The merger between Ultimate Software and Kronos in February 2020 has reshuffled the HCM workspace and will affect the industry for years to come.
Kronos will continue to be the leader in time management systems – but they have not found the same success with their cloud HCM system, Workforce Ready. Conversely, Ultimate Software’s Ultipro is a consistent top 3 leader in Gartners Power Quadrant, along with Oracle, SAP Successfactors and Workday. In 2019, both companies HCM’s were in opposite quadrants. On paper, this merger it looks like an unqualified success, but raises some questions of the long term strategy. With Ultimate Software already a leader in the HCM space, what will become of Kronos’ Workforce Ready? Will it be folded into Ultimate Software, or remain independent and pivot to the small to mid size HRIS market, with ties and features from Kronos time? Can “UKG”, the generic corporate name of the new company post merger, offer two similar products successfully?
UKG has already addressed some questions about the future of existing partnerships with both SAP and ADP, who both have deep ties with Kronos. ADP uses a Kronos backend for more complex time management and SuccessFactors Employee Central has developed a Employee Central tile and API to manager Kronos time directly in EC.
In light of these changes it’s in SAP’s best interest to improve its time keeping capabilities in Employee Central, to remain competitive- a long standing weak spot – and what do you know – there were some serious improvements in the Q2 2020 release, and I’d put money on a similar level of effort in the Q2 2021 release.
