Ceridian Files for IPO

Ceridian last week filed its Form S-1 with the SEC, a key step in its journey to IPO.

‍Ceridian can trace its roots to Control Data Corporation, one of the first manufacturers of mainframe supercomputers in the 1950s. It was taken private in 2007 and then acquired a workforce management software company, Dayforce, in 2012. In only 6 years, new Dayforce CEO, David Ossip, has led an incredible Ceridian transformation– from a company primarily handling manual payroll and HR outsourcing, to a powerful SaaS-based leader in the HCM market. And that transformation couldn't have come sooner.

Medium and large enterprises are undergoing a seismic shift right now: the transition from on-premise and in-house to cloud-based solutions.

The momentum has been in place for years with smaller businesses and IT infrastructure. It's a shift that made Amazon Web Services and Gmail the standard for technology companies and has given rise to giants such as Salesforce and Box. What has taken longer to transition to the cloud, especially for larger companies, are business processes. That requires not just an investment in technology but a change in the way an entire company does things. It also requires a very specific strategy from service and software vendors:

SaaS-first.‍

Ossip has been able to steer Ceridian back to its technology roots and in doing so the company is helping lead the shift to cloud solutions for HR, rather than play catch-up in a competitive industry. While customers are moving from its bureau services business to its cloud platform, most of its growth in Ceridian's cloud services business is from new customers. That speaks to the changing demand of customers and the lead Ceridian is taking from in-house HR and payroll processing and traditional outsourcing companies like ADP.

The current market for HR and payroll cloud solutions is largely disparate and fragmented. A patchwork of solution stands in contrast to the holy grail of an all-in-one solution.

Integrated solutions for large enterprises exist; SAP, Workday, and Ceridian are incredibly powerful platforms that offer the advantages of cloud-based infrastructure with the ability to cater to complex business processes. However these solutions are largely geared towards large multinational enterprises. Small businesses have a number of disparate solutions, but medium-sized enterprises that have outgrown small business tools are left wanting.

That's the problem we're solving at Humi. Like Ceridian, our roots are in technology, and we're building a leading all-in-one solution powerful enough for an enterprise, but tailored to medium and large businesses.