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ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

blog.zenefits.com

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Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#41

Post by phantom_oracle »

Reading this story, the lawsuit story and in trying to keep up with this entire fiasco...

You end up feeling both sorry and a sour taste in your mouth for both companies. They're both obviously very good at "spin" and drumming up PR to win support of their audience.

I previously thought things would get settled amicably, out of court, with Zenefits saying "sorry", ADP saying "its okay" and the 2 companies settling on some decent structure to use ADPs API (or whatever thing they use for 3rd party access).

Now we are dealing with a situation where this is basically corporate-warfare hitting the "lala-land" of Silicon Valley.

Google, Apple, Microsoft and other tech companies generally have this corporate warfare amongst themselves and they also sometimes move in on other industries, catching those players off-guard.

With that in mind, and also the fact that Zenefits can no longer be classified as a startup - with +50 (or is it +100 employees) and a startup valuation of US$+4,5 billion - this is just another case of corporate warfare.

I shall now neither pity or care for either party of this story, because no matter how good the "spin" from each side is, this is just business as usual.

Any wall-street raider using HN may agree.

Edit: I'd also like to see how much longer this "post" stays as link number 1 on this platform, instead of getting "washed away" like yesterdays ADP link. Then we can also know for a fact that YC is actively pushing the agenda with their corporate interest in Zenefits (and proof that not all "good links eventually surface to the top", without someone pulling some admin-user strings at the top)

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#43

Post by TallGuyShort »

eitally wrote: post #32
jsprogrammer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the email from ADP, directly stating this product is a competitor to Zenefit's offering?

Likely mandated by ADP attorneys under the guise of trademark and/or patent protection.

ADP attorneys file suit accusing Zenefits lying about plans for competing products, and then mandate that they state a product is, in fact, competing? Then the blog post is exactly right.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#45

Post by gknoy »

joshstrange wrote: post #20
gamblor956 wrote: post #9

Blatant 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 ac…

If they are so "completely different" then why would the ADP rep say: > “We are coming out with a product to compete with Zenefits, a full service integrated online payroll and benefits solution.” I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product... On top of that who is ADP to cut off a…

  >  It doesn't matter if a human logs in or a computer, the cost to ADP is the same
In the response that ADP posted a couple days ago, they said that the traffic from Zenefits was several orders of magnitude higher than what normal customers were using. If that's true, then the cost could well be higher for them.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#46

Post by eropple »

hamburglar wrote: post #36
eropple wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From having been there, ADP is a tin-plated nightmare to work with for third-party API access. I'd do the exact same thing in Zenefits' shoes; ADP knows that they are eternally your competitors and will screw you at the first opportunity. Of course, ADP doing that is not doing right by their customers, but who cares, they're just cash cows.

How smart is it to build a business on unofficial, non-API access to a system maintained by someone who you know will try to screw you at the first opportunity? If I were ADP, I'd probably be intentionally breaking those types of integrations just to make it clear that they don't intend to hamstring themselves by supporting interfaces they never published. The fact that it's someone in a market they intend to enter i…

I didn't say it was smart, but it's smarter than ADP's jokestore of an official API. If you want to talk to ADP customers--and, functionally, you very close to need to talk to ADP customers--those are your options.

I feel like maybe the point of my post was not completely clear, though: this would not be a problem, and Zenefits would not be doing this, if ADP was good (not good in the "not poor software" sense, but good in the moral sense). And we should be faulting ADP for not being good to its customers, not Zenefits for trying to bring good to ADP's customers.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#47

Post by myth_buster »

joshstrange wrote: post #20
gamblor956 wrote: post #9

Blatant 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 ac…

If they are so "completely different" then why would the ADP rep say: > “We are coming out with a product to compete with Zenefits, a full service integrated online payroll and benefits solution.” I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product... On top of that who is ADP to cut off a…

A la Meerkat.

On a side note, can we name[0] these strategies just as they do with chess moves so that when someone says "pulled an XXXX", it encapsulates the move and references it. On a long run there could be a website which defines these and references all the previous attempts and responses. I think it would be very useful for founders/team when they are short of time and are brainstorming counter moves. Also perhaps we would internalize these patterns just as a GM does.

[0]: If there is already a resource I would like to know about it.

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#48

Post by fweespeech »

ohitsdom wrote: post #13
cddotdotslash wrote: post #4

I 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 situatio…

Zenefits has their users create an admin ADP user. Then zenefits uses those credentials to pull whatever data they want. They chose this route instead of working with ADP's third party system (without giving any justification as to why). I might sympathize if ADP's API access was severely limited or extremely expensive, but it appears as if Zenefits made no efforts to go this route.

As someone who is a customer of ADP [we use them for payroll, etc, etc]

I'd go the Zenefits route too [and we do for our automation in relation to ADP precisely because ADP's API is insufficient]

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#49

Post by jasonlotito »

joshstrange wrote: post #20
gamblor956 wrote: post #9

Blatant 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 ac…

If they are so "completely different" then why would the ADP rep say: > “We are coming out with a product to compete with Zenefits, a full service integrated online payroll and benefits solution.” I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product... On top of that who is ADP to cut off a…

> I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product...

That's not their claim. Their claim is that the reason they were cut off was because of this product launch. They haven't presented any proof of this.

Simple fact is, the claim is coming from a company that has already made it clear they are doing things they should not be doing. They have the burden of proof. They have a mountain to climb.

Edit: As mentioned in the GP comment, this claim is also false:

"Within the same hour they filed suit, an ADP sales rep started selling a brand new Zenefits competitive offering — called “Opum” — to our shared clients."

Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor

#50

Post by eropple »

jasonlotito wrote: post #49
joshstrange wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are so "completely different" then why would the ADP rep say: > “We are coming out with a product to compete with Zenefits, a full service integrated online payroll and benefits solution.” I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product... On top of that who is ADP to cut off a…

> I can't seem to argue with Zenefits stance that they are being sued for complaining that their access was cut off in an attempt to kill them off while ADP launches a similar product... That's not their claim. Their claim is that the reason they were cut off was because of this product launch. They haven't presented any proof of this. Simple fact is, the claim is coming from a company that has already made it clear…

> the claim is coming from a company that has already made it clear they are doing things they should not be doing

I'm troubled by this assertion. I know firsthand that ADP will actively fight attempts to integrate with them; their APIs are bad, poorly documented, and have reliability problems. Should somebody attempting to do well for the customer--and, yes, make some money, but it's not like Zenefits is inventing problems to solve--not do well by the customer first and foremost?

Like, from my perspective: forget ADP, forget Zenefits. Is this better for the customer?

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