In our latest episode, we chat with Prasanna Gopalakrishnan, ADP's Chief Product and AI Officer, about her journey to ADP and the innovative work happening in Human Capital Management. Learn about our culture, the integration of AI in our products, and why associate longevity matters. If you're considering a career at ADP, this episode is a must-listen!
Ingrid: [00:00:05] Hello, hello, we are back with Life at ADP the podcast, and today I'm actually super, well, I'm always excited and I always say this, but I'm really, really excited to have this special guest, partly because she has, I would say, the coolest, the coolest role in the entire company. And also because she joined the company almost a year ago. So we have a lot of information to cover. Super excited. And, Kate, how are you doing today?
Kate: [00:00:37] Hey, I am doing wonderful today, it's always a good day when I get to be in the studio with you, Ingrid, and our inspiring guests. I mean, how lucky are we to work at a company that, first of all, lets us have a podcast about what it's like to work here. But secondly, to have guests like someone who definitely holds one of the coolest titles here at ADP. So, without further ado, I would love to bring Prasanna Gopalakrishnan up to our stage, our virtual stage and Prasanna is our Chief Product and AI officer here at ADP. So first of all, how many companies do you know that have a Chief product and AI officer? Prasanna welcome to the Life of ADP the podcast.
Prasanna: [00:01:20] Thank you Kate. Super thrilled to be here. Thanks for inviting me to join this podcast.
Kate: [00:01:26] We are so thrilled to have you, and as Ingrid had mentioned, you know you joined ADP not too long ago. You're actually just about to round up into your year anniversary, right?
Prasanna: [00:01:37] Absolutely, yes.
Kate: [00:01:39] And so tell us about your journey to ADP, if you don't mind. Ingrid and I love leaning into the came for stay for. So why did you join ADP? And within this you know, let's round up to a year journey, you know, what are you enjoying about working here so far?
Prasanna: [00:01:57] Kate, I absolutely came here for having this great role of combining product and AI together in and having this title of the and the role of Chief Product and AI Officer. One, the work itself has been very exciting, and the other reason why I came to ADP is also I've been intrigued about the culture of ADP and and I used to be puzzled by is this real that, that I'm hearing a lot about the culture. And I've seen and talk to people during my interview process. So fast forward a year, I'm still impressed with how we treat people, that the whole culture is collaborative. So it's been an exciting journey so far. And what I've been enjoying is everything that I have to learn about our products, and how the way we are client centric, we treat our clients. I spent enormous amount of time with the frontline folks talking to our service agents, and asking them about our clients, as well as getting deeper insights about our products and how they serve in the various market segments. So there's a lot of learning. There's a lot of people to meet and getting to know the culture of ADP. So you can imagine my life has been very, very busy. And I have been enjoying every single moment of it since the day I started here.
Ingrid: [00:03:33] Thank you, Prasanna, for that, awesome answer. And you probably already gave us a hint of this, but I'm going to ask you, right? What has surprised you the most about ADP in your year? And it could be from, you know, the tech aspect or maybe the cultural perspective.
Prasanna: [00:03:53] What is surprise to me, Ingrid, is that I'm curious and I've been excited [00:04:00] to see how many people have been here for more than 20 years, 30 years, multiple decades. It has continued to impress me as what motivates someone to stay here for such a long time. And it's one thing to hear about longevity, but it's another thing that why people stay here and continue to enjoy their work. That's what surprises me. And at the same time, how can an organization that is 75 year old continue to keep that culture intact even through various transitions of CEOs and people and leadership and even transformation of our own companies through multiple decades, as it saw through many economic cycles, we have managed to keep our culture intact, even as we have grown bigger with newer acquisitions and getting into new markets, that what that is. What has surprised me the most about ADP.
Kate: [00:05:04] Prasanna, you hit upon a point that people have brought up a couple of times in regards to their surprised by the longevity of people's careers here, or we've had people on our podcast who have talked about what their longevity has looked like here. You know, we've heard how people are reinventing themselves because we're such a large matrix organization. You can start in, let's say, product marketing and then end up in tech or then end up in sales or perhaps HR marketing. And so it's really fascinating, so even though people have been here for potentially decades, you know, their skills are staying fresh. Their brand is I mean, superb. You would have to argue, if not. But here's a question for you is what would you say to a new joiner, someone who is interviewing at ADP and might be overwhelmed by people with so much tenure? Why should someone consider joining a company that has so much tenure in it?
Prasanna: [00:06:04] That's a really good question. The first thing I would say is don't get intimidated when you walk into a room full of people who've been here like 20 years, 30 years. You absolutely can bring in a new perspective coming from the outside, and you'd be surprised how other people feel. Folks in the room would be more open to listening to the new perspectives that you bring along. That's one thing I would add. And the second thing is, I would say respect the history of how what has changed and morphed in this company and listen to it, seek to understand it, it's very important. Before suggesting why something can be better, there's always has a story behind why we are where we are, good or bad. And that would be super important to understand that perspective. Third, I would say don't be hard on yourself if things take longer or harder than it looks on the surface. Eventually, what I, from my experience, I've been here is that when ADPers put their mind together to achieve something, we corral and come together to achieve that goal. That's one of our superpowers. Those are the three things I'll say to someone who's starting new.
Kate: [00:07:27] Parsanna, that is beautiful advice. And you've echoed some of our own personal sentiments and mantras, quite frankly, I'm a huge fan of seeking to understand, you know, I joined ADP almost six years now, and I'm still seeking to understand, you know, What, why historically are we doing something this way and not this way. And I can imagine, too, in your role in particular, there's some new history that's probably being discovered and that you're also laying the groundwork, for the future, which is really exciting. You know, Ingrid is a huge fan of being kind to yourself. She is constantly telling whether it's myself or any of our teammates or, frankly, anyone that she meets. Just be kind to yourself, so those are some really great piece of advice, and I loved how you leaned into taking it all in because it's a lot. I, when I first joined and you can probably, Ingrid, I guarantee you relate because she joined as an intern prior to me joining ADP. It can be overwhelming all the acronyms and the history and, you know, the matrix org that we have. But the more that you put yourself out there and ask the questions and network, somehow one day you wake up in the puzzle is starting to come together, right?
Prasanna: [00:08:48] Absolutely. If I could say one more thing about the culture. You asked me that, if I pause and think about that, Kate. Based on what we spoke earlier. I would say one thing that folks who are joining you should also understand is that this is a company, even though we've been innovating for 75 years, is still open to think, it's very forward looking and wanting to figure it out how do we take this company into the future? As soon as Maria took her role as a CEO one of the things I've heard her speak is what is up for ourselves in the in a forward thinking mode, and the and the tagline is the new ERA. And that tells that we are constantly looking to innovate, constantly forward looking as to how we can reinvent ourselves. And that says a lot about who we are as a company.
Ingrid: [00:09:45] Prasanna, thank you so much for sharing that perspective. I think that, you know, for someone outside of ADP that really paints a picture of how we are as a company, the culture that we have, the culture that we're so proud of. But now let's talk about technology, right? Let's talk about my favorite, you know, other subject, obviously after culture. So let's talk about technology and product at ADP.
Prasanna: [00:10:10] Thanks, Ingrid. It's a I mean, this is near and dear to my heart and everything I do at ADP. So look we have incredible products at ADP. And all and all products have been created with the premise of serving our clients. And we are a very client centric organization. And we have a strategy that is that's wrapped around how we build our products, which is we have the best technology, best service and we leverage our global scale to bring all innovation to our products. In addition, we are operating as a company with a human centric approach. So even though we bring AI and want to bring AI into all our products, we're always going to have that human centric approach, which I believe is a huge competitive advantage for us as as a company compared to all our competitors. And the scale that I talked about, we operate in so many segments. So we have the three broader segments in the US and the broad global scale that we have and we operate in 140 countries. It's hard to match that in the human capital management industry. And we are a pioneer, in my opinion, in leading the way, not only just in capabilities we bring to the products, but also innovating at scale in AI.
Kate: [00:11:48] And Prasanna, as you're talking, I'm reflecting back on your earlier comment about, you know, the theme of the new era. And it sounds like you're you and the team are absolutely driving ADP's new era forward. Would you say that's that's a correct assessment?
Prasanna: [00:12:06] Absolutely, yes. When we talk about the new era, we constantly think about how do we bring our clients and the practitioners of our clients along in the journey of making them ready for the next era, which is the next transformation of AI that's happening around us? And as you can imagine, or HR practitioners are in the middle of this transformation no matter where which business segment you are in, you're going to have to write this change, and we are helping our practitioners write this transformation through our products. And that's part of how we want to make that the journeys that we build into our products easy, smart and human. And so, so we constantly think about that all the time when we when we bring that thinking on the new era.
Kate: [00:13:03] And I'm glad that you brought up easy, smart human because I know that that's something that you know, Sreeni has brought up numerous times and fully believes in, and as our head of all things tech, that's a big deal. And I know that easy, smart human goes hands in hands with moments that matter. Can you share with us why these concepts are important to tech at ADP and our clients, and why candidates who are thinking about joining ADP should be interested in this.
Prasanna: [00:13:35] Our tagline is Always Designing for People and we constantly reinvent ourselves to build the best experiences, when we build our products and on the how, when we talk about best experiences, easy, smart human is a vehicle through which we build our journeys. And let me explain what that means. So easy is about when you open up our products and say you're looking to look up an employee. You have to be able to get to that and navigate to the inside the product to look up an employee very easily. So we have search bars, in most of our products where you go in and type and we have a smart search lookup that comes up. That's an example of how easy it is to find what you're looking for. And smart is about giving insights to you as a practitioner so that you maybe make your job not only easy to do, but also make you smarter as a result of intelligent insights that we can give you as a part of our product. We have great examples to demonstrate that, for example, we built a analytics assist product where you ask a question or a search bar, and we when the practitioner can look up how many employees have exited the company in this month or give me a trend of a report, it can be, the report comes immediately offline, online to our products, rather than go to multiple menus and go look up a report to go generate. So that's why we make you smarter in front of your organization and make it easier for you to go look, find it. And the human element of this is how do we understand and your difficulties and your meaning to our clients difficulties and build capabilities in our products. And this is where I think about, the moments that matter, something that we obsess about. For example, when you're an employee who's going to go on a maternity leave or or found out that you're pregnant, if that employee is looking for information, it's easily available, and we we have built our workflows that will allow you to start the process of seeking to understand how do I how many vacation days do I have, or am I entitled to? Who do I need to talk to? How do I kick off the process to take the time off? All of these are part of experiences that we create in our products, having insights into moments that matter. And there are plenty of those. And we are fortunate to understand the data a lot more than many other organizations. And we can seek to give human experiences to our clients leveraging our data, and that's our middle name.
Kate: [00:16:37] You're absolutely right, Prasanna, because you think about the moments that matter, you know, maternity leave, service anniversary, you know, things of that nature. There's many things to be celebrated, and there's also many things that people should just be aware of, you know, as we all walk through our own human experience, so thank you for tying that into also the concept of easy, smart human, so thank you so much.
Ingrid: [00:17:05] Thank you so much for that Prasanna, and you know, I'm curious to know like what are, what have been some industry recognition that we have received for one of our products?
Prasanna: [00:17:17] I just want to I'm very proud of all the work that everyone has done across ADP. And we've received a number of awards for ADP Assist, which is our flagship brand for all the AI capabilities we have rolled out into our products.
Ingrid: [00:17:32] And on that note, let's also talk about our mindset right, we're Always Designing for People. So along that we have this client centric mindset. Can you expand on this topic a little bit more?
Prasanna: [00:17:46] Sure. From a product perspective, when you say client centric mindset, how we think about and I talk a lot to my organization is that when we roll out capabilities, features into our products and how we think about roadmap we constantly obsess about what is the problem that we're trying to solve for our practitioners. What's the outcome we are delivering? So we have our practitioners in mind constantly, and this can only be done by talking to our clients, by having regular touchpoints with our clients and meeting with them and speaking to them about what works, what does not work, and also obsessed about metrics that come out of the products in terms of our adoption rate, and are we creating high friction experiences? So that's coming from the product side. In addition to talking to clients, we also spend a lot of time analyzing calls by working with our service associates, talking to frontline leaders about what are you hearing directly from our clients? Is there anything that we are rolling out working for them? And so we have to have a full 360 degree view of every experience our clients are undergoing and every touchpoint that they have, and they interact with our ecosystem. We have to think about how are we showing up both in our products as well as our brand as ADP. And unless we think about this holistically we can build better products and be in the shoes of our practitioners and our clients in being there for them when they need us. And look, our clients don't wake up every day and say, I want to come in and use ADP products. They come to our products for a good reason, and we need to be there when they need us and and in the most frictionless manner that we can have, and be there to resolve whatever problems that they have. That's the way I look at it from a client centric mindset. It is it's a it's something we have to measure ourselves and we have to be obsessed about it.
Kate: [00:20:07] Prasanna, even hearing you talk about the way in which we think of how our users and practitioners are going to use our products. It's very obvious that yourself and most likely your team, just lead with a lot of empathy. I feel like you're always thinking like client first.
Prasanna: [00:20:27] Absolutely. You you spot on, Kate. The way you describe it is empathy is a better word or an alternate word to saying client centric. Because without that deep empathy, we cannot build better products. And also with the mindset that it's a journey and we have to constantly reinvent and innovate in order to bring that empathy into our products.
Kate: [00:20:55] For sure. I can definitely see where like a client roadmap can always be evolving, especially as the world evolves, right. That's one of the amazing things too, about our organization is it's kind of interesting for as large of an org as we are, we we can adapt as quick as we need to, you know. Which is, which is pretty amazing. And I think to a lot of that goes into our ethics. I know that many times we've been touted as an extremely ethical organization, and if we're throughout product discovery and realize that something is not going to work, we're not going to just try to sell it, to sell it, right, we're going to go back to the drawing board, make it work so it's appropriate, it's ready, the client will be satisfied and happy, and that launch date can go off successfully.
Prasanna: [00:21:45] Absolutely. That's the right way to think about it. You described it really well.
Kate: [00:21:50] Well, thank you.
Ingrid: [00:21:51] Okay, and like I said before, you know, tech, innovation, I just love this subject, so of course I have to ask, can we talk about [00:22:00] AI at ADP?
Prasanna: [00:22:02] Thank you, Ingrid. I would frame the our journey with AI into three categories. Number one I call it as empower. Number two as enhanced and number three as transform. Let me start with the first category of empower. Empower is is about bringing productivity tools leveraging Gen AI to our 65,000 associates. And these are tools we are piloting now, will be rolling out much broader. And there are a number of tools we are working with, and this is done to empower them so that they could be more efficient and effective in their job. And the second category of enhance is about how do we bring assist like capabilities, we can augment humans with tools so that they could do their job better, and that is being implemented as ADP Assist into all our products. And that's what I talked a lot about, how we have deep empathy about our practitioners. And we think about how can our AI capabilities, help them do their job better, save time for them, and improve their effectiveness and through our products. The third category is about transform. This is where we are going, where we're looking to build agents, which is something you must have heard everywhere, talked about in all the news media about Agent AI. And that's where we are heading to see how we can transform and bring AI agents, which can help practitioners in an improve their lives in a much bigger way through agents. So that's where we're heading and where we are today.
Ingrid: [00:24:09] That's amazing, and, you know, like hearing you speak, I have to say I have six new favorite words, are you ready for this? Easy, smart, human, empower, enhance and transform. So I'm just going to leave it at that.
Kate: [00:24:27] Oh, Ingrid, that is phenomenal. Well, Prasanna, this has been incredible. I will speak on behalf of Ingrid and myself. We have just loved sitting down with you today and getting to meet you a little bit more personal, hearing about your journey to ADP and really the impactful work that you and your team are doing today and in the future for all of our tomorrows. So I just want to extend a thank you, and I'd love to know, as we wrap things up, why should somebody consider a career at ADP?
Prasanna: [00:25:02] Oh, I love this question. What I would say is do come here if you love culture of a company, if you are someone who wants to wake up every day coming into work and feeling good about your job, the people who you work with, then come to ADP. And the tagline that I say to Ingrid that I came to ADP for the culture, and I'm going to stay here for the impact because there's tremendous opportunities to create an impact. And that's what I would tell someone who wants to start their career at ADP.
Kate: [00:25:39] Thank you Prasanna, I think that is just some really sage advice, and it's so true to who we are at the core. And I'll add on to that just briefly, for anyone who is interested in making impact and really being part of an organization who's in the forefront of technology in the space of which we are Human Capital Management, this is absolutely the place and the time, right? Wouldn't you agree?
Prasanna: [00:26:03] Absolutely. No better time.
Kate: [00:26:06] Well, Prasanna, thank you again for your time today. We have just absolutely loved sitting down with you. And for our listeners, thank you for joining us for this episode of Life at ADP the podcast, and we'll catch you on our next episode.