Who are the largest HRMS vendors

Size is relative. The biggest companies don’t necessarily have the biggest names. And the biggest names don’t always sell the best software. But… size is an issue.

In an HR software market forecast to reach $10 billion by the year 2022, the largest HRMS vendors may not always be the most innovative but they do dominate the market. And while your HRMS needs might lead to you a smaller vendor, more agile and flexible, in terms of business stability – i.e. they’ll be around as long as you are – then the big players are a safe bet. So for those interested in a safe bet, here are 10 of the largest HRMS vendors with a closer look at three of them.

Who are the largest HRMS vendors?

In purely alphabetical order:

1. ADP 
2. Ceridian 
3. Kronos 
4. Oracle 
5. OrangeHRM
6. Sage
7. SAP
8. UltiPro
9. Workday 
10. Zenefits

ADP 

ADP, or Automative Data Processing, was founded in 1949, making it probably the oldest company making HR software. The self-described, “largest provider of HR services in North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim,” boasts well over 50,000 employees worldwide and has reported a turnover of $12 billion.

The ADP website cites a client base of over 740,000 customers in 140 countries and the company offers a number of customizable products, pitched at different sizes of organization, including:

• For organizations of 50 to 10,000 employees, ADP Workforce Now is the all-in-one platform providing payroll, talent management, benefits administration, workforce management, and data-driven analytics.
• RUN is ADP’s small business (up to 49 employees) payroll app, simplifying the payroll process and now also including hiring functionality in the form of ZipRecruiter.
• ADP Enterprise HR, for clients with up to 1,000 employees, offers payroll, recruitment, talent management, benefits, and time and attendance.
• DataCloud is ADP’s specialized data analysis and benchmarking tool, allowing organizations of 50 to 1,000 employees to compare their performance and data with a combined dataset of 30 million US employees across 90,000 organizations.

Kronos

Founded in 1977, Kronos also has a long history of providing workforce software. Beginning with computerized time clocks (Kronos produced the world’s first in 1979) the company expanded to offer a range of workforce and human capital management products. Kronos has over 5,000 employees, reported a turnover of $1 billion in 2014, and specializes in a variety of industry sectors, from health care to manufacturing, higher education to government, and banking to policing.

The Kronos Workforce Dimensions Suite offers data-driven automation and artificial intelligence to provide a range of HR functions and services, including recruitment, scheduling, benefits management, time and attendance, payroll, analytics and performance management, all based on Kronos’ own cloud platform which serves as a common foundation for the company’s products (thus ensuring seamless compatibility).

SAP

Beginning with five IBM engineers in 1972, SAP started out offering payroll and accounting software that stored data electronically instead of on punch cards. The company expanded into enterprise resource planning and today offers its 425,000 clients (in 180 countries) a wide range of business software, supporting procurement, supply chains, customer relationship management, and of course, HR. 

SAP’s HCM Suite comes with a few tantalizing wins, such as a potential ROI of 85%. It provides payroll, recruitment and onboarding, time and attendance, performance management, learning, analytics, and a dedicated compliance module. 

Simplify HR is SAP’s product for smaller businesses, including payroll and core HR, plus learning management, recruitment, workforce planning, and analytics, and performance management. What’s more, SAP’s series of on-demand HR-related online radio broadcasts demonstrate the potential for the largest HRMS vendors to put some of their extensive resources into extra support for clients.

Whether you need a big or boutique HRMS vendor depends very much on your organization’s needs as a client. For more vendors, summarized in one place, try our HRMS vendor directory.