18-Month H&W and DC Plan Implementation for a 300,000-Employee Employer

A health services provider with 300,000 employees made the decision to move from its long-term defined contribution and health & welfare eligibility provider to another large industry vendor. Its plans were complex, involving 17,000 different benefits combinations across 50 states — which made specifications and testing voluminous and complex. In addition to needing support for these significant complexities, the client also desired a fully custom, dedicated call center located in its corporate headquarters’ home city.

SBA led all aspects of the 18-month implementation effort. Among the thousands of tasks SBA completed, we provided complete project management, issue tracking and issue resolution; led discovery; performed multiple reviews of more than 140 detailed specifications documents; monitored systems developments; reviewed countless communication documents; performed data analysis and cleanup; established comprehensive test plans for core systems, websites and call centers; managed and participated in testing; oversaw resolution of test failures; and retested systems.

Because of SBA’s detailed implementation support, all of the new vendor’s systems and services — including the dedicated, custom call center — went live on the planned date with no issues. Initial participant satisfaction scores were very high, and they remain so to this day. The client and vendor continue to enjoy a strong, strategic relationship.