Outsourcing Benefit Enrollment

Our Benefits team is looking to outsource benefit enrollment to provide a more intuitive experience for our employees. We would like an application that allows employees to log in from their phone or other mobile device to enroll and manage their benefits. We are just beginning our vendor search and would appreciate hearing from others who have outsourced their benefit enrollment/admin to find out what vendor you used and whether you are satisfied. Also interested in how the software interfaces to Lawson - are you interfacing deductions only or are you still maintaining benefit plans in Lawson? Are you having to do alot of manual intervention? Is the software intuitive so it walks the employee through enrollment based on selections made, etc. Is reporting and benefit carrier feeds accommodated and easily modified if needed?

Thank you

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unknown

We went with BenefitFocus and overall have been happy. Probably a 3 1/2 on a scale of 1-5. We did have a few support personnel changes which caused some bumps in the road but quickly recovered. Open Enrollment (we have done 3) have really been hit or miss. A 2 1/2 on scale of 1 -5. For the employee's perspective it was fine, but some of the setup after the fact was not perfect. We had to audit carefully to ensure the right data was always loaded. We only load deduction into Infor. Software is intuitive. Company is very responsive.

simon-gliddon

Hi Deanna. I work in IT and our benefits team chose Empyrean. From an IT perspective, it has been very rocky. We import deductions only, so we are no longer using the benefits system.

Cons:

Data has to be retrieved from two different systems when a benefit needs to be researched.

There is a significant lag time from enrollment to processing the deduction. Money is lost. Lawson automatically updates benefits when an employee's pay changes if the benefit cost is determined by salary..

Automating file feeds is difficult when the files are not received in a timely manner.

GTL calculations that are taxed according to IRS regulations have not been updated in a timely manner causing issues with paychecks.

Our benefits team now has to do a comparison between systems to ensure deductions match the benefits chosen.

IT personnel spend more time supporting Open Enrollment than previously. This is an annual project that usually spans 4 months. Other facilities I've supported that used Lawson only required 2-4 weeks.

The cost of outsourcing benefits is more than what we pay for maintenance on Lawson/Kronos combined.

Pros:

Files to carriers are handled by the TPA. If changes are needed, they take care of it....for a fee.

The TPA has provided a call center for assisting employees with enrolling.

Application is fairly easy for our employees to use.

The TPA can accommodate our unusual benefit year. For example, our benefit year is 10/1-9/30. Deductions for each new year begin on the pay check in which 10/1 falls in the pay period being paid not necessarily the first check in October. This has been the second pay check in October for the past couple of years.

It really boils down to what best serves your company, what you are willing to pay and the processes your benefits team uses.

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