6 Questions You Should Ask in Your Benefits Administration RFP

Benefits technology is key to amping up your benefits strategy. Here are some of the top RFP questions to consider as you’re looking for the right benefits administration technology partner.

Businessolver’s benefits insights data has told us for years that employees will never be benefits experts (yeah, we said it), but they are eager to engage with their benefits. Technology has been proven to help engage employees year-round with support and resources like personalization, communication tools, and artificial intelligence.  

As you and your HR teams head into the busy annual enrollment season, this is a great time to get feedback from employees while their benefits are top of mind. Results from those employee surveys and data from your benefits administrator are excellent feedback channels you can use to begin thinking about what you need in a benefits administration partner.  

If you’re considering ways to link your employees with their benefits, and perhaps revising your program, selecting the right benefits administration partner should be a top priority. Here are six essential questions you and your broker or consultant should be asking: 

1. What are your benefits technology must haves? 

Every “ben admin” provider will have enrollment and eligibility services. Depending on your population, you may want to consider a technology partner that can handle a broad range of complexities for you and your team’s needs. This might include varying divisions or employee groups based on location, wages, union status, and more. Your benefits offerings won’t matter if your employees can’t find or engage with the benefits they’re eligible for. 

61% of employers we polled said that engaging the workforce is their top strategic goal for 2024 and beyond. Use your RFP as an opportunity to highlight how a technology partner could help you with that.  

Questions to bring to your broker or RFP: 

• What are their strategies for engaging your employees beyond the annual enrollment experience?  
• Do they use multiple channels to connect with employees?
• How do they empower your team to use their tools?
• Do they have avenues to create a holistic benefits experience or a hub where employees can find what they need when they need it? 

2. Who are the contenders? 

There are a lot of options out there – do we just add on to our payroll vendor or HRIS? Go with our consultant’s enrollment engine? Is it time to explore a bigger service that will streamline administration? What level of investment do we need, and how can we justify the expense?  

These are all great questions to ask as you take your answers to #1 and filter them through #2 to create your short list of potential vendors. And don’t skimp on the security questions. Your organization’s data is one of its most valuable assets—your technology vendor should ideally have multiple certifications and layers of cybersecurity to give you and your executive team peace of mind. 

3. What does the member experience look like? 

In our 2023 pulse report of employers, we found that the top two employee experiences that benefits buyers were looking for were a platform that: 

• Provided fully integrated access to all benefits programs from one place; and 
• Offered a personalized employee experience 

As you take a deeper dive into the employee experience offered, consider looking at how the technology re-engages your members throughout the year. Knowing how your employees like to be engaged will help guide this discussion. Find the partner who can meet your members where they are. 

Questions to bring to your broker or RFP: 

• Does the benefits technology offer a search feature? 
• Is there a virtual benefits assistant and live member advocates to help guide employees year-round? 
• Is there an integrated mobile app? If so, how often is it updated? Does it provide push notifications and messaging functions? 

4. What efficiencies could we gain as an HR team with this product? 

A lot of factors have to come together to truly gain efficiencies and realize your ROI on your platform. Notably, ask about on-demand reporting, capabilities to make updates to your portal when/if needed without costly change orders, and capabilities to integrate with your other vendors for files, SSOs, and other data transfer requirements. The last thing you want to spend time on is file management. Make sure you’re comparing “apples to apples” by lining up your options with these questions. 

5. How does benefits technology provide ROI for your organization? 

Going from insourced to outsourced benefits administration will pay for itself when you consider the time, resources, and efficiency gains you’ll get, not to mention access to added insights and data.  

Based on our calculations from market research, we assume that a 2,000-employee company that gets 80% of its employees to self-enroll could save more than $174,000 in manual process costs for its team. Dependent verification, closed-loop payroll, AI-enabled chat functions, and a plan recommendation service can provide additional ROI to the tune of millions of dollars saved for the benefits budget. Ask potential vendors to give you a clear calculation of the financial benefits with relevant proof-points. 

6. How are they innovating with their technology? 

Finally, once you’ve satisfied your questions about engagement, data security, efficiencies, and ROI—it’s time to have your preferred partners do some crystal ball gazing. Their current platform release schedule will give you both some clues as to how they will continue to grow with your organization.  

Take a moment to look back on the last ten years of benefits trends and think toward growing expectations of the workforce. Employees are expecting more bang for their benefits bucks, and a benefits administration partner that provides only the basics or a stagnant product roadmap is not going to take you and your team into the future. Benefits are a key recruitment and retention tool. Your chosen partner should have a plan for staying ahead of evolving client needs. 

As you begin thinking through these questions, use our RFP guide to help you plan and navigate your process. And don’t forget to put Businessolver on your short list. We’re eager to help you address your organization’s current and future needs.