Great Stories: From LEGO® Bricks to Data

By Jack Berkowitz, Chief Data Officer, ADP  

My kids loved LEGO® bricks when they were growing up. They’d play for hours separating the pieces to get the right sizes, analyzing what they had, and then putting them together to build massive cities. I’d watch as they’d use the structures to create stories about different places and events that would happen in the cities they built. It was exciting to see. They knew that individually, each LEGO® was important. They weren’t interesting when looked at as individual pieces. It wasn’t until the pieces were all together that they shined and were able to work together to tell a great story. 

As ADP’s Chief Data Officer, I lead data and analytics management in partnership with service, product, and sales operations leaders. In my role, I have a unique lens into how we manage data across our products. ADP has the most comprehensive workforce data anywhere, and we’re able to take that data and help our clients create the stories they need to make real-time and long-term decisions. 

Individually, like a single LEGO® piece, each element of data by itself means almost nothing. However, when it’s constructed together, we’re able to build stories, gain insights, take action and make informed decisions. With the right data, insights, and vision, we’re accelerating the use of data as an asset to help our clients. 

When we look at our data strategy, we can break it down into four areas for our clients: 

1. Protect My Data: With a focus on data security and governance, we think like owners and can applaud how we protect our clients’ data. Our clients respect our processes and trust us to keep their sensitive information private. With a culture rooted in integrity, we are all privacy and data evangelists. 
2. Answer My Questions: ADP’s unmatched data platforms and analytics help clients make better decisions about their people. The amount of data across ADP’s platforms is astronomical. We serve data in meaningful ways for immediate evaluation, understanding, and action. For clients using ADP Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms with capabilities through ADP DataCloud, analytics help our clients explore data, get insights and benchmarks against which to compare themselves in a truly differentiated way. Without insights, it’s just raw data. ADP is committed to helping businesses take reliable insights from the right workforce data in a way they can understand and take action. 
3. Improve My Experience: Through our data transformation and initiatives, we are paving the way our data is used to proactively respond to client needs, solve problems that keep them up at night and help our clients make real-time decisions. We’re working on developing innovative products that use our workforce data to help organizations gain reliable insights to invoke action and achieve results. However, it’s beyond products. We continue to innovate and strategically centralize client data from their first through current interaction into one system, resulting in a better client experience. 
4. Guide My Future: We will expand our solutions to help shape business decisions and investments. We can identify new ways for businesses to tap into the massive ADP data set, including new use cases and user personas. For example, geographic income data may provide insights to help companies figure out where to build their next location, or this data could enrich valuation models for the investment community. The potential is endless, especially built with our commitment to data privacy at the foundation. 

We’re continuously proving ADP is the undisputed leader in data. With solutions such as our award-winning ADP DataCloud, we can take our information and offer clients something no one else can. Recently, our ADP DataCloud Diversity, Equity and Inclusion dashboards won the Top HR Product from Human Resource Executive, marking the seventh consecutive year ADP earned this award. ADP DataCloud was additionally a recipient of the AI Breakthrough Awards, Data Breakthrough Awards, and Stratus Awards for Cloud Computing, owing to its powerful capabilities and latest enhancements.  

The past 20 months have changed the world of work, and people’s data has never been as important as it is now. Businesses of all sizes across every industry are using (and asking for) people data at rates we’ve never seen before. There’s a massive global shift in hiring needs, patterns, and retention. Businesses need information about industry trends and their ability to match or exceed where the global workforce is shifting. Real-time people data is what drives clients’ decisions, product innovation, and the global economy. ADP is in the enviable position to use our data to continue to make impactful and meaningful changes across organizations. 

I’ve never been more excited to work in this space than I am at this moment. I’m enthusiastic and focused on where we’re headed. It’s about taking data to tell a story, and it’s exciting. It’s not unlike the excitement my kids experienced when I brought them years ago to LEGOLAND® (both in California and the U.K.), where creations they made in their imaginations came to life in real-time. 

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