Exchange Data Seamlessly
The Benefitfocus Platform™ uses a one-to-many model for managing benefits. This means that employers can manage ALL of their employees’ benefits, and Benefitfocus will transmit benefit information to all of the associated carriers. The technology supports enrollment for all health, life and disability benefits, as well as health savings accounts, wellness programs, retirement benefits, cafeteria programs, flexible spending, employee assistance programs and other special benefit programs. The Platform integrates with a variety of systems, including:
- Carrier membership systems for health and voluntary benefits enrollment
- Payroll and HR systems for paycheck deductions
- Banks for HSA enrollment
- Third party administrators for HRA and FSA enrollment
The Platform supports multiple integration methods, including event-driven transactions, real-time Web services and XML or fixed-width file-based data exchange. The Platform not only provides convenient data exchange, but it also ensures employers and carriers that their data is secure and accurate.
Flexible Data Exchange Capabilities
The Platform’s sophisticated data exchange capabilities are flexible enough to work with a variety of systems with complex data exchange requirements. Where your systems can’t be flexible, we can help. For example, the Platform can:
- Calculate and send an unlimited number of ID numbers that are required by your systems, such as package codes, plan IDs, group numbers and member IDs
- Hold transactions until X days prior to the effective date
- Send transactions that meet specific requirements to HR administrators, underwriters or membership representatives for online approval prior to transmission
- Split and combine transactions, if necessary
- Send current year transactions during open enrollment for the following year
- Generate human-readable versions to supplement electronic files
Payroll/HR System Integration
Paycheck deduction information
Payroll integration allows for maximum efficiency within the HR team. HR Administrators can import new hires, terminations and other demographic changes from the payroll system. Employees and benefit administrators then make benefit elections within the Platform, which enforces all business rules and calculates paycheck deductions. Paycheck deduction updates are then synchronized with the HR system, eliminating the need for dual data entry.
Employees can see the impact of benefit decisions on their paychecks in real time. They can also view their employer’s contributions to the total benefits package. When employees fully understand the value of their benefits, they are more likely to make informed decisions and truly appreciate the benefit investments their employer makes.
Data Exchange Services
For employers that have their own online enrollment system, Benefitfocus can provide a data exchange service to translate employer data into a carrier-preferred format. With this service, all group data can be imported into the carrier’s membership system with one format. The technology ensures accuracy by adding validations, threshold safeguards and business rules during data transformation.
Benefitfocus translates the data, performs validations, applies employer-level and carrier-level business rules and generates reports before the outbound file is produced. This process ensures the files received from Benefitfocus contain accurate data in the right format.