RPA and AI help ADP work smarter and faster

As one of the largest providers of human capital management (HCM) solutions in the world, ADP is basing its digital transformation on working smarter and faster, and eliminating steps for its more than 810,000 clients. Vipul Nagrath, who has been CIO at ADP since 2015, discusses how he is changing the culture of IT to bring intelligent automation to the $14 billion global technology company.

Martha Heller: What does “digital” mean to ADP?

Vipul Nagrath: We’ve defined four pillars to drive our digital initiatives:

A major enabler behind all of these pillars is “intelligent automation,” which means stepping back to look at processes and why you have them, and using technology to change those processes. Robotic process automation (RPA) might be a key part of a digital strategy, but it’s not a digital strategy on its own. RPA is just using a robot to do the same process as a human, serving as today’s version of macros, which have been around for decades. When you look at your processes holistically, that’s how you get a true digital transformation.

What is an example of intelligent automation at ADP?

Let’s take one of our pillars: eliminating work.  In our RUN Powered by ADP® small business payroll solution, we are eliminating manual processes and providing more self-service capabilities for our clients. We have given our small business clients the ability to come onto our website, select an offering, enroll themselves, and get set up to run their first payroll, all in a matter of minutes.

In the past, we performed a number of manual steps on behalf of the client to set them up to run payroll. With intelligent automation, we looked at the process to see if we could eliminate enough steps to let the client manage that process themselves and make it easy. We are always aiming for a “single click.” 

What are you doing architecturally to drive this kind of innovation?

We are modernizing the technology environment, which is not an easy journey, and one that that never really ends. At ADP, we are a little ahead of the game, because we’ve been a SaaS provider for many years. We’ve also been in a private cloud for a long time, but of course, our approach to cloud has changed over time. We’ve moved from physical machines to virtual machines, and now we are moving from our private cloud to the public cloud, where we are putting our strategic new products. 

What advice do you have for CIOs who are moving to the public cloud?

My advice is to understand that increased reliability and resilience do not automatically come out of the cloud. You actually have to program for the public cloud and build your software so that it’s resilient and has failover at every level, just as you do when you are running your own data centers.  Even if you have a microservices or container-based architecture, you have to architect for resiliency to achieve better failover. Simply moving to microservices is not enough; you still have to do work.  

You should also clearly understand your reasons for going to the cloud, and be extremely thoughtful and surgical about your approach. You hear these big claims that the cloud is cheaper, but that is not always the case.