality for improved decision-making, reduced turnover from 78% to 47%, reduced compliance issues by 50%, and labor expenses (including OT) were down 19% due to better time scheduling.

An office/workspace solutions provider was directed by its new parent company to implement nine Dayforce modules, including payroll and recruitment, in 90 days, with Ceridian delivering in 59 days. Recruitment was a new Dayforce offering at the time and the client was able to conduct hires in 30 days. First year savings were >$200k in efficiencies.

Dayforce new developments & priorities

A key focus for Ceridian is to expand its global footprint and presence, with a recent addition including native payroll for the U.K. Next, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland are on the roadmap for 2019. Other priorities include increasing client adoption of Dayforce by adding new modules to existing client subscriptions, and targeting the upper mid-market and enterprise level customers.

New product developments include:

• On-demand payroll live in January 2019
• Succession planning, including a talent matrix to show which future leaders can succeed based on flight risk and performance history, linking to performance management and goal setting
• Advanced analytics, including drill-downs of sales data by location combined with people data to depict turnover, and analyzing total 2018 labor costs by region
• Decision support, including helping employees make better decisions about benefit choices
• Additional work on engagement surveys, compensation and benchmarking.

Opportunities & challenges

Ceridian Dayforce customers were broadly positive, though some said they were not utilizing all modules they had purchased – due either to time spent learning other modules and/or certain modules not being a priority for the business. This could be an opportunity for Ceridian client account managers to determine utilization of all modules bought and offer implementation assistance and/or change management consultation where needed.

One customer pointed out that, with Dayforce Onboarding, some forms can be completed using mobile, but the entire onboarding process is not yet mobile. The response was that this will happen, but no timeframe was given. Perhaps the plan for that could be communicated.

Finally, with Dayforce on a strong growth trajectory in North America, with a strategic focus now on EMEA and APAC, and with the goal of targeting larger enterprise clients (with sophisticated process expectations), Ceridian’s ability to scale to support demand will be tested. While Dayforce has a growing partner network of consultancies which can implement the platform, it will need to rely heavily on these partners to help support that growth and scale, particularly as its demand increases in new international markets. Ceridian and Dayforce could benefit from partnering with a larger global consultancy practice (e.g. one of the Big Four) or a major IT consulting firm, both from the perspective of pipeline building and of supporting its growth trajectory.