Gantry Group Study: Workforce Adoption is Key to ROI

[April 07, 2004]

Gantry Group Study: Workforce Adoption is Key to ROI

Gantry Group recently concluded a quantitative research study that accessed the value of third party automated Benefits Enrollment solutions to enterprises that have deployed them. The study captured large enterprise needs, challenges, governing business performance metrics, and the key solution attributes that dictate high value delivery for this solution category. Study results are published in a Gantry Group ROI white paper titled HR Automation Solutions: Annual Benefits Enrollment. A copy of this report is available by contacting Gantry Group.

The study reached 450 HR professionals within large U.S. enterprises (5,000 or more employees) of which 305 had deployed an automated Benefits Enrollment solution. Approximately 2/3 of these respondents were HR Vice Presidents, Directors or Managers; the remaining 1/3 were responsible for the HRIS function in their organizations. Respondents were drawn from a broad and even cross-section of industries with an average company employee base of 24,394 per respondent. Respondent data was analyzed by the category of solution currently deployed (e.g. Best-of-Breed, Outsourced and ERP/HRMS) and by the specific HR solution vendor.

�Corporate HR departments across all industries are facing a common challenge: the need to reduce time and money spent on administrative tasks in order to focus on providing more strategic support to the organization,� said Dale Troppito, a managing partner at Gantry Group. �73% of the study respondents reported the need to decrease HR administrative tasks and costs as their top motivation for automating Benefits Enrollment processes. However, automation success is shown to be highly dependent on employee adoption and continued use of the self-service solution.�

By increasing HR process efficiencies through employee self-service, HR departments are significantly relieved of benefits enrollment administration and can increase their attention to top strategic issues facing the enterprise. Study respondents identified retaining, developing and rewarding top talent (50%) as their key corporate initiative.

The study revealed the following top findings regarding Benefits Enrollment solutions deployed in large enterprises today:

� Rate and degree of workforce adoption is a pivotal success metric in determining ROI. Higher workforce adoption rates of automated Benefits Enrollment solutions clearly lead to greater ROI.

� Significant workforce adoption differences were discovered between the Best-of-Breed category leader, Workscape, and traditional ERP/HRMS solutions (e.g. Peoplesoft, SAP and Oracle). Workforces of Workscape�s customers use the Web 29.7% more for Benefits Enrollment than workforces of ERP customers.

� Workforces of Workscape�s customers rely on manual paper-based Benefits Enrollment processes 88.2% less and HR Line Reps 72.8% less than workforces of ERP customers.

�An automated Benefits Enrollment solution is effective only to the degree it is used � adopted � by a company�s workforce. Employees must abandon their old reliance on paper forms and calls into HR for process guidance and plan recommendations. Workforce adoption is the primary success metric that dictates ROI,� added Troppito.

Automated Benefits Enrollment solutions offer an array of discrete value drivers that contribute to the ROI equation for the project, including:

� Decrease in per employee benefit enrollment costs
� Decrease in HR staff time spent on administrative tasks
� Increase in benefits data accuracy and timeliness
� Decrease in enrollment errors
� Increase in employee satisfaction with benefits enrollment process

Enterprises are measuring Benefits Enrollment ROI through established corporate performance metrics. Improved data quality and timeliness (59%) of the annual benefits enrollment process is the key approach enterprises will use to assess the success of their automation.

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