Nearly four years after the creation of UKG, the HCM software powerhouse is seizing the window of opportunity to expand further into everything from AI-powered workforce management and global payroll to workplace recognition and HR process automation for small, midmarket and enterprise companies.
UKG, the world’s largest privately-held HR SaaS vendor following the merger between Ultimate Software and Kronos, is capitalizing on the deceleration of its publicly-traded competitors amid the paradigm shifts borne out of the Generative AI craze, elongated sales cycle at the enterprise level, and even missteps from its rivals.
In recent months, some of its rivals like Paycom have reduced their revenue forecasts, resulting in stock drops, high turnover, and low morale. Platform vendors such as Meta have even bowed out of the HR market by killing its Workplace by Facebook product for employee experience after years of investing heavily in amassing thousands of customers. It threw in the towel after citing the need to reallocate resources to its AI initiatives.
Meanwhile UKG trains its laser focus on a growing number of strategic areas such as workplace culture ( Great Place to Work Hub for fostering positive company culture, employee growth, and workplace equity), global payroll (UKG One View for multi-country payroll), and more features specifically serving small and midsized businesses, many with large frontline workforces (UKG Ready now accounts for more than half of its installed base of 80,000+ customers).
Speaking at an analyst event, CEO Chris Todd and his team of executives expressed confidence that the $4-billion-plus vendor will outpace its peers because of its broad product portfolio designed to support frontline workers with increased emphasis on user experience and AI-infused digital assistants for removing workplace friction between managers and employees. Our projection calls for UKG exceeding $5 billion in sales over the next 12 months.
2023 Workforce Management (WFM) Market
| Rank | Vendor | 2021 Workforce Total Apps Revenues, $M | 2022 Workforce Total Apps Revenues, $M | 2023 Workforce Total Apps Revenues, $M | YoY Growth | 2023 Workforce Total Market Share, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UKG | 1412.5 | 1613.1 | 1772.3 | 9.9% | 24.2% |
| 2 | Workday | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 17.1% | Subscribe |
| 3 | Visier | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 7.6% | Subscribe |
| 4 | Dayforce | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 24.0% | Subscribe |
| 5 | ADP | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 5.4% | Subscribe |
| 6 | Oracle | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 9.3% | Subscribe |
| 7 | SAP | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 3.5% | Subscribe |
| 8 | Paycom | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 23.2% | Subscribe |
| 9 | Paylocity | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 21.6% | Subscribe |
| 10 | ATOSS | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 33.4% | Subscribe |
| Subtotal | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 12.3% | Subscribe | |
| Other | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 9.4% | Subscribe | |
| Total | Subscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe | 10.8% | 100.0% |
Source: Apps Run The World, June 2024
Source: ARTW Buyer Insight Master Database, June 2024
- University of Warwick, a United Kingdom based Education organization with 6897 Employees
- SAP, a Germany based Professional Services company with 109000 Employees
- SAP, a Germany based Professional Services organization with 109000 Employees
| Logo | Company | Industry | Employees | Revenue | Country | Evaluated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | University of Warwick | Education | 6897 | $1.1B | United Kingdom | 2025-02-01 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 109000 | $34.8B | Germany | 2024-11-06 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 109000 | $34.8B | Germany | 2024-10-30 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 109000 | $34.8B | Germany | 2024-10-17 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 62000 | $29.1B | United States | 2024-10-17 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 2800 | $553M | United States | 2024-09-30 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 12 | $1M | United States | 2024-09-30 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 19000 | $5.8B | United States | 2024-09-06 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Government | 68 | $8M | Japan | 2024-08-19 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 50 | $5M | Israel | 2024-08-18 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 2800 | $553M | United States | 2024-07-30 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 50 | $5M | United States | 2024-07-08 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 2800 | $553M | United States | 2024-07-01 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Manufacturing | 1869 | $573M | United Kingdom | 2024-07-01 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 775 | $166M | Germany | 2024-07-01 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 2800 | $553M | United States | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Retail | 12261 | $6.2B | United States | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 1500 | $300M | United States | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Education | 1600 | $358M | United States | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 70 | $10M | United States | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Media | 500 | $259M | United States | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Banking and Financial Services | 50 | $5M | Saudi Arabia | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Professional Services | 847 | $96M | India | 2024-06-28 |
| Subscribe | Subscribe | Banking and Financial Services | 250 | $35M | United States | 2024-06-28 |
Armed with nearly a quarter of the workforce management applications market share in 2023, the No. 1 vendor is parlaying its strengths in WFM segments like time and attendance and workforce scheduling into adjacent markets such as workplace recognition.
In order to shore up its presence in the enterprise, Todd reiterated the importance of its many vertical-specific solution capabilities, especially in key industries like healthcare where uneven financial performance exacerbated by talent shortages has hurt many hospitals in the post-Covid era.
Along those lines, more than 50 customers have recently added the Great Place To Work Hub to their UKG Pro suites, allowing them to build inclusive and equitable cultures by leveraging GPTW’s vast repository of employee data and best practices that sustain a diverse workforce. For UKG and its customers, the ultimate win lies in leveraging GPTW wisely and effectively without eroding its brand equity.
In May, UKG also announced the appointment of Rachel Barger – formerly senior vice president of Americas with Cisco – as its new president, Go-To-Market, overseeing sales, marketing and customer relationship management. Barger said she expects her years of experience with running sales and services operations in Asia and elsewhere will add value to UKG’s international expansion efforts.
Following its acquisition of Immedis to launch One View, UKG has recently signed more than a dozen customers, enabling them to process payroll for over 120,000 employees in 50+ countries within weeks and having one place to visualize all of their employees across the world. Expanding global payroll widely for One View is its next priority, as having schedule to fund in one solution is a game changer for global customers today.
Over the past few months, UKG has secured thousands of small and medium businesses for its UKG Ready suite, resulting in more than 51,000 customers – out of the vendor’s entire installed base of 80,000+ accounts. As it continues to automate core HR, payroll, and workforce management processes in North America, EMEA and ANZ regions, it is notable for the inclusion of its AI engine Bryte Assist for conversational search that simplifies the lookup of company policies and compliance records.
Hugo Sarrazin, chief product and technology officer of UKG, said after years of partnering with Google to develop Bryte AI, UKG digital assistance is expected to be pervasive across its product portfolio for both enterprise and SMB customers, allowing them to compress the time to complete tasks in minutes with precision and remarkable results, something that might have taken them hours if not days in the past.
Among the time savers are writing performance self-reviews and job descriptions in minutes as well as identifying skills needed for internal job mobility and matching them with integrated learning, all of which can be fully automated with the use of Bryte AI, Sarrazin said.
Extending Bryte AI further, UKG is building thousands of new AI models and use cases including breakthroughs in frontline worker career planning, fatigue prediction and benefits summarization, he added. Hence, testing such AI models fast and doing it well could be a key differentiator for UKG especially with multi-language support for Bryte AI.
While its competitors are preoccupied with reviving sagging stock prices, UKG, which is held by a group of PE firms including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman, has the luxury of playing a different game by investing heavily in AI without sacrificing the intrinsic value that forms a lasting bond with its customers wholly dependent on its WFM, core HR, payroll and now workplace culture and recognition solutions.
Still, meeting the simplicity challenge UKG has set for itself now that it has grown to more than 15,000 employees and many different areas of capability is going to be a monumental task in the coming years. Improving user experience has never been more important in the eyes of UKG executives as it emerges as a recurring theme across many of the upcoming enhancements planned for UKG Pro, UKG Ready. and the UKG Flex Platform for data, integration, and AI development. This includes addressing key areas such as real-time integration of UKG data and upskilling and reskilling for frontline workers.
UKG executives are keenly aware of the importance of being easy to work with after experiencing explosive growth through the years, or for that matter, any negative connotation of its offerings if they were perceived as not user friendly.
Many companies fail not simply because they think they are too big to fail, but the real culprit might well stem from their inabilities to remove complexity when it is necessary to do so – such as when migrating customers to a new version or even an AI assistant. Otherwise, the New Coke would have rendered Coke Classic obsolete.
The challenge for UKG is to instill confidence in Bryte AI through intuitive self-service capabilities that seamlessly nudge users to let automation take over after removing their fear, uncertainty, or even the anxiety of change. This is the same reason that fewer people have bothered to return to bank branches after switching to online banking.
List of UKG Customers
Source: Apps Run The World, June 2024
