Articles | July 30, 2019

Are There Problems with Your Benefits Administration System?

A state of the art benefits administration system is key to any successful modern fund office. Unfortunately, many systems lack the necessary functionality or have not been adequately maintained or updated to fully automate the benefits administration process.

Often, systems are insufficiently or incorrectly implemented and lack the necessary functionality or data to fully automate work processes and are unable to provide accurate reporting and member and employer self-service capabilities.

Check for data issues

From the ways in which you use your data to underlying issues with data integrity, cleanliness and accuracy, data issues can make or break your ability to administer benefits accurately and efficiently and provide a high level of member service.

Make sure to review:

how you’re collecting information, from duplication to discrepancies,
the processes you have in place for gathering, accessing and analyzing data within your office and with your participants, and
whether information is being fully utilized to improve the delivery of benefits.

Review manual processes

Your benefits administration system should operate in a manner that allows you to automate and measure your business processes.

If you are finding your office is using manual workarounds for work processes, there is likely an underlying problem.

Consider whether your processes are:

automated and streamlined,
clearly documented,
measurable, and
developed in a way that limits the use of multiple systems.

Make sure your system is compliant

The further your data goes, the more pitfalls there are for data protection and legal compliance violations.

Following Canadian privacy laws such as the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”) provide an important framework for protecting your participants’ data.

If your system isn’t compliant with the relevant laws, you may have serious issues. Contact us to find out more about how we review your systems’ compliance capabilities.