51–60 of 129 posts
Reading all these comments about how ADP is the worst for any of its online tools (and in my experience, it really is), could someone enlighten me as to why so many companies use them? Is there no alternative?
Engineer at Zenefits. Can confirm this.
Reading all these comments about how ADP is the worst for any of its online tools (and in my experience, it really is), could someone enlighten me as to why so many companies use them? Is there no alternative?
It's a combination of a) founders/ceos not being aware of alternatives, b) many perceived alternatives don't in fact offer an alternative, but a layer on top (zenefits). and c) since ADP is so difficult, the pain of getting off of them - and the perceived pain of switching to someone new, is a large enough disincentive to keep folks from switching. New companies like Justworks don't build on top of other systems but…
I have to put the blame on Zenefits here. You cannot offer something to a customer that depends on integration with a competitor. Shame on you. No I don't support ADP and am not a fan but basic business dictates that you should not even offer this service if it depends on integration with a competitor.
This model was well-established long before Zenefits hit the scene.
By your account, Walmart should manufacture all the items it sells, etc.
I just went digging around the zenefits.com and pulled this verbiage out, which i think outlines the fundamental business problem: 'Zenefits works with all top payroll providers, so there's no need to switch from your favorite system.' ADP doesn't want to be a 'provider' in the 'Payroll As A Service' sense. Further Zenefits entry point into the market is based on the low friction of you not needing to leave your curr…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9499906
it's a running theme in most customer service interactions with Zenefits (Aetna's fault, Intuit's fault, etc.). There's also tends to be long delays in response times because of the back and forth between Zenefits and the provider, and sometimes conflicting responses which make things really frustrating
ADP has some of the worst online offerings. In order to see my paystub or signup for health coverage I use one site. To request time off I have to use a different ADP site. Both have different usernames and passwords. Both sites look like they were made in the IE 5/6 web development drought. I have no real complaints though with how everything actually works though, never had an incorrect paycheck or messed up PTO.
It is pretty typical to split sensitive personal information (e.g. SSN, pay, health records, etc) from administrative activities (e.g. leave requests). In the event that the administrative side gets compromised, it will limit how "bad" that compromise might be, additionally they may be required to store sensitive information differently (e.g. better physical security, server-drive encryption, etc).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is pretty typical to split sensitive personal information (e.g. SSN, pay, health records, etc) from administrative activities (e.g. leave requests). In the event that the administrative side gets compromised, it will limit how "bad" that compromise might be, additionally they may be required to store sensitive information differently (e.g. better physical security, server-drive encryption, etc).
In a well designed system this kind of segmentation and isolation can be done in a way that is transparent to the user experience. TL;DR Have your front end talk to multiple backends-
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not close enough on the details so I could be wrong. But it sounds like a) Zenefits integrates to ADP and starts being the flow through for payroll. b) Zenefits decides to become a direct competitor to ADP by launching their own payroll service (ZenPayroll mentioned here) c) ADP isn't enthusiastic about supporting a service that plans to upsell or cross sell shared customers to move away from them.
Zenpayroll and Zenefits are different companies and unrelated except that they both did Y Combinator.
Reading all these comments about how ADP is the worst for any of its online tools (and in my experience, it really is), could someone enlighten me as to why so many companies use them? Is there no alternative?