They are boarding steadily…
They are boarding steadily…FinancialForce has announced that the migration of HCM customers to ADP is going well. The announcement that they would sunset their HCM product in 2022 came as a surprise to many. There was never going to be a rush of customers to come off their HCM solution instantly. While ADP are covering the implementation costs there is still the question of internal resources to consider. FinancialForce have said that 35% of its HCM customer base is either moving or discussing the move to ADP.
Rebecca Heyman, Product Strategy Director, FinancialForce commented: “The customers who are not yet migrating to ADP are taking their time to decide and many are staying the course until we sunset the product in March 2022. There’s still plenty of time and therefore not an urgent rush for customers to be spurred into making final decisions.
“One customer Eagle Productivity Systems, a full ERP customer, has started the migration process to ADP Workforce Now. Christian Phichith, Director IT, Operations and Business Systems at Eagle Productivity Systems said: “FinancialForce’s strategic decision to work with a partner to offer a much broader HCM solution has really closed the loop on one of our organization’s biggest needs. FinancialForce is our choice, for our complete ERP suite and following free implementation of ADP solutions, we will be going live on 1/1/2018. The difficulties of Human Capital Management has been lessened, providing us a complete system for our workforce. We will continue to identify new requirements and efficiency that will help support the success of our organization and execute accordingly.”
ADP Alliance – The right strategic decision
While many questioned the decision to remove HCM from the portfolio. It is after all, unusual for an ERP company to remove functionality. It was a decision that will allow FinancialForce to concentrate on what remains. Ensuring that it innovates on its remaining products and stays competitive. An example of this was the recent announcement around utilising myEinstein. FinancialForce has embedded AI into its own internal solution as part of the Salesforce beta program. Those learnings will be available to customers soon.
While Eagle Productivity Systems are ahead of the curve many customers will wait for the promised integration between PSA and ADP’s HCM. ET asked Heyman when that would appear, she said: “We are on track to release our first phase of the ADP to FF integrations in our Spring 2018 release.”
That integration is initially with Workforce Now. ET also spoke to Kathy Schrieffer, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at Dreamforce this week about that progress. She clarified that while the majority of FinancialForce customers were better suited to Workforce Now they will start the process to integrate FinancialForce to Vantage. In fact they would start the design phase for this shortly after Dreamforce. While only a few customers will benefit from this integration, it is very good news for FinancialForce.
With integration to the large enterprise ADP solution, they will have a better chance going to market in that space. Fred Studer, CMO at FinancialForce commented that they were already working together on a considerable number of deals. Some of which one assumes they may not have been a part of historically. In aligning themselves with ADP there is a combined solution that appears to be going head to head with companies such as Oracle, Workday and SAP solution.
What does this mean
Well, Tod Nielsen CEO of FinancialForce commented: “The rapid momentum we have seen has surpassed our expectations and validates that we chose the perfect HCM partner to maintain the high standards of excellence we present to the marketplace with our ERP solutions. Feedback from migrating HCM customers and our ERP customers that are working together with ADP, could not be better. We’re enjoying the collaboration with our overall roadmap to ensure we continue to enhance our solutions. In addition, we’re excited to offer the benefits to prospects and Salesforce customers.”
While we might disagree with the use of the adverb “rapid” in this case, progress appears to be good. The key is ensuring that once the integration between PSA is tested and live the remaining customers have plans to migrate also. There is always a risk that they may decide to use an alternate solution. If those customers do select an alternate HCM solution then it may not mean the end of the relationship with FinancialForce. It has not ruled out integration with other HCM vendors just that ADP is the preferred HCM vendor of choice in North America.
What one might expect to see in Dreamforce 18 is a larger ADP presence of. It is likely that they will not just integrate to FinancialForce but also Salesforce. The massive payroll and HCM provider could be the new Salesforce strategic partner for 2018. In the same way that Google became the surprise strategic partner for Salesforce this year.
