ADP

ADP: From a $2,000 Startup to the Nation's Top Paymaster

ADP (Automatic Data Processing, Inc.) is a global provider of cloud-based human resources, payroll, and professional employer organization (PEO) services. The company traces its origin to 1949, when 21-year-old accountant Henry Taub founded Automatic Payrolls, Inc. in Paterson, New Jersey, with a modest initial investment reported as either $2,000 or $6,000 depending on the source (Wikipedia; Encyclopedia.com, 2026). Taub got the idea after visiting a client company where employees hadn't been paid on time because the payroll manager was out sick. His brother, Joe Taub, joined soon after, and Frank Lautenberg, later a US Senator, joined in the company's early years and became a full partner in 1957, the same year the company adopted its now-familiar name, Automatic Data Processing (Wikipedia, 2026). ADP went public in 1961 with an offering of 100,000 shares at $3 each, and has maintained one of the longest records of consistent quarterly earnings growth in its industry since. Maria Black currently serves as CEO. ADP is headquartered in Roseland, New Jersey, and reported $20.6 billion in revenue and roughly 67,000 employees in 2025 (Wikipedia, 2026).

What ADP does

ADP operates through two primary segments: Employer Services, providing cloud-based payroll processing, benefits administration, talent management, time and attendance, and compliance tools; and its PEO segment, offering employment administration through co-employment relationships for small and mid-sized businesses (Companies History, 2026). The company processes paychecks for roughly one in seven American workers, making it one of the largest payroll processors in the country, alongside additional services in stock quotation systems, brokerage back-office processing, and computerized services for auto dealers and insurers.

Where it fits

ADP serves businesses of virtually every size, from small businesses using its PEO services to large multinational enterprises using its full HCM suite, and competes directly with UKG, Workday, SAP, and Oracle in the enterprise HR technology space. It's a fit for organizations of any size that want a payroll and HR provider with an exceptionally long operating history and broad service breadth, from basic payroll processing through full talent management and compliance.

Why this matters for people leaders

ADP's 75-plus-year history means it has operated through essentially every major shift in how payroll and HR work has been done, from mechanical bookkeeping machines and addressographs in the 1950s to today's cloud-based compliance and talent platforms, and it has done so as a consistently profitable public company for decades. For organizations focused on Culture, Performance, and Retention, that operational longevity carries a specific kind of reassurance: payroll and compliance are the parts of the employee experience where reliability matters most and errors are least tolerated, and a provider with that long a track record of uninterrupted service has weathered more disruptions than almost any competitor in the category.

Learn more