Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Mike Byers, CEO of HighRoads (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In terms of actionable conclusions that came out of this normalizing and big data processing work, what were the highlights of what you were able to do with that data?

Mike Byers: The activity itself shaved off a considerable amount of time that the client was spending just preparing for their open enrollment. It shaved a couple of months off that process. The second thing it gave the client was the ability to look across their 330 different medical plans and get a good comparison of what they were providing to their employees across these 14 business units. That is something they historically hadn’t been able to do. They would rely on a consultant to tell them what was happening in their business as opposed to empowering them to get that information at their fingertips. That was a tremendous benefit. The third thing was the ability to effectively stay in compliance with ERISA [Employee Retirement Income Security Act], a law that has been on the books since 1974, but also to stay in compliance at a reasonable cost. Those were the three biggest takeaways that General Dynamics had.

SM: Let’s do another customer.

MB: Dell Corporation, despite being a technology and services company, had a significant problem with staying in compliance with ERISA as it pertained to their summary plan descriptions. They had HighRoads take the processes and the way they were doing it, reintroducing those processes within the HighRoads platform, and then they experienced a ROI of 175%. This allowed them to provide their employees with an accurate and compliant document that informed them of what their benefits were. It saved a considerable amount of time and money, and once again it gave them the ability to look at their business data in one central repository, which we refer to as the source, in a way that was unique. Historically somebody would have to go through three-ring binders and manila folders to get answers to questions. In the HighRoads environment, it gave them access to all of their benefit plan information accurately and quickly and gave them the ability to make side-by-side comparisons of different plans.

SM: Is there a third example you would like to share with us?

MB: The third one is Boeing Corporation. We were able to automate their benefit plan management – the ability to store and aggregate hundreds of different plans. We gave them the ability to take off almost three months of preparation of open enrollment, and it gave them the ability to automate just over 660,000 data elements, which had historically been done with less than effective data technologies. This is another success story where we were able to provide data, where somebody in the benefits team at Boeing could access information quickly and accurately.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Interview with Mike Byers, CEO of HighRoads
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