AWS PP4

Embrace The Cloud

Just a few years ago, ADP used a private cloud and stored information in its own physical data centers. This made ML models cumbersome and time-consuming to deploy, sometimes taking up to three weeks to launch. ADP’s product development team repeatedly started from scratch as it devised new features and products—like benefits selection tools and budgeting solutions—to address the evolving needs of businesses ranging from Fortune 500 giants to small startups. Seeking faster solutions, ADP transitioned off its physical data stores, gradually migrated data to Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure and implemented Amazon SageMaker, a service that enables the creation of ML models in the cloud. Using these flexible, scalable ML services, ADP could swiftly recast HR data into powerful learnings for customers.

Rather than launching a full-scale transformation immediately, ADP tackled one specific use case first: benchmarking data.

The company concentrated on how to better process, streamline and deliver organizational information so that customers could make easy cross-industry comparisons on metrics from compensation and staff diversity to company structure and investment priorities. Using cloud-based solutions, ADP upgraded its people analytics platform, now called DataCloud, to offer anonymized benchmarking data in real time, providing customers access to valuable competitor data while also safeguarding privacy. Amin Venjara, chief product owner and vice president of product management for ADP DataCloud, says that starting with benchmarking data alone was a smart initial step in ADP’s cloud modernization. “Once we were able to migrate off the on-prem capabilities, move workloads and fulfill that benchmarking use case, it started to build the confidence of being able to do more and more in the cloud,” he says.

We’ve built a platform we can use across enterprise-wide data. If you think about all the data that's available, it’s fantastic—but allowing teams across ADP to leverage it is a whole different equation.”

Amin Venjara Chief Product Owner & Vice President of Product Management, ADP DataCloud

Reinvent How Customers Consume Data

These tools include a Pay Equity Storyboard that tracks a company’s pay differentials across demographics and helps HR leaders assess where their companies stand in comparison to peers. A Turnover Storyboard uses predictive analytics to track turnover rates and identify employees at risk for resigning. ADP also implemented platform features that measure turnover costs, match candidates with open roles and identify strategies to retain top performers. Venjara says C-suite leaders at prominent tech and banking companies used these storyboard tools to power significant diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) progress as well as address workforce challenges during the pandemic.

Next, ADP used Amazon SageMaker to create ML-based visualization tools for translating HCM data into rich, user-friendly workforce insights for customers with varying levels of data expertise.

During the pandemic, not only did we have to step up for our employees, but also for our clients. We had to make sure that our reports were ready for them, available at scale and simple and easy to use.”

How can ADP actually assess the results delivered to employers with such a massive universe of data, tools and customers?

Recently, for example, ADP conducted an analysis to gauge whether its analytics tools contribute to customers’ DEI efforts. After examining gender and race pay gaps across a customer subset, ADP found that 55% of clients who actively use its pay equity measurement tools experienced a 25% average decrease in their pay gaps over the last year. “That’s companies putting real dollars and effort behind a DEI commitment that everybody makes,” Venjara says. “We can actually measure that impact.” Using its own cloud-powered analytics, ADP was able to clearly demonstrate its value to clients. In turn, the company is empowering those clients to show employees that they’re genuinely working to make their organizations more equitable.

Venjara says that modernizing with the cloud helps facilitate the learning process and make sense of performance data.

Propel Customer Innovation

Use Data To Decode The Future

As ADP looks ahead, Venjara says it will continue to enhance its platform so that HR teams can be more data-driven and optimize their people analytics.

“This is where AWS also comes into play. We’ve been able to take not only the 30 million pay and HR records we have, but also 50 million resumes and five million job postings that come through our recruiting systems, and put that together to link jobs, people and the skills needed for those jobs,” says Venjara. “HR can now be a more strategic partner at the table. They have the data to say: ‘Our workforce looks like this. Here’s how it’s changed. People have these skills. We not only know where we are today, but where we need to go.’”

One way ADP is doing this, he explains, is by harnessing data on skills transformation. The company created a skills graph that helps clients understand how to use the skills that currently exist within their organizations, align skills with different roles and deepen intelligence about talent demand across their industries.

I can’t think of a better way for us to participate in shaping the world of work than by helping the stewards of people and workforces at organizations use the data they’ve collected themselves.”

Amin Venjara Chief Product Owner & Vice President of Product Management, ADP DataCloud