zenefits post about ADP is making me dislike them and I've never used their product.
ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
31–40 of 96 posts
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#32Blatant 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…
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.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. If I found a third-party company that was having users create accounts on my systems for the purposes of pulling data out, I would block it too, probably more quickly than ADP did. Imagine if a company asked for your Google password instead of using the proper API channels. I don't know many users who would do that.
> Imagine if a company asked for your Google password instead of using the proper API channels This would be more like creating a new Google Apps email account for someone, and allowing them to use it to (e.g.) manage things on your Google Drive (by sharing a group folder with them). How many companies hire a 3rd party accounting / HR firm (or person) to manage their bookkeeping? How many of them create an ADP admin…
Ironically, this is typical in the Google Apps reseller arena, where the reseller creates your domain for you under their Google account, and then also administer it using a superadmin account they create in your domain for that purpose.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#34I 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.
I'm not speaking for or against Zenefits and their methods, but ADPs API is severely limited and extremely expensive. I worked with their Dealer Services division when I was at a startup in the automotive space and ADP had one of the worst crafted APIs I have ever seen. I made a comment about it on an earlier Zenefits post, but the gist was that the "stable, production API" was a constantly moving target that changed without notice or reason.
I believe we had incurred over $50,000.00 in fees before we ever reached the testing stage or purchased the right to use the API (that license is on a client by client basis, too). That $50M number was fees directly to ADP, and does not include our own payroll and expenses.
We were completely bootstrapped and started with about $70M in the bank, yet we were still able to complete that integration. I can't see how a company with over $500MM in funding[0] couldn't unless they were prohibited by ADP.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#35Blatant 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…
Yeah -- I'm having a lot of trouble having much sympathy for Zenefits here, not least because of the really moronic spam I've been getting from them recently. And the ______'s keep sending it via Google, so I can't even reasonably blackhole their mail.
I wish one of the YC tests for "how smart are these founders?" was "do you think spam is a good growth hack?"
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 is gravy.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Exactly. If I found a third-party company that was having users create accounts on my systems for the purposes of pulling data out, I would block it too, probably more quickly than ADP did. Imagine if a company asked for your Google password instead of using the proper API channels. I don't know many users who would do that.
The Google password scenario actually used to be a pretty common thing before Google built an API.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. If I found a third-party company that was having users create accounts on my systems for the purposes of pulling data out, I would block it too, probably more quickly than ADP did. Imagine if a company asked for your Google password instead of using the proper API channels. I don't know many users who would do that.
> Imagine if a company asked for your Google password instead of using the proper API channels This would be more like creating a new Google Apps email account for someone, and allowing them to use it to (e.g.) manage things on your Google Drive (by sharing a group folder with them). How many companies hire a 3rd party accounting / HR firm (or person) to manage their bookkeeping? How many of them create an ADP admin…
This is exactly how most resellers on Google Apps are set up, actually.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#39It is likely possible to identify the email address + name that are blacked out email because of its pixel dimension if that is a major concern:
Just figure out the application and OS/browser rendering the email and compare each possible email/name combination with this.
It is like a one-way hash with a fairly small set of possibilities. May be a few hits though, rather than just one.
Re: ADP Begins to Roll Out a Zenefits Competitor
#40I guess it really depends on what ADP's terms of service say. It is their site and service. Clients can choose to stop using them. The Zenefits teams seems very immature, maybe they should pivot and start offering more full services.