Yeah. No, I think having followed the space for the sector, for this game for a couple of decades now, I think you've taught me this and reminded me this, Maria, that it's mostly about selling and retention. And so.
That's right.
When you look at the data, it looks like bookings have been strong.
Yes.
Retention has been strong.
Yes.
You've been pushing us to the higher end of the guide. Let's dig in on that a little bit more. I think the only callout was that international bookings was a little bit softer or lumpy, as we call it. What else would you say is, or how else would you characterize demand? Just to dig into that a little bit more.
Yeah. You mentioned retention, and I apologize. That's a good story for us. It's been a good story for us. We continue to, thank you. We continue to beat on retention. We continue to have broad strength across retention. You know, when I look back at kind of where we sit today versus where we sit pre-pandemic, I think overall the narrative for us with respect to our clients staying is solid. I think our clients recognize the investments we've made into product. They recognize the investments that we made into service and service tools. I think we're being rewarded for that. I think the overall sentiment around retention, you mentioned international, I'll get back to international bookings in a minute, but international from a retention perspective is actually one of our highest retention businesses.
I think broadly speaking, we feel really good, and that's why we did at this last earnings call, we did guide to the higher end of the retention, and we feel good about where we are. In terms of, is it structural? I'd like to think that some of the things we're seeing sitting here five years later have really propelled our retention to the place that it sits today, which is again about investments into product, service, tools, all of those things. I think our clients recognize that. As it relates to the booking side of the international, we did talk about some softness in international bookings. That softness is, we thought it was relevant to call it out because it felt different than the previous quarters.
I think we were citing strength in bookings in international for several quarters, and this one felt a little bit different. We talked about it being a watch item for us. This was now a watch item where we saw some elongation in the sales processes, et cetera. That said, the year isn't done for us. One of the things we're looking at is the pipelines in international, and they're there. The pipelines are there. The question is, how quickly will it move through the cycles and has that cycle elongated a bit to where there will be some softness? I think overall, broadly speaking, back to HCM demand, the demand is there in international for bookings as well and pipelines.
We have a great new offering that we've taken to market in the enterprise space and kind of marrying that to our international narrative. I'm sure we'll get into that. I think broadly speaking, we still feel solid about the international space. Retention undoubtedly is a very good story for us.
Yeah. I feel like for the last few years we've had you at the conference, we've talked about strong bookings and strong retention, which always brings me to the question, and we debate this with investors of, is there a shift towards outsourcing again versus software do-it-yourself? How do you see that? Is there a discernible trend that's worth calling out?
I think there is a discernible trend. I think that trend has been ongoing. I have been in this business now for 28, almost 29 years. I think I have seen that trend happen, and each year it gets bigger and bigger. I do think there is a discernible trend as it relates to outsourcing. It is not getting any easier. I would say by the day it is getting more complex to be an employer, whether that is the challenge of talent, as we talked about earlier, and navigating how to support talent, how to hire talent, or it is the challenges of compliance, which there is a lot going on in the world of complexity and compliance these days. There is a discernible trend toward HCM outsourcing. Obviously we are the biggest and the broadest and the deepest across all the markets in the space. I think we show up really well.
How we show up is also a meaningful piece, I think, to the strength of ADP. We have 8,500 sellers that show up every day across 140 some odd countries across every segment and represent and kind of lean into this specific discernible trend of HR outsourcing. Our model over the years, the machine of ADP sales is there's nothing really quite like it. It is certainly our sellers. I mentioned the 8,500. It's the ecosystem by which we go to market. The channel approach that we have, I would say broadly speaking across the portfolio, about 50% of the new business bookings comes in through channels. That's everything in the down market, like partners such as banks and CPAs and accountants. In the mid-market, it's the likes of brokers. In the up markets, it's channels such as SIs. We're also expanding our channels.
I'm sure we'll get to the discussion around the most recent announcement with a partnership with Pfizer. That channel expansion. I think one more thing on the distribution. You imagine having the best in class distribution, the biggest distribution, married to an incredible ecosystem of channels, also married to the most modern way that we go to market. I used to run a worldwide sales and marketing. I have a lot of passion around the investments. We started making decades ago into this mix of having in-person sellers, digital sellers, digital footprints, modern seller tools.
I would say the likes of modern seller tools are actually turning to ADP to see how we're leveraging the technology because the way that we go to market from a technology perspective and making our sellers as productive as possible is a big piece to the model and the overall equation to the strength. To kind of wrap up the conversation, there is HCM broadening trends toward outsourcing, and that demand, and we meet it with best in class sellers, distribution, technology, et cetera.
Perfect. You have obviously a great seat in the past around on the sales side. You mentioned it. What are you hearing from the salesforce with respect to competition? Is there any change in terms of who they're seeing or pricing? We talked about outsourcing in general, but just broadly the balance of trade conversation that comes up a lot.
Yeah, it's a great question. We look at it very closely. You imagine being in our space, having such a broad and deep offering. We have competitors in countries. We have competitors in the down market, mid-market, up market. It is a very broad set that we're looking at quarter to quarter at some level, week to week as we look at balance of trade. What I would say is from a quarter perspective, a Q3 perspective, we were up. From a balance of trade perspective, we're up from a year-to-date perspective this fiscal year in our overall balance of trade. That's not to suggest that we're winning against every single competitor. There's still opportunity, but we are winning. I think the strength of our overall offer and the strength again of things such as our sellers married to great service and great retention lends itself to that winning.
As it relates to the overall question on competition and have things changed, I would say not really. It's always been a competition. I started in sales knocking doors. I was telling my niece and nephew this last night when I had dinner with them of how I actually used to sell payroll door to door. And they were like, "You did what? And how did you do this?" We were facing heavy competition. I would knock on a door and a competitor would knock right after. Today that happens. It happens digitally. It happens in a different way. I think it's always been a highly competitive space. To me, there's not a structural change in all of that. There are always consolidations. There are mixed changes. There are all sorts of things that happen. I would say it is competitive. It's always competitive.
My belief is to have that best in class sales distribution model. The retention piece is a big piece to this. Really investing in service, service tools, product, having the value being recognized by our clients and making that what already is something relatively sticky, that much stickier, that's a big piece to the balance of trade equation as well.
Okay. Good. No, that ties out well because it feels like some of your peers would say ADP is stepping up and being successful. I think part of that is part of that is Lyric.
Yes.
Let's talk about Lyric.
Let's do.
I know that was part of the bookings commentary. Of course, it is new. There is new, I think you mentioned on the call, Maria, that you probably would not have been able to bid on some business without it. Just explain to us, maybe for those that are less familiar, what is Lyric? How did we get here? What is your vision here on how big this can become?
Let's start there. What is Lyric? Lyric is the new name, which, by the way, love the name of our next-gen HCM offering in the enterprise and global MNC space. We're incredibly excited about this offer. We've been investing for years into what is now the most modern offer that exists in this space. Why is it the most modern? Part of that is the architecture and how it's built. A lot of it is how we built it really around the centricity of our clients and employees. Imagine putting the worker at the center of the design. It's easy, smart, and human. That's our design principles. They really show up in the Lyric platform in that it's adaptable. It's flexible. It allows practitioners, CHROs, to actually look at their workforce in the way that business gets done today.
Think about it in being able to see teams and team dynamics. The design is resonating, and it's resonating incredibly well across the market. I mentioned on the third quarter call this quarter, this past quarter, we hosted many of our annual events. In the international space, we have an event called Rethink, where we bring together our decision makers, very large MNC businesses. In the United States, we also host a meeting called Meeting of the Minds. We had both of those this last quarter. Meeting of the Minds is an event where we bring together many of our very loyal and tenured CHROs, decision makers, but also practitioners. Lyric is resonating because it's different, it's modern, and it's agile. I think the market is ready for it. I think they like the name.
It's taking something that is not always a beloved offering inside a workforce and trying to bring it into a place where people enjoy engaging with their overall HCM tools. It is really married to now what we're able to couple with the acquisition that we did of WorkForce Software. If you imagine taking these two products together, it has really changed our narrative. I think overall at both of these events, the interest in both of the offerings has yielded what you mentioned, which is that we've actually seen deals move through the system. We've had wins that we wouldn't otherwise have had, especially as it relates to the WorkForce Software acquisition and now this ability to marry these two offers together. It is changing the game. I'm glad, by the way. I'm glad I said thank you because I'm glad that the competition is noticing.
We are really excited. That said, it's early days. It is contributing to the bookings narrative. It did so in Q3. We expect that it will for the balance of this year and next year. The pipelines are incredibly strong, but it's early days. It will take a bit of time for us to continue to scale. The progress is incredible. The most important part is how it's resonating in the market. We can see that in the pipelines, and we can see that even by what you mentioned with the response from the competition.
Good. Think about Lyric. I know I've always asked you about this modernization journey that ADP has been going through. The company's done it within the framework of your margin expansion, which I think is underappreciated probably. I wonder if you agree with that or not. Just with Lyric being in the market, what's next with respect to modernizing? What else is there to do, whether it's transitioning to the cloud or digital transformation? Anything to mention here, Maria?
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. We have been on a digital transformation journey for a long time. I do not know that the work will ever be done because there is only more innovation that you can do. The answer to that laundry list is all of that. I mentioned earlier design principles of making things easy, smart, and human. We are inserting those into the Lyric offer. Again, we are taking the Lyric offer, marrying it to the acquisition. We have talked a bit about the enterprise offer and that side of it. In the mid-market, in the down market, in our in-country offerings, that holds firm as it relates to making sure that all of our products are as frictionless as possible, that we modernize and automate both for our practitioners as well as our own associates through things such as Generative AI.
We have a big initiative around ADP Assist, and we're inserting that into our own house to make it easier for our clients and our associates to engage. We're also extending that reach into each one of our products. From a design principle perspective, ADP Assist kind of sits at the center. Imagine creating agents, if you will, for payroll, tax, compliance, benefits. I could go on and on, but then having each one of these platforms consume that. That's a big piece of digital transformation that extends into our clients, but also inside of our house. I think the other investments, you mentioned the cloud. Certainly, we're on our cloud journey. Our next-gen offerings sit in the cloud. We are on our own cloud journey. We sit, by the way, in ADP's cloud today.
I think I'd like to call us sometimes the original, the OG on the cloud. We created the model. I see some smiles. Some of you are giving us credit for that, and I appreciate it. As we journey into the public cloud, that's a big piece of our modernization as well. I think we'll always be modernizing. We have a tremendous innovation and transformation muscle that sits in the fabric of ADP. If you think about being what is now a 76-year-old company almost, last year we celebrated our 75th.
Again, back to the story I was telling my niece and nephew last night, or I think about 75 years ago and how HCM was handled and all the innovation cycles that we've been through from the advent of buying our first IBM mainframe to things like, obviously, the advent of electronic tax filing via phones to Windows, to certainly the internet. Now what is arguably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, of all the innovation cycles that we're in the middle of, which is the Generative AI and Agentic AI. With a 75-year-old company, what you get is a company that's proven time and time again that we can withstand and innovate into those cycles. That's exactly what we've done. Like I said at the very beginning, the work is never done to continue to innovate and transform.
We just continue to remain focused. Before I lose it, though, because you mentioned the shareholder commitment that we have around protecting kind of this balance between growth and margin. Is it underappreciated? I'd like to think it's appreciated. We take it very seriously to make sure that we are balanced in our approach, especially as it relates to how we handle the treatment of things such as innovation, but also certainly things like acquisitions. Each and every one of these decisions, whether it's choices that we make to do client roll-ups, do bespoke roll-ups of technology, certainly the biggest acquisition that we did, the WorkForce Software, or it's the innovation into the transformation, et cetera, our commitment is to have a dual lens between growth and efficiency and making sure that we are returning the margin that you would expect from ADP.
Good. Good. I remember I have to say real quick from a modernization innovation statement. I remember when I first started covering ADP that the majority of the business we used to talk to, they would fax in their payrolls.
Yes, that's right.
To ADP. When we're talking about that, I triggered that memory. Sticking with the growth and the cost, I have to ask on Gen AI, just like we asked last year, you probably learned a lot in the last year. Do you favor the growth potential of deploying Gen AI across ADP, or is there more potential on the cost or productivity side? Do you have a bias one way or the other?
I'd like to think it's an and. If I had to split, I would say 49-51. I won't tell you which direction. Not because I'm being trivial about it, but rather because I think it's both. I think the efficiency is meaningful. As mentioned, we've worked on digital transformation for a long time. To give a specific example, I used to run our down market business, and we've been focused on digital transformation in the down market for decades and making it easy. I'll give an example in implementation, easy for our clients to onboard. If you think about a business such as our small business offering that sits on Run, we're close, getting up there in the 900-plus thousand clients. We onboard hundreds of thousands of clients every year and taking friction out of that and being able to do digital transformation.
We've talked a lot about over the years this ability. I have to tell you, we kind of hovered around 30%-40% of our clients were moving through in the digital onboarding perspective where the client's able to actually digitally onboard themselves. By the way, we're talking about minutes and hours. I could sell you payroll today and have you live this afternoon. That function looked very different 30 years ago and certainly many, many years ago. What's interesting about generative AI is it is that leapfrog innovation.
Where we kind of used to sit around and think that there was a ceiling to what could actually happen with a digital end-to-end experience, what we're seeing now is we have line of sight toward much higher numbers of our clients being able to be addressed in that capacity, which totally changes the efficiency equation for our implementers, by the way, and for our sellers that oftentimes are in that process with our clients. These are meaningful strides. To me, staying laser-focused, and this is an extension of our digital transformation, but it's a meaningful extension. I think that all the business cases that I've had the privilege of seeing for 20 years of dreams, like if we only could do it this way, suddenly seem possible.
Those are, again, we did OCR, we did RPA, we've done machine learning, we've done AI, but this one's different, undoubtedly. Remaining focused on that, I would say it's very early days. From an efficiency perspective, us, many others, the reason myself and our CFO hasn't gone out and given targets necessarily around this is you have to build all of the models to really understand ultimately what it will yield. It's still early days, but undoubtedly, it'll be a big contributor. You can already see in certain businesses, I just mentioned the down market, we're bending the curve on this stuff, which is amazing to see.
I think on the growth side, I equally believe that having AI inside of our products and extending that reach, as I mentioned, to our clients to leverage, but also our associates to leverage, I think that will be a meaningful game changer in terms of how we go to market. We see that it's resonating as we're layering in ADP Assist in platforms. You're actually seeing the clients' journey through that. I think it will help us sell. I think it will help us certainly retain our clients from a growth perspective. I think the other piece, and it's probably underappreciated by some, but very appreciated by people like me who used to sell payroll door-to-door, is the amount of AI that we're actually leveraging for our sellers. I talked earlier about having the most modern Salesforce with the most modern platforms and technology.
We're putting AI into our sellers' ecosystem. Probably snoozey for some of you, but if you were in sales and you used to do things like pre-call planning, or you were in sales leadership and you used to do coaching or call summarization, these are game-changing tools that make our sellers certainly more efficient, make them more productive, make them smarter and more engaging and meeting that prospect with the right product at the right time. We have this big, broad ecosystem of sellers that is selling to our existing clients, a big part of our business. In fact, 50% of our bookings comes from existing clients in terms of whether it's upgrades or additional land and expand opportunities.
The key to all of that is knowing which product to pitch to the right buyer at the right time, whether you're in the down market or the up market. AI is a game changer. This is stuff I used to do. This is why I care so much about it. This was days. This was always the stuff as a seller you did after selling hours. You did it in the evenings, on the weekends, spending hours just preparing. We're making our sellers smarter, and we're making them more efficient.
Yeah. Now, we'll look for more at HR Tech, I'm sure, when we go to the conference and see more on AI. Yeah, I wish we had more time to talk about it, but that's a good summary. We're about nine minutes left. I just want to, there's a few topics I want to hit. Let me see. I do want to pick a brand. I know it's a small thing, Maria, but I do think it's interesting thinking about how you see the chessboard with this acquisition of PEI and getting into Mexico. I know it's small, but I think it fits this idea of being more local and going after local markets. You tell me, I'm just curious, how strategically important is this, not financially? Is this more of a desire to get local, especially in foreign countries like or LATAM , for example?
Absolutely. For everyone, just a reminder, PEI is the most recent acquisition that we announced this past quarter in Mexico. It was a partner of ours. We have been partnered with PEI since 2009. What it does is exactly what you mentioned, which is add roughly 300 ADPers to the mix that have local on-the-ground expertise in the Mexico market. Do we believe this is a key strategic lever? We do. We have done many of these. We did BTR in Sweden last year. Just prior to that, we did Sage in South Africa. Many of these countries and partners that we are acquiring have been part of our overall ecosystem.
Yes, we believe it further solidifies what is already one of our three strategic pillars, which is to broaden and continue to strengthen the global scale, and ultimately the pillar being to benefit our clients with the broad and deep global scale that we have. I see this. I'm very fortunate. I get to travel all around the world and visit a lot of these countries where we process payrolls. Again, we process payroll across 141, I think it is, countries, coupled with having ADPers on the ground in these with local expertise in about a third of them, a little bit north of a third of them. I would tell you, it is a meaningful competitive differentiator. The final mile in many of these countries is the hardest mile.
If you think back to what we've talked about in the history of how payroll used to be done here in the U.S., in many of these countries, payroll is still relatively manual. It takes understanding what that final mile looks like with people and expertise on the ground. Some of that is about the complexity of regulation and compliance. You think about countries like Argentina, it's incredibly complex to do payroll there. In other countries, it's really about physically being able to walk the tax payment to the tax agency, knowing where that tax agency is, who they are, how to get to them. Where the data needs to sit is a big piece of this equation. This final mile is a big piece.
We believe having local expertise on the ground further differentiates us and further strengthens our ability to extend that reach to our client. Certainly, this is a big piece of our strategy. The scale by which we're operating, I mentioned traveling. It doesn't matter where I go in the world. I said to our team last week as we had a global town hall, I'm always met with this incredible vibrant culture of ADP. No matter where I am, you can feel it in these offices. I'm pretty convinced that it's because we all speak this universal language of HCM and payroll. It might have nuances and variances locally that we want to ensure that we understand.
It is really incredible what we are able to scale across the globe to meet our clients that are also thinking about how they can extend the reach into various countries.
Thematically, international is a big thing for us. That's why I wanted to ask. It does make sense that you want to extend that way. We have five minutes left. I want to make sure we hit two, maybe three questions. I'll try to rapid fire. We may not get to PEO, Andrew. Don't be mad. Consolidation. We'll have Paychex here later. They are buying Paycorp, big acquisition for them. Paylocity bought Airbase, which was an interesting deal as well. We've been debating this depth versus breadth, scale versus verticalization debate for a bit. Do these moves change your thinking on inorganic additions for ADP?
They don't. That's a simple answer. I think we just mentioned it. I just rattled off a bunch of local acquisitions. We talked about WorkForce Software. We also do a tremendous amount of roll-ups. We also did a, we do bespoke technology roll-ups such as Sora Technologies, which is workflows that we're able to insert into our innovation cycle. I think that's our strategy. We're going to continue to remain focused on breadth and depth. I think we're in a different spot than others in that we already have the breadth and depth. I think that's, and again, we just talked about all the acquisitions we've done. For us, it's the same narrative that it's been, which is this focus of making sure that it's good for our clients and good for our shareholders and this balance of making sure that we're driving growth and margin.
We're going to continue to look for whether it's technology that can advance our innovation cycle in country, things that can advance our global footprint, or TAM expansion that can be done through things like WorkForce Software. I don't think that has changed as a result of others. I think that's our strategy and that's how we execute.
Good. Now, I figured I have to ask you. You did mention the Fiserv distribution deal. I have to ask about that. There's a lot of investor interest in it. It reminds me of the old days of First Data ADP. There was always a discussion around distribution and how that can be leveraged. Now this seems more formal. Give us the timeline of Run and Clover being integrated. Of course, Cashflow Central coming to Run later this year. The question people have for us, Maria, is what's the motivation, the incentive for your channel to promote and vice versa on their side? Are those interests aligned? Do you think it'll really move the needle for both companies?
I do. The motivator is, and the model is really about revenue share. The true motivator, if I were to think about it as somebody who has served the small business market for decades, is ADP started in the small business 75 years ago. It is partnering with somebody who has the same intrinsic belief in bringing value into the SMB ecosystem. The beautiful part is we both have great distributions. We both have great partner distributions. From an offering perspective, we actually do not overlap. We are both bringing value into that business owner ecosystem. We are very excited about this partnership. Outside of solving these problems for small businesses, it is a model by which we both gain. We like to think of it as the client wins and we both win from a revenue perspective.
Where are we in the timeline outside of being excited? As of the 5th of May, we do have Run officially live inside of Clover. Super excited about that. You can check it out on adp.com or on the Clover. I think you have them later this week. Certainly, you can ask Fiserv about it as well. We are excited about that. We see that as the very first big step as we perfect the model of how we go into the market together. As mentioned, Cashflow Central will be inside of the Run offering later this year. That will be the next fundamental, call it milestone in this partnership. We are seeing tremendous lead flow back and forth. We are perfecting the go-to-market. We have done part of the integration is live. We have more to come.
We're both incredibly excited about putting the strength of these two businesses that have fundamentally the same core values into the market and to drive both of our growth and really thinking about what this can mean long-term for both of us.
Good. All right. We have one minute left. We'll get to PEO next time. I thought I'd ask about the Investor Day. I know you're not going to give us all the details now. You still need to have a reason for us to come. We'll absolutely be there. I think it's my anniversary, by the way, June 12th. I make reservations with my wife. What can you tell us? What's the reason? What's the pitch for us to go? What can we expect without spoiling anything, of course, with this update?
Yeah, sure. Just this morning, I was reviewing actually some of the content that we're working on because it's rapidly approaching. I have to tell you, even for me, it's been a while since we did an Investor Day. It was November of 2021. As I was looking through the content, I was reminded of just how much we've accomplished. It's incredible when you think about whether it's the little things like leaning deeper into the ADP Red brand, or it's the bigger things such as the innovation, the launching of new products, the acquisition. What you will see at Investor Day, and I hope all of you join us, is really a showcase of a lot of these things that we've accomplished and just how much progress we've made since November of 2021. I was reminded of it going through the meaningful impact.
It is about execution against our three strategic pillars. In each one of them, we just have the best HCM tech and technology, coupled with the best and broadest global service, as well as the deepest scale from a global perspective. Each one of these pillars, we made meaningful progress. That is what I am excited to show you on your anniversary, and all of you hopefully join us. Undoubtedly, rumor is this will be my first one in this capacity. Rumor is that these types of events, we are also going to give a, we are supposed to give a little bit of a longer-term view. We look forward to doing that as well. I will not tell you what that is.
You're going to have to show up to see both the incredible progress we've made against our strategic pillars and how we're thinking about our durable business model from a financial results perspective in the out years.
It's a good teaser, Maria. Thank you for the update. Always enjoy the conversation. I really do.
As well.
We'll hopefully get you back next year. We'll see you in June.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, Maria.