Businessolver
Benefits Technology with Purpose

Paid time off, free food, on-site childcare, gym memberships, pension plans. Companies today are using creative and enviable employee benefits to hire and retain top talent, and for good reason: Tell today’s top candidates that no benefits are offered and often, they’ll head for the door. Glassdoor, an employee review platform, captured this reality in its recent report, which found that more than 57 percent of employees say benefits and perks are among their top considerations before accepting a job offer. Experts predict benefits will continue playing a major role for job seekers this year.

With benefits taking center stage in employee recruiting and retention efforts, HR professionals are investing in technology to help them offer the right benefits programs and foster employee engagement. “However, spending a fortune on technology is not always enough for the enterprises to wisely select the benefits program,” says Jon Shanahan, President and CEO of Businessolver, a benefits technology company. According to Shanahan, organizations need to concentrate more on selecting an expert HR technology partner to guide them through the process. Founded by HR professionals, Businessolver provides benefits technology in a configurable, secure, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.

As machine learning, predictive analysis, and similar technologies are making their presence felt in the HR industry, Businesssolver sees a future in which predictive analytics revolutionizes the HR landscape. “The national and federal changes and individual exchanges have pushed the envelope forward on how diverse benefits offerings can be,” says Shanahan. To streamline this, recommendation engines will appeal to consumers by allowing them to put each program under the microscope to educate themselves and make the right decision.

Businessolver sees key opportunities to individualize and tailor the employee experience by working with an entire ecosystem of technology providers. “We are focused on providing a personalized experience that transforms the entire benefits industry,” says Shanahan. The company is working toward bringing benefits silos—from retirement to health insurance—together to help employers and employees make better decisions based on comprehensive data.
The West Des Moines, Iowa-based company helps employers maximize their investment in benefits programs and minimize exposure to risk, while engaging employees with a full suite of communication vehicles that empower them to choose and use benefits wisely. Businessolver’s suite of services is multi-faceted, from enabling enterprises to keep pace with Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance requirements to helping employees carefully choose suitable insurance plans. “We strive to be the solution, helping employers and employees transform the annual enrollment event to a personalized journey—equipping employees with the right benefits at the right time in their life,” says Shanahan.

We are transforming the annual benefits enrollment to a personalized journey–equipping employees with the right benefits at the right time in their life

Getting Past the Old School Methods

“Forward-thinking HR professionals want to get past the smoke and mirrors, myths, group thinking, and traditional biases that surround HR technology,” says Shanahan. However, even today, many HR teams are tied to legacy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) that are not keeping up with the current market changes. Businessolver helps companies make the much-needed shift from clunky ERP systems to sleek, modern SaaS-based platforms that enable employers to quickly deploy solutions. Unlike the older systems that would take as long as 30 days to update, Businessolver’s SaaS platform allows organizations to make updates and install new solutions in real-time.

Businessolver also ensures the security, compliance, and integrity of each client’s benefits information data and processes. “We have built the most secure SaaS benefits administration platform available—which means we have our client’s back in a world of prevalent cyber-attacks,” says Shanahan.

Besides assuring security, the company also helps enterprises by facilitating trustworthy and streamlined processes to solve billing challenges, while saving significant time and money. “We offer web-based tools for benefits billing and financial reporting to deliver reconciled bills that are easily reportable by division, location, and carrier,” says Shanahan. “These bills meet the carrier wash rules, including plan eligibility and billing rules such as cut-off dates and retroactive limits.”

Committed to its customers’ needs, Businessolver has dedicated service teams that answer queries around the benefits programs from customers’ employees. Leadership teams listen and analyze calls, which helps Businessolver more effectively deliver technology. “Everybody working under the platform can understand what’s going on through a common window,” says Shanahan.

SaaS-enabled Benefits Platform

Health insurance is a major benefit that enterprises use to lure and keep employees. However, most employees lack basic insurance knowledge and are confused when choosing plans. Without a recommendation engine or a decision support tool, employees could select plans that are not aligned with their health and financial needs, leading employees to sticker shock at best and insurmountable debt at worst when facing high deductibles.

Businessolver helps organizations proactively anticipate such challenges through its MyChoice™ recommendation engine.

This award-winning, data-driven recommendation engine helps make complex decisions simpler while helping companies easily collect crucial data on employees’ risk tolerance and risk preferences. This includes integrating its SaaS technology with social media platforms to better connect with different generations of the workforce and understand their diverse benefits needs. The platform also supports employees by matching their financial risk levels with appropriate insurance coverage. This makes the entire benefits selection process easier and more personalized for employees, matching different insurance plans with their individual needs. In addition to basic health questions, the engine also collects data about the employees’ “rainy day” savings, which allows employees to take into consideration things like financial wellbeing.

"We have built the most secure SaaS benefits administration platform available-which means we have our client's back when it counts"

In one instance, the data collected by MyChoice indicated that only eight percent of an organization’s employees would be able to absorb the financial risk of an emergency, while the remaining 88 percent had no emergency savings. The analysis further revealed that the employees think they are healthier than they actually are and, in case of a health event, would be unprepared. “We tap into all these data touchpoints that occur in employees’ lives to help them be more educated and engaged during the benefits enrollment process,” says Shanahan.

The company’s SaaS-based benefits technology— Benefitsolver—allows employees to easily enroll benefits based on eligibility, “supporting HR professionals to strategize with the C-suite of their future benefits decisions,” says Shanahan. It also helps organizations to offer wellness benefits to employees. “There are a higher number of total population health, wellness, and well-being vendors and suppliers today. However, the challenge is to select the right partner that aligns with organizations, technologically and culturally,” says Shanahan. “Businessolver supports large employers through its wellness tools by allowing them to leverage their own wellness programs during benefits election process.” For employers that choose wellness vendors, Businessolver assists by using technology to combine wellness program’s data to employee benefit elections.

Businessolver looks forward to advancing its technology tools that will impact each generation at the workplace and support HR professionals throughout the year, beyond open enrollment.