Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) is an American multinational provider of cloud-based human resources management, payroll processing, and professional employer organization (PEO) services, headquartered in Roseland, New Jersey.
History
In 1949, Henry Taub founded Automatic Payrolls, Inc. as a manual payroll processing company with his brother Joe Taub. Future United States SenatorFrank Lautenberg joined the brothers in the company's infancy. In 1954, Lautenberg, after successfully serving in sales and marketing, became a full-fledged partner with the two brothers.
In 1957 the company installed a punched card system that would facilitate automatic data processing, replacing manual input calculators. The next year the company changed its name to Automatic Data Processing. In 1961, Oppenheimer & Company, one of ADP's clients, took the company public. At that time the company had 300 clients, 125 employees, and revenues of approximately US$400,000.
In 1962, ADP opened a Wall Street office to provide payroll and accounting services to brokerage firms. This office eventually expanded into ADP's brokerage service division, which was spun off into Broadridge Financial Solutions in 1997.
ADP established its dealer services business in 1973 after acquiring National Inventory Control System, a Portland-based inventory control service and data center, and CSI Computer Systems of Cincinnati. These moves extended ADP's reach into another industry-specific market, and the company later completed more than 30 dealer service acquisitions before spinning the division off into a separate company.
In 1975, Frank Lautenberg succeeded Henry Taub as CEO. By that time, ADP's annual revenue had grown to $150 million. ADP achieved growth during this period through horizontal acquisitions that allowed the company to reinforce its core service offerings while expanding geographically. The company acquired several time-sharing computer service companies during the 1970s, including the UK-based Time Sharing Limited (TSL) in 1974 and the Michigan-based Cyphernetics in 1975. These companies were folded into ADP Network Services, and allowed the company to continue its payroll processing transition from traditional batch-processing courier models toward remote mainframe access.
By 1981, ADP had approximately 100,000 clients and total annual revenues exceeding $500 million, making it the world's largest independent computer services company. At that time, ADP processed paychecks for five percent of the U.S. workforce.
In August 1996, ADP began acting as a professional employer organization (PEO) after acquiring Staff Management Systems of Tampa, Florida. On October 21, 2008, ADP switched its stock listing to the NASDAQ Global Select Market. In 2020, ADP was ranked 227 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue. ADP has also been included on Fortune Magazine's "World's Most Admired Companies" List for 14 consecutive years and has earned recognition from DiversityInc as one of the top companies for diversity and inclusion in the United States for 11 consecutive years. ADP has about 67,000 employees worldwide and its fiscal year 2025 revenues were $20.6 billion.
Acquisitions
As ADP became a professional employer organization, it made several acquisitions. In 1995, the company acquired the German company Autonom and the payroll and human resource services company GSI, among others. In September 1998, ADP acquired UK-based Chessington Computer Centre that supplied administration services to the UK Government.
In 2006, ADP acquired Kerridge Computer Co. Ltd., a dealer management systems (DMS) provider to auto dealers, primarily in the UK. In 2007, the ADP Brokerage Service Group was spun off to form Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.
In January 2017, ADP acquired The Marcus Buckingham Company (TMBC). In October 2017, ADP acquired Global Cash Card, a digital payments facilitator.[non-primary source needed] In January 2018, ADP acquired WorkMarket, a New York City–based software platform company that helps businesses manage freelancers, contractors, and consultants. Later that same year, the company announced the acquisition of Celergo, a global payroll management service company.
In 2023, ADP acquired workflow automation tool Sora. In October 2024, ADP acquired WorkForce Software, a management services provider.
Divisions and spinoffs
Broadridge Financial Solutions
In 2007, the ADP Brokerage Service Group was spun off to form Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., removing about US$2 billion from ADP's total yearly revenue. ADP distributed one share of Broadridge common stock for every four shares of ADP common stock held by shareholders of record as of the close of business on March 23, 2007. ADP had originally bought Brokerage Service Group in 1965.
CDK Global, LLC
Formerly called ADP Dealer Services, CDK Global was formed October 1, 2014, and provides technology services to automotive dealerships, as well as vehicle manufacturers.
In 2010, ADP acquired the automotive marketing company Cobalt.
BZ Results, winner of AutoSuccess magazine's 2005 "Innovative Company of the Year" award, was purchased by ADP in 2006. At the time, BZ Results was valued at $125 million. On April 7, 2014, ADP laid off several Dealer Services associates in a reorganization and 3 days later announced plans to spin off the Dealer Services division as a standalone company. On August 19, 2014, ADP Dealer Services announced that the name of the new company, post-spinoff, would be CDK Global (an acronym for Cobalt, Dealer Services, Kerridge).
Both S&P and Moody's downgraded ADP to AA in April 2014, after the dealer services unit was spun off.
Business model and operations
Automatic Data Processing provides human resource management software and services, including payroll, and operates with a recurring revenue business model. ADP operates through two business segments: employer services and professional employer organization. Key products include RUN Powered by ADP, an HR and payroll platform for small businesses, ADP Workforce Now, a human capital management (HCM) platform for mid-sized and large businesses, and ADP Lyric HCM, an enterprise HCM platform. ADP also issues the National Employment Report, which analyzes aggregated and anonymized payroll data from more than 26 million workers. The report is widely cited in economic reporting and analysis.
The company is headquartered in Roseland, New Jersey and operates in more than 140 countries and territories. ADP has expanded its international presence and extended its services through acquisitions.
Maria Black has served as CEO since 2023[update]. As of 2025[update], the company was ranked 220 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue, and had around 67,000 employees.
Employment data
ADP has been used as a source of private-sector employment data. ADP's National Employment Report (NER) launches two days before the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. In 2022, it was redesigned in collaboration with Stanford's Digital Economy Lab.
As early as 2018, the Federal Reserve used ADP employment and earnings data. In mid-2025, ADP stopped providing data to the Federal Reserve. That same year, ADP began issuing the NER Pulse, a weekly preliminary U.S. estimate of the ADP National Employment Report.
↑James, George (December 15, 1996). "A 'Gentle Presence' Off Court". The New York Times. As a 21-year-old accountant, he created a company that began by preparing payrolls for dye houses out of an office above a luncheonette in his native Paterson. That company grew to become Automatic Data Processing.
↑Wilson, Duff (April 4, 2011). "Henry Taub, a Founder of a Payroll Firm That Became a Global Giant, Dies at 83". The New York Times. Starting in 1949 in an office above a Paterson, N.J., ice cream parlor and then in a hotel basement, Mr. Taub and his brother, Joseph, built the company on a reputation for precision and timeliness.
↑Mayer, Martin (April 23, 1984). "How to manage a revolution". Forbes– via Nexis. In 1954, Lautenberg took the plunge and signed on full time with the Taubs.
12Mayer, Martin (April 23, 1984). "How to manage a revolution". Forbes– via Nexis. In 1957 the three partners took their first stumbling step into data processing, installing a system that ran calculations and kept records on stiff IBM punch cards to replace the Comptometers and desk calculators.
↑"Form 10-K". United States Securities and Exchange Commission. June 30, 2019. In 1962, the Brokerage Services division of ADP opened for business with one client, processing an average of 300 trades per night.
↑"For Data Management, Broadridge Aligns With GoldenSource and IBM". Securities Industry News. May 7, 2007 – via Nexis. Stumm added that his company's history as a service bureau dates back to 1962 and it has "significant background in maintaining a securities master database." In 1997, ADP Brokerage Services Group, which was officially spun off as Broadridge in March, launched an integrated master security distributor to feed its domestic U.S., non-U.S. and fixed-income service offering.
↑Vendor Profile: A Publication from INPUT's Vendor Analysis Program. Input Reports and Research Archive Project. 1976. p.611. 1973: National Inventory Control Systems, Portland, OR. NICS placed ADP in the field of inventory control services for automotive dealers and provided a data center in Portland. It was renamed ADP dealer services, along with CSI Computer Systems, Inc.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑"CDK Global: A Spin-Off Worth Avoiding". Seeking Alpha. October 18, 2014. Archived from the original on November 4, 2014. Even though the independent company is new, the business, as part of ADP, is built up of more than 30 acquisitions completed over the last fifteen years. The current name, which is inspired from different acquisitions; C in the CDK is from Cobalt Digital Marketing, D from the original dealer services business and K from Kerridge Computer, highlights the acquisitive heritage.
↑Arnold, Laurence (June 3, 2013). "Frank Lautenberg, U.S. Senator From New Jersey, Dies at 89". Bloomberg. In 1975, when Lautenberg succeeded Taub as chief executive officer, ADP had annual revenue of $150 million and 5,000 employees.
↑""Give Us Your Payrolls, Your Accounts Receivable..."". Forbes. January 23, 1978 – via Nexis. They opted to stay away from "exotic" software applications, and instead remain a "meat and potatoes" company delivering effective payroll processing and general accounting services to a broad market. Instead of expanding vertically, they expanded horizontally, using their strong cash flow to finance ADP's geographical expansion by acquisition. There were hundreds of small service centers ripe to be picked because they sold low-margined, if successful, narrow-application packages.
↑Katharine Davis Fishman (1982). The Computer Establishment. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 1982. p.285. ISBN0070211272. ADP stuck to the payroll until 1967, when it began to offer additional accounting tasks. A few years later, it started to diversify in exactly the way it had expanded geographically: it would find a promising industry market, buy a smaller company with a foothold in that market and add its own muscle.
↑""Give Us Your Payrolls, Your Accounts Receivable..."". Forbes. January 23, 1978 – via Nexis. Likewise, American Telephone & Telegraph Co. telephone lines tie together ADP's new time-sharing data base network created with the aid of four acquisitions since 1975. The new system is anchored by 25 large-scale Digital Equipment DEC/10 computers, plus over 100 minicomputers..
↑Miller, James. "Time Sharing". James Miller. When TSL was taken over by ADP in 1974, I sold my share in the program and they then changed the name to APECS.
↑"Business Briefs". The Herald-News. July 10, 1975. p.39 – via Newspapers.com.
↑Martin Campbell-Kelly; Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz (June 8, 2015). From Mainframes to Smartphones. Harvard University Press. p.70. ISBN9780674286559. As data communications technology improved, the traditional messenger-or-mail-based batch model morphed into an "online batch" approach in which transactional data and outputs were transmitted between customers and service bureaus using leased telephone lines. ADP, one of the leading companies in the service-bureau business, expanded in the second half of the 1960s by acquiring smaller operations in regions outside its original geographic base of the Greater New York City area. It also diversified from the payroll-processing business into an adjacent market, the brokerage accounting business.
↑""Give Us Your Payrolls, Your Accounts Receivable..."". Forbes. January 23, 1978 – via Nexis. ADP's equipment was keeping pace with its rapid geographical explosion. As in the rest of the computer service or time-sharing industry, more and more customers are hooking into its service centers via their own in-house, remote job entry terminals connected by regular telephone lines. Some clients even have "remote-interactive" capability that allows ongoing "conversations" with ADP computers doing their billings or payroll.
12Cunniff, John (July 1, 1981). "The Evolution of a Payroll Processing Concern". Associated Press– via Nexis. Twenty-nine years later the company, its name modernized to Automatic Data Processing Inc. and with Lautenberg as chairman, grosses $500 million a year. It serves 100,000 clients. It now maintains, processes, calculates, analyzes, prints and projects an infinite variety of data. It is, in effect, the office staff of thousands of organizations: manufacturers, brokers, distributors, pension funds, banks. But it sticks to its past too: It processes paychecks for 5 percent of U.S. civilian workers.
↑Schriber, John (July 6, 1981). "ADP trades up". Forbes– via Nexis. What was once a minuscule payroll processing company when Lautenberg joined the firm in the early Fifties is now -- at $46 million in earnings and $245 million in net worth -- the world's largest independent computer services company. However, with revenues of over $500 million, ADP is second to Computer Sciences Corp. in volume.
↑Savage, Arline A.; Brannock, Danielle; Foksinska, Alicja (2024). "Chapter 9: Human Resources and Payroll Processes". Accounting Information Systems. Wiley. p.122. Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) is a provider of human resources management software and services, including payroll.
↑"Automatic Data (ADP) Benefits From Strong Business Model". Zachs Equity Research. Yahoo! Finance. August 28, 2024. Automatic Data Processing, Inc. ADP boasts a robust business model, marked by substantial recurring revenues, favorable profit margins, exceptional client loyalty, and efficient capital usage.
↑"Form 10-K"(PDF). United States Securities and Exchange Commission. June 30, 2025. Our two reportable business segments are Employer Services and Professional Employer Organization ("PEO"), and are based on the way that management reviews the performance of, and makes decisions about, our businesses.
↑"Form 10-K"(PDF). United States Securities and Exchange Commission. June 30, 2025. In order to serve the unique needs of our clients and their diverse types of businesses and workforce models, we provide a range of solutions that businesses of all types and sizes and across geographies can use to recruit, onboard, pay, manage, and retain their workforce. We address these broad market needs with our cloudbased strategic platforms: RUN Powered by ADP , serving over 940,000 small businesses; ADP Workforce Now , serving over 90,000 mid-sized and large businesses; and ADP Lyric HCM, serving large enterprise businesses.
↑Alexander Kurov; Alessio Sancetta; Georg Strasser; Marketa Halova Wolfe (May 1, 2015). "Price Drift before U.S. Macroeconomic Newsy: Private Information about Public Announcements"(PDF). Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. 54 (1). We augment this set by seven announcements, which are frequently discussed in the financial press: Automatic Data Processing (ADP) Employment, Building Permits, Existing Home Sales, the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Non-Manufacturing Index, Pending Home Sales, and the Preliminary and Final releases of the University of Michigan (UM) Consumer Sentiment Index.
↑Alex Biesada (December 2007). Sally Alt; Adam Anderson; Jenn Barnier; Victoria Bernard (eds.). Hoover's Handbook of American Business. Vol.1. US: D&B Hoovers. p.112. ADP is expanding internationally and extending its services through acquisitions.
↑"Maria Black". The Wall Street Journal. Maria Black currently works at Automatic Data Processing, Inc., as President, Chief Executive Officer & Director from 2023, ADP, Inc.
↑"Form 10-K"(PDF). United States Securities and Exchange Commission. June 30, 2025. As of June 30, 2025, our global team of associates consisted of approximately 67,000 persons.
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US$20.6 billion (2025)
US$53.4 billion (2025)
