pi hr logo
Request a Demo
Blogs

ADP Workforce Now® + PeopleInsight: Unified HR Analytics

HR Strategy and Planning

ADP Workforce Now®+ PeopleInsight: Turning Workforce Data into Decisions for Mid-Sized Organizations

Mid-sized organizations rely on ADP Workforce Now® because it centralizes everyday HR, talent acquisition (TA), time and attendance, and payroll, in one extensible platform. That breadth is exactly why these teams often ask a second question once they’re up and running: “How do we bring our ADP data together with everything else we use and surface insights the native reports can’t?” This is where PeopleInsight by HireRoad fits: purpose-built people analytics that unifies ADP Workforce Now® with the rest of your HR tech stack and translates raw data into clear, leadership-ready answers.
Group 10000047782

Who this is for

Mid-sized Workforce Now (WFN) customers who want clearer, faster answers from their people data. Whether you use only WFN today or WFN alongside other HR/TA systems, you’re likely looking to move beyond static reports to instant, AI‑powered insights that connect hiring, retention, workforce health, and business outcomes.

Why ADP Workforce Now® is a strong core for mid-market HR

Workforce Now is designed for mid-sized businesses, offering a flexible, cloud-based HCM suite to manage the employee lifecycle from recruiting and onboarding to payroll and benefits. It’s the system of record for many HR teams because it combines core HR with payroll accuracy and compliance, plus modular components that can scale with the business.

ADP also brings serious scale to the table. As of 2025, ADP serves over 1.1 million clients in more than 140 countries, evidence that its payroll and HCM capabilities are tested across industries, geographies, and compliance regimes. That global footprint matters for mid-sized companies that hire across borders or plan to expand.

The challenge: data spread across multiple tools

Even when ADP Workforce Now® is the hub, mid-sized HR teams rarely live in one system. Recruiting may happen in an ATS, learning in an LMS, background checks with a specialized provider, and surveys in an engagement platform. Finance keeps labor cost actuals in a GL or BI tool. As your tech stack expands, so do the questions leadership asks:

Are hiring sources improving time to fill and quality of hire?

Where are labor costs rising fastest, and does overtime correlate with attrition?

Which frontline locations have the highest absenteeism, and what’s the impact on overtime and margins?

You can answer parts of these questions within ADP. But you can’t fully answer them without joining ADP data with data from the rest of your HR Technology stack and doing so reliably, repeatably, and in a way that stakeholders understand at a glance.

Why an analytics layer on ADP Workforce Now® matters

ADP Workforce Now® provides the raw ingredients, including requisitions, hires, schedule and time data, earnings codes, cost centers, and organizational hierarchies – along with tools to filter, segment, and export. The platform’s value here is consistency: the same data definitions and histories that power payroll and compliance also make trend analysis possible.

ADP’s partner ecosystem matters just as much as its core. Through ADP Marketplace apps, APIs, and secure file exchanges, Workforce Now seamlessly connects with applicant tracking tools, background screening, learning systems, survey platforms, and financial planning systems. For mid-sized teams, this connectivity reduces spreadsheet gymnastics and makes it practical to look beyond single reports.

The practical challenge isn’t access to data so much as customization and consistency. Even with access to robust data, HR teams often still have to manipulate and align data fields to meet the needs of their business (think: renaming cost centers, changing location hierarchies, or adjusting job families). They also need repeatable views that hold up month over month and a way to tell a clear story to executives who won’t live inside a reporting tool.

An analytics layer on top of ADP helps teams move from “What happened?” to “Why did it happen?” and “What should we do next?”—without building a custom BI stack or relying on one-off spreadsheets that drift from the truth over time.

What “better use of ADP data” looks like

Icon

Cleaner, comparable dimensions

Ensure departments, locations, job families, job levels, and cost centers align to your specific organizational needs, and are consistent across any connected systems. That way, trend lines don’t break when org structures change.

2

Consistent metric definitions

Lock in how you calculate time-to-fill, early-tenure attrition, overtime ratio, or compa-ratios so you can avoid human error in spreadsheet formulas and focus on strategic decisions.

3

Role-based views

Give executives concise scorecards, HRBPs diagnostic drill-downs, and managers simple action lists tied to their teams.

Icon44

Narrative-ready visuals

Pair charts with AI-powered insights, diagnostics, and predictive analytics to get key takeaways alongside your visuals, allowing you to make decisions faster.

Two paths for advanced ADP Workforce Now® analytics

#1: Get more out of your WFN data

You rely on WFN’s operational reporting but want more advanced, customized analytics to understand the “why” and “so what.” You’d like to start with WFN data now and scale analytics as you add systems later.

#2: Pair your WFN data with your other systems

You’re juggling multiple tools and often stitching data together in spreadsheets or a generic BI platform. You want a single, integrated view that connects the journey from candidate → employee → retention → performance, plus pre‑built insights so you’re not rebuilding metrics every month.

Look for an analytics partner that meets you where you’re at in your data journey, and helps you deliver impact fast. PeopleInsight supports both paths to advanced WFN analytics, with different offerings and analytics modules based on the needs of your business. Dashboards are up and running in as little as 5 days, and add-ons make it easy to scale as your needs evolve.

Use cases for ADP Workforce Now® + PeopleInsight

Early‑tenure retention

Track 30/60/90‑day exits alongside onboarding completion and manager touchpoints captured in WFN; spot hotspots early and quantify fixes.

Hiring quality and cost

Connect ATS source/stage data to first‑year retention and performance proxies in WFN; reallocate spend toward higher‑yield channels.

Labor cost control

Identify overtime hotspots by shift and supervisor, correlate with absence patterns, and quantify the savings from schedule fixes.

Pay equity and progression

Compare pay to bands by cohort and tenure; flag compression risks and uneven promotion velocity by job family/location.

Location health:

Roll up headcount, turnover, absenteeism, and overtime by site to quickly see where staffing models or manager coaching need attention.

ADP Marketplace + APIs: extend your Workforce Now® data

ADP offers a robust Marketplace and secure APIs that make it straightforward to get more out of your WFN data by connecting complementary solutions. This keeps day‑to‑day operations running in WFN while enabling advanced analytics, without tying up your team in spreadsheets or custom BI projects. By adopting ADP Marketplace partners to complement your ADP WFN instance, you’ll ensure a seamless integration and implementation process. Purpose-built APIs make data transfer safe and efficient, saving your team time on what can often be a long, complex implementation process.

Where PeopleInsight by HireRoad fits

When you’re ready to layer advanced analytics on top of ADP Workforce Now®, PeopleInsight by HireRoad is the ideal partner. It connects to ADP and any other HR or talent tools you use, harmonizes dimensions and metric definitions, and publishes role‑based dashboards that answer the cross‑module questions leaders ask most often. Because the integration runs via API and follows proven data models, teams can access a robust suite of dashboards in as little as five days.

What you get:

Frame 1321318103

AI‑powered insights & predictive analytics that move beyond static reports to show leading indicators and “what to do next.”

Frame 1321318103

Pre‑built dashboards designed for top HR and TA use cases —fast time‑to‑value, no custom BI build required.

Frame 1321318103

One view across WFN and (optionally) your ATS, engagement, performance, and survey tools.

Frame 1321318103

A team of analysts to support implementation, onboarding, and ongoing requests.

Frame 1321318103

Start small and scale as your needs and impact grow, tapping into analytics for a fraction of the cost of other bespoke platforms.

The benefit is practical: you keep running HR, Payroll, and Time in ADP, while decision‑ready dashboards and plain‑English narratives help HR, Finance, and Operations understand the story and act on it. Want to see your ADP Workforce Now® data presented this way, joined where it needs to be, cleaned for consistency, and explained in simple terms? Reach out to PeopleInsight by HireRoad for a live view using your metrics so you can judge how much faster it makes planning, reviews, and executive updates.