Analyst Perspectives

I am happy to share some insights on Ceridian drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic representation of our assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index: Workforce Management 2019 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We utilized a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect the breadth of the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for workforce management. We evaluated Ceridian and 12 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and data derived from our benchmark research on workforce management.

Ceridian’s Dayforce Workforce Management has been a key offering in the market for many years. The system offers an array of capabilities; for example, managers can see the cost of a schedule in real time and make changes based on algorithms to optimize it from cost and potential liability management, customer experience and employee experience perspectives. It provides an immediate view of the impacts of shift swapping. The system creates labor forecasts using a combination of historical sales data, customer traffic information, recent trends and seasonal predictions — a more diverse array of inputs than those of most WFM offerings. The vendor’s absence management rules engine is highly configurable and flexible. Also, error tracking and timesheet validation is easy because managers can view all employee time information on one screen, fix errors quickly and thus adjust pay in real time.

Ceridian scored third overall with fewer than one and a half percentage points separating the three leaders. The vendor is a Value Index Leader in five of the seven evaluation categories, the most of any vendor. Ceridian ranks first in Usability, an area it has emphasized in recent years, and in Manageability as a result of its focus on administrative personas and its work to enable easy deployment. It ranked first in overall product rating that includes the evaluation of all five product categories. The category for which it needs the most improvement is Validation, where further clarity on its references, support and services could be more easily accessible.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of workforce management software in the industry. You can learn more about our Value Index as an effective vendor selection and RFI/RFP tool here. Participating vendors can learn more about how to use the Value Index here.