Market Perspectives

Ventana Research is sharing insights about Paychex, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2022 Ventana Research Value Index: Workforce Management is a distillation of a year of market and product research efforts.

Paychex Flex is a human capital management system built on a central platform, with a range of applications used for the life cycle of the worker hiring process — from onboarding to time tracking, absence management, and schedule and compliance testing.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for workforce management. We evaluated Workday and 12 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our Benchmark Research on Workforce Management.

Paychex was categorized as a Vendor of Merit, ranking 10th overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked ninth in Product Experience, where it performed best in Usability, and ninth in Capability. It ranked 11th in Customer Experience, and performed best in TCO/ROI. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in TCO/ROI and Validation, which represent 20% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Our assessment finds that Paychex could perform better in TCO/ROI — where it ranked 10th — in the depth of information on its support for organizations in this category. In Validation, where it ranked 11th, Paychex could have more depth on the references and product for workforce management. Paychex did not participate in the Value Index process, and this assessment was based on Paychex’s Flex products available in September of 2021 in the Fall ’21 Release.

Unlike many IT analyst firms that rank vendors from an IT-only perspective or consider futures or vision over what is available in the products today, Ventana Research has designed the Value Index to provide a balanced perspective of vendors and products that is rooted in an understanding of business drivers and needs. This approach not only reduces cost and time but also minimizes the risk of making a decision that is bad for the business. Using the Value Index will enable your organization to achieve the levels of efficiency and effectiveness expected and hoped for when investing in workforce management technology.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of workforce management software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.