Ideon Blog

Benefits administration platforms’ (BenAdmins) sales, operations, and product teams have a ton to think about these days: 

• How do we become a year-round benefits destination for employees? 
• How do we take advantage of the growing popularity of voluntary benefits? 
• How do we ensure our employee experience is a competitive differentiator?

One topic that is all too often overlooked: carrier connectivity. On one hand, carrier connectivity has become table stakes — after all, doesn’t every BenAdmin platform communicate enrollments and member changes to carriers digitally, mostly via EDI feeds?

Yes, but leading BenAdmins view carrier connectivity as much more than a technical requirement: done correctly, it’s a competitive advantage, enabling scalability, efficient operations, and a fast, accurate enrollment experience.

In the benefits industry, “fast” and “scalable” are rarely used to describe group setup and implementation. We know from speaking with our customers that it takes most BenAdmins 8-12 weeks — and often longer — to build typical BenAdmin-to-carrier EDI feeds. But that’s all changing now. We’ve seen several platforms reduce their group setup timeline to as few as five days. 

The obvious question: How are BenAdmins reducing group setup to days, instead of months?

The answer lies in a new way of managing carrier connections, a strategic decision to partner with companies that specialize in exchanging enrollment data between BenAdmins and carriers. 

The results for BenAdmins speak for themselves:

• Group setup completed in five days
• The ability to send enrollment data in a consistent format
• Elimination of several manual steps that typically prolong EDI implementation

Our new infographic compares, side-by-side, this enhanced carrier connectivity strategy vs. traditional EDI setup. Fast, accurate, and scalable — it’s a new world of connectivity without complexity. Download the infographic to learn more.