Analyst Perspectives

Here are some insights on Paychex drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well payroll software vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Payroll Software 2020 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Paychex and seven other vendors in seven categories, five product-related (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two concerning the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each of the seven categories to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on data derived from our benchmark research on payroll software.

Paychex, a vendor of payroll management systems and tools geared to small businesses, ranks eighth overall in this Value Index evaluation.

Its product, Paychex Flex, provides a unified experience across its product modules and boasts fast mobile-based time entry. Data integration across all modules on the platform is seamless and the user experience is consistent across desktops, tablets and mobile devices. The vendor offers a chatbot that’s programmed to answer hundreds of common payroll and HR questions. In addition, Paychex has invested in AI, machine learning and RPA to personalize and automating repetitive tasks.

Our research finds areas for improvement in the product’s analytics capabilities, some of which aren’t on par with those offered by market leaders, including its lack of a role-based KPI dashboard. Paychex’s payroll offering is centered on reports rather than dashboard-based analytics. The vendor performs least well in Adaptability due to less robust configurability capabilities in relation to personalized dashboards and the overall user experience. The vendor’s response to our survey offered scant details on some product features and likely would have performed better had it provided more information and documentation for our evaluation.

Paychex has held a large share of the small business market for decades because it offers a reliable payroll product at a reasonable cost, as well as name recognition, thought leadership and research. The vendor is expanding its coverage outside the U.S. and seems poised for growth. Since our Value Index analysis, Paychex has enhanced integrations, document management and the Flex dashboard as well as its pay-on-demand solution.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of payroll 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.