All right, thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, and welcome to TD Cowen HCM Summit. I'm Bryan Bergin, I'm joined by my colleague, Jared Levine, and we're very excited to have you and to be with ADP. Really needs no introduction as a leading global payroll and HCM provider in the market. With us today, we have Jim Sperduto, President of Small Business Solutions, and Danyal Hussain, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you both for being here today. Thanks for having me. We appreciate it, Bryan. So before we get into it, for the audience, this is gonna be a 35-minute discussion. You can add your questions into the platform, and we'll work those into the conversation as we go. And with that, we're gonna get right into it, Jim. I think, you know, always easiest to start with a background for the group. So we understand you currently lead ADP Small Business Solutions, which consists of RUN, Roll, Insurance, and Retirement Services, but you've been with the company for a bit. So can you talk about your background first, and then, you know, we'll get into the rest? Sure, yeah. I've been with ADP for about 30 years. So if you... And that, that's if you count my internship between my junior and senior year of college. So, you know, I ended up starting in sales in New York City, in the small business space. Carried a bag there in the Garment Center of Manhattan, and, you know, worked my way up the sales organization. Ultimately, led nationally on different occasions, Retirement Services, SBS Major Accounts, and Global Insight sales as well. About three years ago, I made the leap over to running a business. So I ran the Retirement Services business three years ago, and then about two years ago, I was appointed to lead the entire portfolio, which you mentioned, is made up of, you know, traditional, payroll and HR business, and as well as our Retirement and Insurance Services businesses. It's been a, it's been a great ride. You know, I've enjoyed every twist and turn along the way here. And, you know, and as you learn from day one at ADP, always tried to hold our clients and our associates front and center in, in that journey. All right, very good. So a great perspective across the organization for obviously within this business as well. So SBS, it's been really one of the best performing portfolios within the company, certainly with new book, you know, new business bookings performance. So talk about what do you think the key factors there, besides your leadership, what are the key factors there that are driving? And talk about some of the product improvements, you know, within the marketplace. What are you seeing? Thanks, Bryan. Yeah, I think the strong performance really comes down to three things: great product, great distribution, and great client service, which leads to great relationships. We are proud of a lot of the product enhancements. You know, we made a major investment in the RUN user experience, and it's been really very well received. In addition, I would say it's a relatively new RUN mobile app. It's been a big hit, 4.9 stars in the Apple Store, and that's with over 23,000 reviews. So, you know, the market really seems to be liking our RUN mobile app. And in addition, I mean, there's a lot of features and functionality I could go through, but we'd run out of time. But the one I'd like to highlight is probably our Payroll Inspector, 'cause our clients seem to love it, and that's, you know, within the actual application, it helps to prevent errors from happening. So if somebody keys in a bonus, and we know the last time that they keyed in a bonus for this person, it was X, and it looks abnormal, maybe it has an extra zero or something in it, Payroll Inspector will pop up, let them know that you probably did you mean to do this? And, you know, it helps to prevent errors before they happen, and clients seem to really appreciate it. And, you know, as it relates to product, look, payroll could be complicated, right? It's complicated in a regulatory environment. What we try to do is keep it simple, keep it as simple and as clean as possible, and make it easy for our clients to do what they want to do in the app, which is, you know, get their employees paid. Okay, and, and that Payroll Inspector, that's just functionality within the platform that you've had? Yep. All right. That functionality within the platform. As it relates to, you know, the other factors, I mean, distribution is definitely another big reason for our success. We have one of the most powerful distribution engines in the world. You know, we have thousands of field and digital sellers. And the other thing that we do is we're able to meet the buyer where they want to be met, right? And we are able to offer buyers choice on how they want to interact with us, whether that's in person, whether that's virtually, or whether they don't want to interact, they just want it to be completely digitally or perhaps some combination of the three. But, you know, we find that, you know, being able to have that really strong field and digital presence, as well as being able to offer buyers choice on how they want to interact with us, you know, contribute to our success. The other big factor is client service. I mean, client service helps to distinguish us. You know, we're in this business to drive great client relationships, and our NPS has been outstanding. We've had a real great string of performances, and we're near record high levels. So I think that's strong evidence of the relationship that we have. And, you know, in all the various surveys that we do, the big constant in terms of positive verbatim is always around the quality of our associates, and that is, you know, is a good thing to hear, and it speaks to why we have good client relationships. So, look, it's a good thing when, you know, product and sales and service are all clicking at the same time. Yeah, for sure. When they are, the outcome's usually good for our clients. The outcome for us is that the clients trust us, and they reward us with their loyalty. ... Okay, so let's just focus right on RUN here. So it's really been a standout with client growth. What are the, I would say, you know, the near-term focus areas to make sure you keep that momentum going? Yeah, we have to keep that momentum going, and it starts with product, right? That's the first area that I think about. I also think about channel investments, and I also think about making sure that we're enabling our sellers to be as productive as possible. So, you know, again, starting with product, right? It all starts and ends in a lot of ways with product, right? Product's critical. And, you know, our clients, they want it to be simple, they expect a consumer-grade experience, and they want journeys that are easy to navigate. And, we're going to continue to, you know, even though we went on a really big journey, continue that journey to refine, you know, to refine the solution to make sure that it's as easy as possible, as comprehensive as possible, for our clients. We're going to, you know, deliver on this. We have now this strength, right, this emerging strength with our mobile app, and there's a lot more to do on that front, so we're going to continue to push the envelope there. You know, the goal is simple, right? To make things easy on our clients, make things easier on our associates. I imagine that's going to be enhanced by, you know, the GenAI capabilities that we'll put in the product, the GenAI capabilities that we'll build for our service associates and, you know, to make that service experience even stronger on top of what is right now a very strong client retention rate. As it relates to channels, you probably know that channels are a huge part of our business. So something like 75% of our new units are sold with the influence of a partner. Primary ones are accountants and banks, with accountants being the main one. So we're focused on what I think is our market-leading position here. And specific to the CPA channel, we are going to continue to deliver enhancements to our Accountant Connect platform, which is a really, really important product platform for us to drive stickiness in the relationships with the CPA community, as well as to drive even more referrals. You know, Accountant Connect, when I was the head of sales, I don't know, probably over 10 years ago, I remember we got all these CPAs in a room together and, you know, we asked them a provocative question. We said: "What would it take for you to give all of your referrals to ADP?" And, you know, they went away into workshops, and they came back, and they ultimately described something that sounded like Accountant Connect. You know, a portal that they couldn't live without, where they could, you know, service their clients in an efficient way, in an effective way. And we listened to them. We built it, and we keep listening, and we keep improving. And, we're really proud of this technology, 'cause, you know, it ultimately makes the CPA the hero to their clients by managing them more effectively, and it also helps the CPA grow their business as well. And then the last piece of, you know, what we're focused on is really around our sellers. I mean, again, you know, the size of our sales force, right? But we also want to make sure that we're helping to make this sales team as productive as possible. So, you know, we're going to leverage GenAI technology to, you know, help our sellers be able to better target prospects, so they know who to go after, as well as help them pre-call plan for an initial meeting. And, you know, when you could take this very large sales machine and drive both efficiency and effectiveness, like, good outcomes are usually going to happen. So we're pretty excited about the potential here. In terms of the demand environment, how would you characterize the current state of the demand environment within the U.S. SMB market? Has there been any change in lead volumes or pace of prospective client decision-making in 2023? Thanks, thanks, Jared. I mean, the demand environment remains healthy. I mean, we've consistently called out that small business has been a big driver of bookings growth over the last several years, and that's continued really into this year. And I'm pleased to say, I'll knock on wood here, right? Like, we haven't really seen any discernible changes in lead volumes or sales cycles. I mean, for us, the sales cycles are usually pretty short anyway. And again, against this backdrop, the tenure of our sales force is actually improving due to lower turnover, right? So when you have higher tenure, you usually have higher productivity. You know, we're seeing that in a lot of the leading indicators, when we think about, like, first appointments that we're making in the market or channel visits that we have to, you know, some of the channels that I mentioned earlier with both CPAs and banks. Outside of payroll, what are the primary HCM modules that small business segment clients typically purchase, and how have those attach rates trended over recent years? Yeah, If you think about our offering, our offering is very consumer-like, right, in the small business space. You may not see that as you move further upmarket. And so at the, you know, lowest end, we offer basic payroll, right, for our simplest clients. But we are finding that small businesses, right, with such a focus on finding and retaining talent, as well as making sure that they're keeping compliant, it's led to, led to, you know, more demand for HR and, you know, more support that they want from HR. So our top offer is something called HR Pro, and that's really meant to, you know, to address a lot of these needs. I mean, it includes a bunch of stuff, you know, HR help desk, employee handbooks. It has job postings with ZipRecruiter, you know, salary benchmarks, leveraging you know, our DataCl oud, applicant tracking, I mean, trainings, and a lot of these trainings, some of which and some of the topics are mandated in certain states. So, you know, and in addition to that need for HR, we're also seeing you know, popular attachments of you know, products like retirement and insurance and time and attendance. And in terms of how it's all trended, I would say it's generally moving higher because of that need for the additional HR support and also trending more towards you know, retirement and insurance. And some of that's a reflection of just the whole you know, SMB market being resilient. As they tend to grow and mature, they move upward in our bundle continuum. Got it. And then the small business space is uniquely impacted by both the level of new business formations as well as out-of-business rate. What is ADP experiencing on these fronts today? Are they presently providing a net tailwind or headwind for the business? Yeah, so look, you know, the new business formations are still very strong. I mean, they're up something like 9%. And although it's not as high as the spike that we saw during the pandemic, they're still very healthy. And you know, the out-of-business rates are normalizing some, but they're still at relatively healthy levels. They're gradually, you know, getting closer to their pre-pandemic, you know, our fiscal year 2019 levels than these past couple of years. But overall, like, we're not really worried. I mean, again, number one, because of the gradual pace of it all, but two, you know, economic headwinds are not unusual in the small business space, right? Inevitably, there's going to be slowdowns, right, and recessions at some point, and usually those are followed by some tailwinds, right? The good news is that we have a great value proposition that helps small businesses, whether it's great times or in tougher times. I feel like we're well positioned, and it doesn't really change what we need to do, which is some of the focus items that I talked about earlier, which is we're going to control what we can control, and that's building great products, providing great services, and leveraging our powerful distribution engine. Why don't we pivot to two probably lesser-known areas of the portfolio, Retirement Services and insurance? We'll start with retirement. Can you just talk about how, you know, the scale of this business? I think we understand it's 150 or 150,000+ clients that you're serving there, but any, any revenue sizing or growth trajectory that you can share around that retirement? Yeah. Well, so in Q1, Bryan, you're right, we shared, right, that the Retirement Services business has over 150,000 clients, and I believe in, in 2022, we shared that, you know, the revenue was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And that, you know, the, the revenue and sales growth of retirement was outpacing, you know, a lot of the other businesses within the enterprises. And those, those characterizations are, are still true, today. I mean, it's a, it's a great business. It's a great business with a, with an even greater purpose. I mean, there's still about half of Americans that don't have a retirement plan option that's offered to them by their work, right? And, you know, the federal incentives as well as the state mandates, you know, those are vehicles to help try to solve for this problem, and, you know, the legislation has certainly provided tailwinds from a sales perspective. But, you know, our solution is also, you know, fully integrated, right, with payroll and HR. But we're also able to leverage the greater ADP and leverage our ADP's tax credit business to help calculate and obtain that credit that is available from the SECURE Act 2.0. So, you know, by... You know, which again, you know, you put it all together, it helps to create a pretty differentiated offer with a really great purpose and against a favorable backdrop. So, you know, we're well positioned. Right. And, maybe can you just dig in a little bit on the revenue model within Retirement Services for ADP? How are you making money there? Yeah, I'll try to make it as simple as possible. It's really three, three areas. The first is, you know, the hard dollar fees that are associated with, like, your normal monthly processing, as well as your per-participant fee. Those are fees to administer the plan. The second thing is the participant fees, so that's fees that you get from the participants, as an example, when somebody goes to take out a 401(k) loan. And the third is the revenue from the assets that you have under the administration. So it's a pretty diverse set of revenue drivers, and it's ultimately driven by the growth that you have with clients, participants, and with assets. Okay. And yeah, you mentioned... You know, sounds like you have a big greenfield opportunity here, given that penetration number. You mentioned 50% or so of total U.S.? Well, yeah, I mean, the... So 50%, right, of the, of Americans don't have a retirement plan available to them at work. Right, I imagine that would imply that the small business segment of the market is even more a greenfield opportunity versus the enterprise side of that equation. Yeah, I mean, it's... Look, I would say that there's a good opportunity here, right? There are 850,000 clients that are on RUN, right? We have about 150,000 clients that are on Retirement Services. Now, keep in mind that they're not all on RUN, right? Because some of the Retirement Services also goes into some of our mid- and larger-sized platforms. But the opportunity is great because of really two things. One, you know, there's the opportunity to grow share within the base for all those clients that don't have a plan, right? And then second is that it's, you know, because of our differentiated solution, right, our ability to be able to drive conversions from clients that are using another provider to administer their plans. Now, you know, in the low end of the space, you're gonna have more of what we call startup opportunity, right? Those are the non-adopters, and you're trying to educate them on the benefits, right, about having a retirement plan made available to their employees. As you move further upmarket, right, you know, again, from one employee on up, right, you'll start to see that it's more common for, you know, companies to have a retirement plan, and that's where we have to really try to educate them on why ADP versus, you know, their current provider. So yeah, the addressable opportunity is big. You know, we think of those two categories when within our captive audience of clients and, you know, we're well-positioned to continue to capitalize on the opportunity and, you know, help our clients with this really important thing, which is to help their employees prepare for retirement. Okay. It's nice to have, I guess, a regulatory assist here. Can you give us, you know, what is influencing the demand here, and what are you doing within your own strategy to take advantage of kind of SECURE Act 2.0 and the various state mandates? Yeah, so, so I think of, the SECURE Act 2.0 as kind of like the carrot, right? And the state mandates are kind of like the stick. And, you know, unless there's, like, a dramatic change in behavior, I think the, the, the carrot, right, the, the federal incentives are going to provide a gradual increase over time. Okay? That's what we've seen, you know, with the advent of SECURE, SECURE Act, the original SECURE Act, and now with 2.0. The state mandates, though, on the other hand, they seem to create more of a spike in demand because you have clients that are pushing to be compliant by a certain deadline. So on both fronts, we have a opportunity to, you know, educate our clients, educate our prospects, educate our channel partners, around the need to stay compliant or to keep their clients compliant as it relates to the various state mandates, and also to be able to capitalize and provide these benefits based on the incentives provided by SECURE Act 2.0. In both cases, right, like, we do see this as like, you know, multi-year growth driver. Mm-hmm. Okay. On the insurance services side, can you give us a sense of how large is ADP's insurance services business in terms of clients served and revenue scale, and perhaps comment on its recent growth trends? Sure, yeah. We run what's called the ADP Insurance Agency. It's made up of more than 1,000 licensed insurance agents. You know, we help over 200,000 clients, and we're actually one of the top agencies, top 30 agencies in the country. Primarily, you know, we provide workers' comp, we provide business insurance and health insurance coverage. Now, the business has grown nicely, and very similar to if you think about the value prop with Retirement Services, right? You know, it's very similar, right? We have a fully integrated solution with payroll, which helps reduce the overall administration. We also offer P ay-by-Pay, which means that, you know, you could bill by pay period versus having to wait to be billed at the end of the year, which obviously has some impacts on cash flow. And we've also taken that value prop really to the next level, something you know we're calling the Insurance Inspector, and that looks for changes in the payroll that could impact the workers' compensation premium. So because we have that really great integration, if a client adds a new state, we'll let the client know there's workers' comp implications, and so we're gonna help the client update their existing workers' comp policy, and we'll automate you know the process of all of the endorsements with the carrier. And that you know removes a lot of work, a lot of friction, and creates a lot more accuracy. In addition, you know, we'll offer online benefit administration for both employers and employees at no added cost. You know, again, I mentioned, you know, the 1,000 licensed insurance agents and, you know, it just speaks to the, you know, it speaks to the people that we have that are also able to provide- To be defrosted. Oh, Jim, we lost you for a moment there. Yeah. Where did you- Back. Where did you lose me? I saw frozen faces. I was like, "Uh-oh! It was only about 10-15 seconds. Okay. On... As it relates to insurance? Yeah. Yeah, so I mentioned the – you heard about the Insurance Inspector, you know, our ability to offer online benefit administration at no additional cost. And then the other, you know, big value prop there is just the, you know, the licensed agents that we have on hand to be able to provide support and consultation with our clients as they need it. I think you kind of touched on this a little bit, but the potential benefits of a client using ADP's insurance services versus another third-party insurance brokerage? ... Yeah, Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really that integration, right? It's being able to, again, very similar to Retirement Services, that benefit of having all the information closely connected. So that way, you know, as changes happen, there's, there's no manual work, things are updated automatically. And, you know, that, that's, that's a big area of the differentiation that we have, and we try to make it even greater, as by adding things like the Insurance Inspector, which, you know, as different events happen, will automatically kind of do the, the, the, the notifications with, you know, the carriers to, to make sure that everything's seamless. And Jim, let's pivot to kind of some of the tech trends here as it relates to GenAI. You mentioned at a high level some product development earlier on AI, but and we do understand you've got GenAI embedded into parts of the business, particularly Roll. Can you discuss maybe other plans that you have to leverage GenAI and SBS? Yeah, sure. We are hard at work with GenAI and SBS. You know, Roll, as you mentioned, you know, this past summer, GenAI was embedded into Roll. Again, for those that are less familiar, Roll is our mobile chat-based AI-driven payroll app. And, you know, it's interesting, clients are using the chat-based interface, so they're already obviously interacting with us for payroll and HR in the chat, but now they're also asking things like, "How do you write a job description?" Or, "Give me some sample interview questions," or general pointers on how to conduct interviews. So these are just some of the real examples that you know, Roll is able to now assist with, with the power of GenAI. And the early usage has been really good, and it just points to the fact that our clients are seeing some value in it, and we're going to continue to learn more and iterate along the way to you know, tailor the application accordingly. As it relates to GenAI within you know, the broader business, you know, we're trying to help our agents, right, our client- service representatives. You think about you know, a lot of the reps have to enter notes, right? Or summarize what happened in a particular call that they have with the client. Well, now, you know, we're piloting this, is we're able to actually have associates have you know, via call recordings, have these notes automatically summarized and transcribed by ChatGPT, which is pretty neat. Okay, that's interesting, and it certainly saves them a heck of a lot of time as a productivity benefit for HR. Yeah, there's more, right, like, if you think about, we have a lot of clients that interact with us via chat. Yeah. And so, you know, GenAI could suggest what that ideal response could be, and then the associate, obviously, if it's a great response, they could send it over, or they could, you know, they could tailor it slightly or, or, you know, or greatly, I guess, based on what the response is. And also, you know, if you think within the product, right, where you are able to search for things, well, now, you know, you could use natural language, right, to get answers to the product questions. And if it's a how do I question, well, great, we can now answer and provide you deep links to where you need to go within that application. So, you know, I think there's a lot of potential here to, you know, meaningfully reduce a lot of the call and contact volumes, and make it easier for our associates to focus on a lot of the more complex and higher value-type activities. So overall, there's a lot going on here, and we're very focused on improving the experience for our clients, for our associates, and we are definitely hard at work, and we are moving fast on delivering all that. Okay. Let's talk about kind of digital sales and some of the self-onboarding as well within the business. So can you just talk about how the company's utilizing, you know, digital sales and the self-onboarding capability for prospective clients, and how long has that been in place? Sure. Well, Bryan, you know the backdrop here. I mean, the buyers' expectations have continued to evolve, right? They want to shop more like consumers. They're doing a lot of research on their own. They want to see the product even before the actual sales call, in many cases. So a lot of that buying process has been moved up front, and, you know, this is a trend that we've leaned into in a really big way. And it's helped contribute to more digital leads, and improvements in our overall, selling approach, right? Making us more effective. What is newer for us is what you mentioned, and that's the ability to self-onboard, as we utilize machine learning to automate, you know, the extraction of new client information. And, you know, it's about a third of our new clients now fully onboard themselves without much support from an implementation specialist. So, once onboarded, you know, we're going to continue, as I've mentioned, right, to place that emphasis on self-service capabilities throughout the products, which, you know, empowers our clients and make them ultimately more self-sufficient. And, you know, we've been on a nice, nice trajectory, where, you know, we've, we've had about a 20% reduction in service contacts since we started this journey, and we believe that GenAI will, you know, help us continue to accelerate that journey and make even more progress moving forward. How quickly can a new client get up and running by digital sales right through self-onboarding? ... So if you wanted to, get up and running today, and self-onboard today, we can make that happen. So if you have any referrals, we'll take them. I'm gonna go start a business after lunch. In terms of a client churn, can you discuss what are the primary drivers to small business client churn, and how should we think about the mix of controllable versus non-controllable unit churn? Sure. Yeah, as you, as you probably know, most of our churn is due to non-controllable reasons. Primarily, you know, when a client goes out- of- business. A small percentage of our clients leave us, and it's a small percentage primarily for two reasons. Number one is, 'cause we provide a really good experience, really great client experience on RUN. The second reason is, you know, clients, you know, they could help, but they really don't want to switch their vendor, you know? They would prefer not to. So, that's the view on churn. In terms of that competitive churn, do those competitive churn rates differ in that down market based on if a client also purchases, you know, HRO services or additional software modules beyond payroll? Sure, yeah. I mean, as they purchase more services, generally we see a retention lift, you know, the more that the clients take advantage of. We observe it... I would say a particular retention lift when we sell our retirement and insurance offerings, 'cause that tends to produce some of our highest lifetime value clients. Is there anything you can do to reduce those competitive churn rates even further in the future? Yeah, again, you know, it's a smaller percentage of clients that we lose to the competition in the small business space, and, you know, we're gonna do everything I said earlier about innovating and improving our product, to further reduce that attrition. You know, and in addition, we have to thwart that competitive pressure with really great service. And, you know, sometimes we're in the heat of the battle, and we have to try to, you know, save a client that's thinking of leaving us. And our associates are really well-trained to showcase, you know, the value differentiators between our solutions and our competitors. And, you know, they know how to react to try to save our clients. And sometimes, unfortunately, we do have clients that leave. I'd also tell you, though, that we're really great at bringing them back and leveraging our digital sellers in that regard. I know, I know we're running up on time here, but in terms of where you source new clients in the small business segment, what is the mix of business formation versus competitive takeaways versus other sources in terms of where you get those new clients from? Yeah, look, it's you know... Let's talk about some of the new business growth, right? It's safe to assume that new business formation is you know, it's a meaningful percentage of our clients, but it's balanced with competitive takeaways. I mean, the new business market is robust, right? There's... Or the business overall, there's what, 5.3 million businesses in the U.S. with less than 50 employees, and you know, high-propensity business applications are running at around 160,000 a month or so. So look, we're we have to be like, if you're in this business, you have to be successful in taking advantage of that opportunity. But we also have to be successful at driving competitive takeaways in the field and digitally. You know, we rely on our strong brand, our digital marketing strategy, and the really tremendous reach that we have from our sales teams to ensure that we have this balanced success. All right, Jim, I know we're kind of out of time. Just, you know, one of the one or two top things you're focused on over the medium- term here to drive the business, and then any parting thoughts. Yeah, I mean, you know, I would just say that, you know, there's some of the trends that are out there. First of all, there's a lot that happens in a space. It's dynamic, it keeps me on my toes, it makes it fun. But, you know, with respect to, you know, some of, you know, the things that we're seeing, you know, embedded payrolls obviously have been a hot topic. You know, and we're seeing in the marketplace, you know, SaaS providers offering an embedded application, right? Responding to, you know, this demand that SMBs have to have an all-in-one application. We haven't seen any providers take any meaningful share, but it's certainly something that we're monitoring. And I would just say two questions that a SaaS provider should contemplate as it relates to offering payroll. Number one, you know, how will you service the customer on payroll effectively? 'Cause you have this core business, and you don't want to be able to detract from that core business. And two, you know, you have to make sure that you have the ability to attach or upsell payroll effectively. So, you know, as we pursue this additional channel opportunity, we're gonna keep these two questions top of mind and feel that we're, you know, we're gonna be best positioned to help our potential partners succeed here on both of those fronts. All right. Very good. Well, Jim, we appreciate your time, and great discussion. Danny, we appreciate your time as well. Thank you, everybody, for joining us, and we're gonna be back at 12:45 P.M. with an AI panel with Eightfold and Fountain. Thanks again. Thanks, Bryan, for the opportunity. Hopefully, we conveyed, you know, some of the strong business momentum that we have and the opportunity to continue our growth forward. Certainly excited about the future. Very good. Thank you.