Dive Brief:

• Zenefits, a darling among cloud-based benefits startups, is feeling some new heat from a competitor. Flock, based in San Francisco, has hooked up with ADP, the massive HR software and payroll provider in Roseland, NJ, to provide HR and benefits services to specific ADP customers, according to the San Francisco Business Times.
• The Business Times reports that Flock's software platform is now available to ADP small and mid-sized business customers nationwide, to help them "simplify the tedious and complex tasks of the HR process" while retaining relationships with existing benefits insurance brokers.
• The agreement comes on the heels of a legal truce of sorts, as ADP recently shut down a defamation lawsuit against Zenefits. Zenefits in turn withdrew its claims against ADP.

Dive Insight:

"We're taking business from Zenefits" by doing the ADP deal, Flock CEO Raj Singh told the Business Times.

For small and medium businesses, the Flock-ADP partnership means that employers from the SMB market now have an additional option if they already use ADP for payroll processing. For its part, Flock's Singh said they already have partnerships with 17 insurance brokerages, ranging in size from roughly $20 million in revenue to $200 million, and "is in deep discussions with seven of the top 10 brokerages in the United States," though those deals are not yet final.

"We're providing [customers with] an intuitive platform to alleviate the management complexities," Don Weinstein, ADP's senior vice president of product management, said in a statement provided to the Business Times. "Flock customers only need to sign into one platform" to gain access to HR, payroll and related data.