August 2011

Product providers must integrate to safeguard their future

Integration is a key influencer in advisors’ decisions on who to place business with. This is the main finding in a recent survey carried out by Staffcare. Over 90% of those who responded indicated how critical this functionality is and 76% of respondents said integration would influence who they place business with.

Staffcare surveyed its partner organisations, including some of the leading Employee Benefit Consultants in the UK, to determine whether they would value further integration between Staffcare and other product providers and, if so, what types of integration would be of most use to them.

While a number of our competitors do already have integration with some providers, this is usually in the form of Contract Enquiry. However, Single Sign On was the most popular request by 96% of respondents together with Straight Through Processing, for online pension joining, which was also deemed important by over 85% of our partners. These were both ahead of Contract Enquiry which was voted as important by 78% of those surveyed.

Staffcare is currently working on detailed integration with one of its newest partners, Alexander Forbes. This will involve Staffcare providing access to its rules engine to facilitate calculations on Alexander Forbes’ new on-line portal which is due to be released shortly.

Steve Watson, Head of DC at Alexander Forbes sees integration as a minimum requirement:

“We have recognised that clients are becoming increasingly frustrated with the absence of a single “access point”. Although there can be many providers involved in the overall employee benefit solution, this should not mean that the user experience is not “seamless”. A unique aspect of our proposition is the creation of a single access point – provider integration is an absolute must”.

Graham Jarvis, Managing Director at Staffcare said:

“We recognise how critical this functionality is and have already integrated Staffcare with many product providers and we are looking at extending this.

We believe the future of HR and Benefits software will be to integrate with other HR and benefit provider systems. No single technology company can afford to replicate the functionality that is provided by all the different systems employers use. The solution must be to provide a seamless employee experience so that the employee can simply and easily move between applications. “

As a result of the survey Staffcare will be contacting organisations, who our partners have requested we integrate with, to explore the way forward to build seamless employee journeys.