ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
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ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
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Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#2I had never heard of Zenefits but I've read the articles that have come across HN thus far. From the standpoint of a non-customer they come across as more consumed with proving a point than just proving they are better.
I think they ought to adjust their strategy.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#3And the rabbit hole gets deeper... I'm guessing this Opum product is smoke and mirrors to capitalize on this whole fiasco.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#4I admittedly don't know a lot about this situation beyond what I've read in the news the past day or so. However, isn't it the case that Zenefits is simply building an interface on top of ADP's payroll data? And, from what I've read, it seems like they did this without following the proper procedures (did they write some kind of web scraper?). So if that is the case, ADP has every right to block them. If the situation was reversed and a large company was scraping a startup's data to integrate into their own platform, the outrage would be directed quite differently. So Zenefits is plugging into ADP's data, not paying them for access, not following the proper procedures to get access, and selling an interface on top of that data for a 10% fee, and then they complain that ADP blocked them?
EDIT: Also, all of their press releases sound very immature.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#5I had never heard of Zenefits but I've read the articles that have come across HN thus far. From the standpoint of a non-customer they come across as more consumed with proving a point than just proving they are better. I think they ought to adjust their strategy.
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Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#6This is pretty bad on ADPs part. But after reading the other HN discussion on this topic[1], it seems like this is a company destined for as fast of a fall as it rose. I hate to see big companies muscle out little ones, but I guess if you're going to rustle the feathers of so many, you're bound to make some powerful enemies.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#7I highly doubt this is a "new" product. They have offered payroll/HR/benefits for eons. What would be game changing is if it is free...
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#8This is getting ugly. Going against a ruthless goliath should help garner public support, but the way they are doing it is very unattractive to me. And as someone currently evaluating payroll solutions for small businesses, I'll be steering clear of them.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#9Blatant FUD from Zenefits. ADP's new product is an online payroll/HR SaaS that integrates across its entire product line.
Zenefit's product is a glorified remote bookkeeping service in which you enter data into the Zenefits website and they re-enter it manually, and usually incorrectly, into the ADP website and scrape the results, usually incorrectly, so they can post a response several days later to your Zenefits account page.
One is a SaaS (ADP) and the other is a remote data-entry service (Zenefits). Completely different. It's hard to argue that Zenefits should even be considered a tech company, since most of their "integration" functionality is driven by manual human labor and not technology. At best, Zenefits is a data-entry service with a nice, shiny UI.
EDIT: Also...the new product is actually just an offshoot of an existing product that my firm has been using for nearly a year. The new product, Opum, is simply the small-to-medium business version of one of ADP's existing enterprise cloud payroll/benefits products. It even uses the same (new) interface as the enterprise product.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#10And the rabbit hole gets deeper... I'm guessing this Opum product is smoke and mirrors to capitalize on this whole fiasco.
I think you should give ADP more credit. Even if they don't have the best product, I would assume they would've foreseen competitors in the front-end benefits field and have adjusted their business plans long before this back and forth. Companies that have been in an industry for a long time can often see industry changes coming, even if they don't have the agility to react quickly.