Calling out the BS! Analysts & Magic Quadrants: Don't Believe Everything you see!

[00:00:01] PayrollBADIES

[00:00:34] It's like a 60 Minutes almost, like a special edition of us talking about a specific topic. And today's topic I thought Imran would be fun to talk about is Analysts and the Magic Quadrant. I've been seeing a lot of these posts on LinkedIn, and I know you have because I know you've been commenting on some of them. But before I get into that, you know, again, just for our listeners, you know, again, because I was pretty new to Magic Quadrants and Analyst Reports.

[00:01:02] You know, from my background, I do deal with them. But again, it's not as common as if I were in a client's shoes picking a choice of software, right? And so, you know, I'd love to hear more about it. And I've been seeing a lot more posts about them. And, you know, it was very interesting to me because, you know, again, I know what I know about the Magic Quadrant and Analyst Reports is there's a lot of companies out there that use it to basically make multi-million dollar decisions to pick their next software.

[00:01:33] And I'm like, how are people putting so much, you know, weight on these reports? And I wanted to understand more about it. So what a good podcast topic to really talk about today. And really, Imran, the first one I want to talk about is actually got me so excited and interested because I don't... I know you post a lot, but then when you comment on some things, I know it's important. So I saw you comment on a very specific post and it got a lot of people talking.

[00:01:58] It was the post around where somebody had compared basically the size of, you know, the workday versus success factors versus Oracle and just showing how much bigger workday in Oracle was to SAP. And that's not true at all. So just wanted to get your take on that and see what was happening. Right. And so, you know, like I ignore a lot of these things. I think, you know, some of it's just straight bullshit. Right. And so I'm like, all right, whatever.

[00:02:25] But the reason I actually comment on that one is someone that I respect a lot sent this to me. And, you know, it just kind of got me realizing that, like, look, people look at this and perceptions are made from this and you get misconceptions. And so this particular one, right, look, workday has done well. We've known that and that's all fine. But it showed them with like 25% of market share. And then it didn't even say success factors. Right. It said, right. And it showed that 11%.

[00:02:55] Then it said Oracle people stuff, not like Oracle fusion or any other cloud stuff. So it's like, are you comparing cloud to on premise and then you're just ignoring all of the cloud stuff with success factors? Right. So that kind of was like, all right, well, you know, I'm having people that I respect bring this up to me. So let's just clear it up. So I actually responded to it and I was like, hey, you know, I want to be respectful of people when I respond to them.

[00:03:21] So I'm like, hey, I'm curious where the data comes from. I wonder, are they classifying SAP HCM as the on premise model and why is success factors not there? And then I kind of followed it up with publicly available information. Right. So success factors there. I included a press release from 2024 showing that they have over 10,000 customers, 290 million users. Right.

[00:03:45] And then I included data from a press release where they put out where Employee Central, the core HR, has over 6000 customers. And that was from 2023. Right. And then I followed that up with, OK, we know Workday has done well. But from public analyst information, they in September 2024, right, nine months later, showed that they had 5500 customers.

[00:04:12] So this was nine months later and they had 500 less customers. So how can you in any type of credible notion say that their market share is more more than double SAP? It just didn't make sense. Right. So that one kind of got me irritated. And so I responded to it. Author never responded back to me. He was responding to other people, but he never responded back to me. And then the guy doubled down and pointed to the six cents report that actually showed Workday had 30,000 customers.

[00:04:41] Success factors has 7000. Even though if you go to the Workday website, there's Workday dot com slash customers. Right. Right. They themselves claim they have 10,000. So you're pointing to this market research data that claims more than the vendor does. And then, you know, I already showed the data that success factors has in a press release in a publicly traded company. So they don't you know, they're not making up customer numbers that showed above that for just success factors. Right.

[00:05:09] And so I don't know. Some people want to ignore the facts and that part's just irritating. Right. So I think that's one example of where an analyst or research just can go wrong. But there's others, too. Right. So, you know, I think you sent me one in our chat. You know, we're always having these chats behind the scenes. This other post about like that whole SPM Forrester and those guys post on that. Yeah. You saw that? I mean, that was again, I mean, just but before we get into that, but just going back to the first one again,

[00:05:39] because it always baffles me when I see posts like this and people posting all these different vendors. Right. And and analyst reports. And again, I don't know if just our listeners and people out there just know all the type of reports that are just available. And again, this is something that, again, I think people should be doing a lot of due diligence about about what report are you looking at? What is the back end? Like what criterias are they even using to make these reports?

[00:06:05] Because, shit, we can make a magic quadrant out of anything. We can put anything we want on the top right. You know what I mean? Like a Maddie's one, huh? Yeah, Maddie's one. Exactly. You know, Jesse would be on the bottom. So, so, but no. But the other example, 100 percent was the other one was was so surprising was I believe it was a SPM Forrester versus IDC report. Yeah. And it was literally the same product. Right. The same product categorization. Sales performance management.

[00:06:34] Yeah, exactly. Sales performance management. And then one SAP was like at the bottom, you know, and then the other one SAP was on the top. So it's like, well, how did you how did you both get this information and how is it complete opposite? So I and I know you shed some light on that. And again, it'd be great for our listeners to hear about that. No, it was actually a LinkedIn post. We can share it in our chat. Guy, Abijit. Right. He just said he read the fine print and come to find out.

[00:06:59] SAP didn't participate in the Forrester one. Right. And so that left them at the bottom left. But you wouldn't know that, obviously. Right. Unless you're going and reading, which most people don't. They just look at the graphical chart. Right. And so I think that's one of the problems is sometimes vendors don't participate in certain things. Right. And I saw another one. Shout out to this guy. I don't know him. Tim, Tim Sackett. He also posted an entire post about a recent Gartner MQ. Right.

[00:07:26] And so he actually went and posted and said, look, I can't understand this. And I think his exact title was Gartner's 2025 Magic Quadrant for ATS is a joke. And then he actually broke it down. So shout out to him. You know, he said, what did they get right? And then what did they miss? And he pointed out like obvious discrepancies. He said, like, eightfold wasn't on there. And if you're putting Phenom on the list, how do you not have eightfold or Paradox, who is one of the fastest growing ones on there?

[00:07:53] Right. Like, how did they get that so wrong? And then they have these other ones. So I don't know. I mean, you know, people are clearly seeing some of these things, but you have to understand, like, what's going on there? Yeah, no, for sure. And it's almost like, again, my only some of my small interactions that I've had with analyst firms, again, one was a asking us to basically, hey, do you want to pay for our services and then fill out basically information?

[00:08:19] Now, what they did with that information, I have no idea. But again, as a, you know, as a company who doesn't understand how the info, like, how are analyst firms getting their information? Is it that they are requesting it from the vendors? Well, how are they not getting to know the vendors? What are the criteria they're using to to make sure that everybody is, you know, they're looking, you know, you know, apples to apples, right?

[00:08:45] And then are they also doing client references to back it up? Like these are things were not clear. And and I know, again, there's a lot of, you know, you know, people use the word pay for play sometimes and things like that. But just curious to hear your thoughts on what you have seen in the market. And, you know, for sure. I mean, you know what, before we get there, I want to talk about one more more thing. Right. Like so we talked about one of like, look, sometimes it's just bad data straight up. Right.

[00:09:11] Sometimes it might be a vendor not participating. And then, you know, sometimes it also could be the comparison. Right. What are we comparing? I saw another one. There was this other one for nucleus research. And one success factors was misspelled on there. Right. And so you're not even getting the vendors name right. Like you can't. How are you supposed to trust this? But then when I looked on it, you're literally comparing these enterprise players on the same chart as like these small market ones. Right.

[00:09:40] And so that to me just doesn't make sense. It's not apples to apples. The target buyers aren't the same. The people shopping for them are the same. They're like, how can you have credibility when you do it that way? Right. So I think that's just a different thing that, you know, being on the buyer side, you have to look out for. Right. You're looking at these. So now I guess going back to your other point of all right. So. Some of them have a lot of credibility. Gartner obviously has credibility, and we saw from Tim's post that sometimes they do miss.

[00:10:10] I guess for me, I worked on a bunch of these. Right. Everyone knows I worked at SAP for a long time. And so I worked on a whole bunch of my probably did over 20 analyst briefings during that time I responded. So I was the one responding to the Gartner MQ, filling it out for the payroll part for their core HR one. And look, I definitely saw direct incompetence when I worked on that MQ. Right. So I'm the one that filled out all these questions and it was something I put a lot of passion to.

[00:10:39] I really cared about it. So I put a whole bunch of details into it. So it's actually they come to the vendors like SAP and they give you a questionnaire. So I guess they send it to all the vendors and you have, I don't know, let's say 100 questions that you have to answer. And then there's part of it is you brief their people. You know, they get customer interviews. They do stuff. So I will say that they're doing a relatively thorough job and they're having these conversations, assuming you're participating. Right.

[00:11:06] But then, like I said, I think I saw I saw some direct incompetence. So for many years, payroll wasn't really even mentioned in the report. Right. So they included the criteria. I answered all these questions year over year. However, my last year, for whatever reason, they decided to list it as a weakness for SAP. And believe it or not, the verbiage they used was SAP lacks next generation functionality such as continuous payroll. And I'm not joking with you, Rod. I'm not joking. I'm not exaggerating.

[00:11:34] As soon as I saw that, I remember it to this day. I was at Success Connect when I got this and in my heart just dropped. I'm like, what is going on here? I went I went and looked back at my answers. And I'm not kidding you. My first answer to the first question mentioned that Success Factors SAP has continuous payroll. Right. We all that PCC does that. Yeah. Literally auditing your payroll jobs running behind the scene.

[00:12:02] So I'm like, how can I feel not feel like the person who was putting this together was incompetent when you came up with a weakness for a topic? And did you not check row number one in the section? Right. Like my best guess is maybe they did some customer interview where someone mentioned that. But maybe there was just some on premise customer using SAP's payroll that didn't use PCC. I don't know. I mean, but still read the report.

[00:12:29] And how do you do that? And so then the way that it actually works is if you can't change a weakness. So if they find something factually accurate, inaccurate, which is what I said this was, they basically made me rewrite it. And I sent it back that SAP lacks advanced functionality such as native earned wage access. Right. So I played that game. So I did want to, you know, I had to show weakness. Well, that was one that we had a very logical rebuttal to. Right.

[00:12:57] So you have vendors that are on your app store to do that. And given the global nature of SAP, that that was a strategy that just made sense. So, you know, I filled out and did these briefings for others. But, you know, I think when we get down to it, you have to ask questions about bias. Some of them, one of them, the CEO ran this analyst company was an ex Oracle guy. And what do you know? Oracle's coming out on top. Right.

[00:13:22] So, you know, I guess I'm sorry, but I have a hard time seeing some of these reports as credible. And what I would love to see is them just disclose the vendor's spin. I don't know if you, I think you saw it because you sent it to me. Well, my guy, Jerome from data scale HR, he posted a brilliant, honest analyst grid. I thought it was perfect. Right. It had, you know, event sponsors in one corner, too big to ignore another series.

[00:13:50] I don't know. I think that part was so spot on. Right. But but exactly like I think you again, what you think, you know, you going through that process of what you did, you know, when you were at SAP, just I mean, that kind of, you know, for me actually like resonates because in the sense of like, I'm like, for me, it's always been such a black box. Right. And and I would love to see, you know, more clarity around, again, not only the spend, but also the criteria.

[00:14:18] Now, again, maybe in some of the reports now they are putting all that. But, hey, your your graph, your images, I know, like are being used by by other people and vendors. And that's how people are sometimes consuming it. Yes. Of course, the company should be paying for their whole report. And I'm sure they're going to go to. But who is really going to be asking those type of questions? Because if it's not clearly laid out for them. Right.

[00:14:44] So, again, all like you said in the beginning, somebody who you like came to you and said, hey, look at this graph. Look at how, you know, work days are killing it. I mean, that's not really the whole truth. Right. And it's and it's funny because, you know, as we were getting ready for this podcast, I thought I would, you know, again, do some of my own research or see see some things. And there has been lawsuits out there before with other analyst firms about this certain topic, you know, from vendors saying, hey, we're not getting a fair shake.

[00:15:14] You're misrepresenting. And you know how which was so surprising to me how the analyst firms won the cases is by saying that these reports and these magic quadrants are opinions and not facts. And isn't that the crazy truth when I mean, that's what we should be right. People should be talking about is if you're really going to make decisions off of it. No, these are just opinions. Right.

[00:15:40] And not facts. And really, there has to be other mediums that you need to be using, you know, to really gather which is the right software for you. Yeah. And you know what? I want to get back to something you said earlier, Rod. So I saw another post about a guy, Alessio. Right. And he actually basically wrote this post saying he was being extorted. It was a learning analyst research company. And, you know, they basically came to him and said, hey, you know, we would love to interview you about your capability.

[00:16:11] But it was like a package you had to pay to even get interviewed. Right. And I think he said it was twenty thousand dollars to do. How wild is that? I think you said you've also been, you know, you have a business in services and that sort of thing. You've been solicited for someone to come. Same thing. And again, it was a top analyst firm. Again, I'll name it. It was Gardner. Right. Who came in, who said again, like, look, do you want to be you want to use our services?

[00:16:40] You want to use this? You'll get to spend time with our analysts. They'll get to know your company, which can then be used for marketing and other things. And I'm assuming. And again, if somebody else knows better, let let me know. But this is the way to get into a Gardner report, because, like, again, if you're a midsize, small size company, unless you have those marketing spend or the, you know, you know, maybe P.E. backing or other stuff that comes with it.

[00:17:07] How is a company? I mean, how is, you know, any analyst firm going to know about you? And again, I know a lot of people might be like, oh, you guys are just haters because you guys aren't selected. No, I mean, honestly, it's just more of a curious question. Like, without spending money, how do you get in here? Again, is it that analyst firms are talking to clients? But, you know, typically when the clients are talking there again, it's like a feedback loop.

[00:17:32] They're seeing the magic quadrant. They're potentially only talking to the, you know, you know, the, you know, the top, you know, the vendors that are on there. And then we're not getting any of the disruptors in there. Right. And again, that was very clearly laid out in that recruiting one. And there, you know, of course, I don't know. It's hard, you know, to find a lot of credibility when it's that aggressively pay to play. Right. I mean, look, my guy, Pete Tiliaco is one of the best analysts I've ever spoke to.

[00:17:59] And I appreciate him because since the day I met him, I was working at SAP. You know, he was an analyst and look, like I said, I've done a lot of these analyst abuse. And, you know, there's a lot of ego there. I think Pete stood out to me. He never had an ego. Nicest guy I've met. And then he knew his shit. Right. And so that's why I just got along with him from from day one. And, you know, like we've always talked about, we're going to have we got to have him on the podcast.

[00:18:26] That's good. So there's a lot of really good analysts out there. Right. Yeah. No doubt about that. A lot of good research out there. But I guess part of it is, you know, you have to be cautious when you're using an analyst report as your primary driver to pick an HR or payroll vendor using that. Right. It could be a data point, but make sure you think about one, your business. Right.

[00:18:49] And I'll let you talk about that, too. But, you know, like what could this analyst report not be showing you? Did some vendor not participate? Is it flawed data that's behind there? Right. Is it not considering X, Y, Z things? And I think, unfortunately, a lot of buyers don't know that. Right. No, that makes sense. And again, like I go back to, you know, something we mentioned. I had mentioned, I think many, many podcasts ago about like, again, I it was it's so curious.

[00:19:19] It's so interesting to me to find out when a firm, a client or sorry, a company that is, you know, an SAP shop for, you know, let's say finance there, you know, all their ERP system. But then because, you know, they pick workday and sometimes, you know, you hear, oh, well, they're the leader in, you know, when this magic quadrant, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I'm sorry. We all we all know, everybody listening, that this is an SAP bias podcast.

[00:19:46] So, yes, we are and right now are going to be SAP bias, but it makes zero sense. You cannot tell me there's that that big of a difference where where the interconnectivity of SAP of having a full suite connected to all your ERP and HR is going to make that much of a difference, you know, by switching out to another product. Right. No, for sure. I mean, look, right. We've seen it on the other side now. Right.

[00:20:13] We have many years of data. We have a lot of customers that did exactly that. And, you know, like the sad reality is they're paying a price for it. Right. Because if you do have SAP for finance, you have SAP for payroll and then you choose workday for HR. You you chose poorly. Let's be honest. You chose poorly. You're going to spend a lot of money keeping those connected. You don't have aligned things in the reality is they will never work well together. Right.

[00:20:39] The release timings will always be off. There's not going to be cohesiveness in it. And so, you know, without even saying, even if you think it was a superior HR product, all of the other things, if you're wall to wall SAP, it's a mistake to go that route. And I just. Especially if you're especially if you're I mean, especially if you're a global company. Right. With all the localization, with all the payroll, there's nothing else that can touch it. I mean, again, these are facts. These are not just biases. These are facts.

[00:21:09] Yeah. You know, from a globalization standpoint, I think this is one of those things that is difficult during the sales process to really articulate. Right. Because if you're global, I think using any other vendor, if you're a large enterprise company other than SAP is a mistake. Right. You're going to have to spend so much time, effort, money to localize those countries and the specific details of them. And then, you know, you're going to have to maintain those as well. I think he spends a ridiculous amount of money on a localization.

[00:21:39] And then on top of that, if you do go with another vendor. Right. I don't even care who it is, but you're going to handicap yourself when it comes to your global payroll for all these other countries. Right. Because with SAP, you just have more options. So, you know, like I think these analyst reports sometimes are overrated from that standpoint. But you have to consider the intricacies of your business. Right. Are you an SAP shop? Are you global?

[00:22:04] Those very much lean in favor of then choosing success factors for HR. Right. No if and or what's about it. So, yeah, that's how I feel. And no one's going to change that mind. I love it. I love it. And what a what a fun conversation. You know, maybe maybe we should wrap it up, Imran. What do you think? Maybe what are what is what is what are some parting words can leave our audience? Payroll baddies, baby. Let's go. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:22:32] Hey, SAP payroll is king, baby. Now, again, again, I mean, this was a fun conversation. I hope we I hope we have more of these because, again, it's always the type of conversation we have in the back end. It's what most people are probably thinking and want to know more about. So, you know, it's always fun to have these, you know, honest conversation. And I hope people listen to this. And even if we're wrong about something, comment, comment on here. Tell us why we're wrong. Tell us what we don't know. So we'd love to learn. We'll call out the bullshit.

[00:23:02] And if you don't like it, then, you know, that's fine. Let's have a let's have a debate. Exactly. That's great. All right. Baddies out. Thanks, everybody. It's payroll baddies. We keep it. I do payroll, right? We don't need no strike. Work day calling y'all rock stars. Ain't that cute day force. UKG are still in pursuit. Go be baddies in the game. Bring him more to the loop. Go.

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[00:24:00] Running it. Showing respect. So all the payroll baddies. You know who you are. Join the cause. Let's take it far. All you baddies out there. It's time to rise. Join the movement. No compromise. Keep your rock stars. We're classy. No charades. Payroll baddies. Rain and fire. Get paid.