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Today Ventana Research released its 2023 Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll, a quantified, research-based report evaluating technology providers and products. The Buyers Guide assesses 11 vendors’ products using our Value Index methodology to evaluate software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. The Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll evaluates products that address key elements of domestic payroll as we define it.

The payroll preparation process has long been an inefficient, labor-intensive set of administrative tasks designed to ensure that everyone is paid correctly and on time. Historically, it has been a transactional- and compliance-centered function involving manual adjustments, reconciliations, and the answering of repeated routine questions. Now, advances in digital technologies and delivery models have rendered the payroll function considerably more efficient with the added bonus of delivering new value to the business through automation, data-driven decision support, and direct contribution to an enhanced employee experience.

In our view, this technology-mediated shift to a new style of payroll management is well worth the effort. We advise that organizations seeking improvement embrace an integrated approach that not only optimizes the payroll function but also connects payroll with other core HR, talent management, and workforce management systems and their related information and processes. With this integration in place, organizations can make better and often more strategic workforce-related decisions using payroll-related data such as overtime hours worked, PTO, types of bonuses paid, benefits participation rates, or the ratio of regular to contingent worker costs.

“The necessity to manage the efficient processing of domestic US payroll is essential for every enterprise, from small to large businesses, and the use of enterprise software designed for HR, finance and the employees who receive their pay,” said Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer at Ventana Research. “The Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll provides a definitive tool for HR and finance to best assess and select the payroll software that can help provide the desired outcomes.”

The Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll evaluates the following vendors that offer products that address key elements of domestic payroll as we define it: ADP, Ceridian, Infor, Oracle, Paychex, Paycom, Paycor, Paylocity, SAP, UKG, and Workday.

The research finds ADP atop the list, followed by Oracle and UKG. Companies that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. ADP has done so in five of the seven categories; Oracle in seven; UKG in five; and SAP in four.

The research places vendors into one of four overall categories: Exemplary, Innovative, Assurance, or Merit. This representation classifies vendors’ weighted performance overall in Product Experience and Customer Experience. The vendors were awarded the following categories:

• Exemplary – ADP, Ceridian, Oracle, UKG and SAP.
• Innovative – Workday.
• Assurance – Paycor.
• Merit - Infor, Paychex, Paycom and Paylocity.

This Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings will address an organization’s requirements for domestic payroll software. The index is structured to support a request for information (RFI) that could be used in the RFP process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize, and maintain relationships with technology vendors. An effective product and customer experience with a technology vendor can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment.   

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of vendors and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue, or customers generated from a vendor’s marketing and sales efforts. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive research-based approach since making the wrong choice of domestic payroll technology can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment, and hamper an organization’s ability to reach its potential performance. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on a short list of vendors that do not represent the best fit for your organization.

"Selecting the right payroll application is essential to ensure that the software is best suited to an organization’s needs to guarantee that payments are always accurate and that all compliance requirements are met while minimizing the time spent by the HR and accounting departments," noted Robert Kugel, Senior Vice President and head of Business Research at Ventana Research. "Our Buyers Guide gives organizations a rigorous methodology for evaluating their options."

The Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll is neither sponsored nor influenced by technology vendors and is conducted solely in pursuit of Ventana Research's mission to provide value to business and IT through the Consulting, Advisory, Research, and Education (CARE) portfolio of services. Ventana Research's goal is to help guide organizations to optimal efficiency in their use of technology investments for business and IT. Please click here to learn more and read the Buyers Guide for Domestic Payroll.

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the most authoritative and respected market research and advisory services firm. We provide insight and expert guidance on mainstream and disruptive technologies through a unique set of research-based offerings including benchmark research and technology evaluation assessments, education workshops, and our research and advisory services, Ventana On-Demand. Our unparalleled understanding of the role of technology in optimizing business processes and performance and our best practices guidance are rooted in our rigorous research-based benchmarking of people, processes, information, and technology across business and IT functions in every industry. This benchmark research plus our market coverage and in-depth knowledge of hundreds of technology providers means we can deliver education and expertise to our clients to increase the value they derive from technology investments while reducing time, cost, and risk.

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