Workplace already integrates with over 50 of the best of breed enterprise products that people use every day. In this new series, we’ll meet some of our product partners to find out why better integrations equal #bettertogether.

First up, we look at the ADP and Workplace integration and what it means for customers.

Exploring better ways of working

Finding out about your salary or your remaining holiday allowance used to be painful.

Say you just wanted to find out how many volunteering hours you have left. You stop what you’re doing. You switch packages. You dig out an old password (you go through the password reset process…).

It all takes too much time. It takes you out of your flow. It’s a simple task that’s unnecessarily difficult.

But now the Workplace integration combines the ADP Virtual Assistant with Workplace Chat. So you get on-demand, convenient access to your HR and pay information right within Workplace – and you can make quicker and better-informed decisions.

You get on-demand, convenient access to your HR and pay information right within Workplace

The way people use work tools is changing

It’s evident in the move away from the desktop to the mobile app. And it’s continuing now because of the popularity of communication and collaboration platforms.

This affects people in all industries and across job functions. And, Ari believes, it’s no different in HR.

“Traditionally, HR professionals and their employees were accessing HR data on different and often isolated systems, and those systems were completely separate from the ones where they performed real work,” says Ari.

“But now they’re looking for new and smarter ways to access the information they need for all of their work tasks without having to hop across systems.”

People want smarter ways to access the information they need – without having to hop across systems

The ADP integration. What does it look like?

“After installing the ADP Virtual Assistant bot, people can start doing really neat things,” says Ari. Things like pinging the chatbot and looking up your most recent pay information. Or setting up new pay notifications and accessing time off balances. All within Workplace and all seamlessly integrated.

Other benefits include:

• Workplace users can access their latest pay information and more
• Receiving push notifications on payday
• Maintaining full admin control over the information your employees see

Integrated software is the future for enterprise

Ari believes that the market is increasingly demanding that technology solutions must be in close proximity to where everyday work gets done.

In that spirit, the Workplace integration is a natural extension of the user experience of Human Capital Management (HCM), which began on the desktop, then migrated to mobile, and now is moving to collaboration platforms.

Human Capital Management (HCM) began on the desktop, migrated to mobile, and is now moving to collaboration platforms

“People in the workplace are doing things differently. They’re communicating differently,” says Ari.

“They use collaboration platforms for more of their day – in some instances for most of their day – and it’s imperative for solution providers to deliver more utility to people directly in those platforms.”

There are more than 15 million registered users on the ADP mobile app, and ADP has learned a great deal about how those users interact with mobile experiences.

Those learnings have proven to be critically important in the design of the ADP Virtual Assistant integration with the Workplace collaboration platform – a natural next step to further improve the employee experience.

It’s a great opportunity for ADP to provide new and better experiences for HR professionals and their employees to access HCM data and take action.

ADP Clients want more connections for their business tools

ADP takes a lot of direction from their clients about the direction the products should take. And ADP customers have been quite clear.

“We collect direct feedback to inform how we innovate. We like to work on what’s next for users. And they’ve told us directly that their people are using collaboration platforms like Workplace on a day to day basis.”

People are using collaboration platforms like Workplace on a day to day basis

Users need systems to be more user-friendly

“If you look over time there’s been an ebb and flow of the proliferation of systems and technologies that businesses use to get things done,” says Ari.

And right now that means organizations find themselves in a phase where getting things to work together in harmony – to synchronize – is really important.

Sharing the #BetterTogether mentality

ADP has long been a major proponent of the open ecosystem philosophy. And this fits with Workplace’s Better Together approach.

“We know that companies are always looking for best in class capabilities. And they don’t want to have to sacrifice those capabilities because different tools don’t talk together well enough,” says Ari.

It’s a philosophy that ADP embed into their whole business ecosystem. An open API and an open mind to working with new partners to build secure and straightforward integrations capabilities with partners.

And that includes building ADP Marketplace – a digital storefront for customers to find and plug in other HR and business solutions with their ADP system.

“Better Together is something that resonates with us,” Ari explains. “We know our clients don’t want to work with just one provider to get things done. People want the best tools. They want great capabilities without sacrifice and integration inadequacies don’t play a part in that story.”

“That’s why Better Together makes sense.”

“Better Together is something that resonates with us. We know our clients don’t want to work with just one provider to get things done”

And it’s just the beginning

This is the first phase. ADP see the process of helping to enable clients as an ongoing one. “We work with our clients to look at how they can derive better solutions for their teams and businesses,” Ari says.

“Better productivity, cost savings, more revenue, and increasing profitability. All by building out their own bespoke technology stacks that work better together. The Workplace integration is a big part of all that.”

It’s an exciting time. Ari thinks there’s a lot to aim at and a lot of ways Workplace and ADP can work together.

“There are things we can do that will really help drive productivity and engagement. We’re excited to work with our mutual customers and take their feedback and direction on how we shape new features and capabilities. Getting that right over time will be a great measure of success.”

And we can’t wait.

With huge thanks to Ari Osur, VP Marketing of ADP Ventures at ADP.