Over the past 5 years we have experienced the rapid growth of cloud based technology in the market aimed at providing HR executives and personnel an all inclusive, easy solution to managing their people, benefits and payroll.  We've extensively reviewed many of these platforms. Before you go and purchase a system, let’s discuss some of the advantages and pitfalls that we, as brokers, have discovered.

Overall the intent behind these technology platforms is to improve functionality and streamline HR processes. Where many of the initial products fail is in the execution and cross provider/carrier communication. 

 

Payroll Companies

Payroll companies have been at the forefront of technology, supporting both HRIS and payroll functions.  For the most part they have supplied a successful platform to both.

 

ADVANTAGES:

Some payroll companies allow for online benefits enrollment that might be able to save you time by auto feeding payroll deductions for selected benefits directly into every employee's payroll. This will save the user time by not having to add all of the deductions and setting them into each employees payroll file.

We hear stories of companies that decide to move their benefits over to their payroll when buying up to include HRIS. That kind of simplification is very attractive. The biggest challenge we've heard in these cases is that payroll companies are not benefits specialists and often the benefits piece is either over simplified or falls through the cracks.  

There are some platforms that do it all but the cost associated is beyond many companies’ budgets. 

 

PROBLEMS

They have mostly lacked the ability to conduct online benefit elections during your open enrollment period with direct carrier integration. We have also seen and heard that some payroll companies have two systems, making the user log into two platforms. They tend to be quite expensive.  Most people do not like switching payroll companies. 

 

First Generation Stand Alone Tech Companies 

Tech companies have come to market offering HRIS and online enrollments as their primary platform.

 

ADVANTAGES

They are broker friendly and will work with your broker's team on any and all service issues. 

Their HRIS functionality tends to have more modern functionalities for a modern HR department. 

They tend to be much less expensive than the payroll companies' HRIS offerings. 

If you don't mind having payroll in one place, HRIS in another and are budget conscious then one of these combo's could work for you.

 

PROBLEMS:

Most of these platforms lack payroll integration and unless your company has over 250 enrollees they tend not to offer direct integration with the carrier. As a result the user has to log in to multiple portals to get the same task done. 

Most do not have time clocks and paid time off calculation abilities. 

Having the HRIS functionality could duplicate many of the HRIS tasks and info you may already have inside your payroll system. 

 

 

There must be a better way!

Understanding the all-in-one solution is beyond most companies’ budgets and some people HATE switching payroll providers.   We decided to look for a platform that would allow a client to bring their current payroll and experience the added benefits of an easy, modern HRIS with the benefits administration function. 

 

Enter Standalone Tech 2.0 

And the winner is.... GoCo!

It is without a doubt one of the best systems I have reviewed. Many publications have ranked it the #1 HR solution. 

 

Forbes calls it "your best bet" for an all-in-on HR platform.

The look is fresh and user friendly. It can handle the full range of HR functions such as hiring, onboarding, PTO tracking, documents and benefits management, tax forms, employee communication and many others. 

 

And best of all, it talks to payroll. Any payroll. So you can sync your existing vendor with no need to switch or balance multiple platforms.

For those who feel open enrollment and continuing enrollment changes are administratively burdensome, GoCo will feed all of those changes to our enrollment team at WDA and we’ll handle it for you.

 

Technology is made to speed tasks up not slow the user down! We must always remember that not every platform will accomplish that when considering adding technology to our work life.

 

Use the button below to learn more and/or schedule a Demo with our team.

 

Schedule a Demo now
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