Optimizing Benefits Administration at Edlong for Accurate Reconciliation and Employee Satisfaction

Edlong Corporation, a leading player in dairy flavors and food ingredient solutions, faced challenges in reconciling benefits costs with payroll deductions and ensuring accurate employee enrollments. Dealing with multiple benefit vendors and a diverse range of benefit plans, they sought a comprehensive solution to address discrepancies and improve their benefits administration process. INT’s solution involved a meticulous approach, including data gathering, reconciliation processes, and validation of employee enrollments. The results allowed Edlong to identify and address underlying issues, confirming accurate benefits allocation and positioning the company to maintain high employee satisfaction and industry leadership.

The Client:

Edlong Corporation is one of the leading companies in research, development, and production of dairy flavors and food ingredient solutions. They are known for their breadth and depth of dairy flavor expertise, as well as their dedicated commitment to promoting innovation in food, beverage, and nutritional products. For over a century, Edlong has continuously strived to enrich the lives of others.

The Problem:

Edlong Corporation sought a comprehensive benefits analysis to confirm that benefits costs reconciled properly against payroll deductions and benefits enrollment. Additionally, they wanted to ensure that employee enrollments accurately matched their elections. Lastly, Edlong required findings of potential discrepancies and areas for improvement.

The Challenges:

  1. Multiple Benefit Vendors for Different Benefits: Edlong collaborates with a variety of benefits vendors including Mutual of Omaha, Cigna, MetLife, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, each providing different types of benefits such as dental and health insurance. Managing and coordinating information across these various providers presented a significant challenge due to their unique methods of tracking and reporting benefits and deductions. 
  2. Complexity of Benefit Plans: Edlong offers a wide range of benefit plans to its employees, each with their own specific details and requirements. The complexity of reconciling these various plans added an additional layer of intricacy to the task. 
  3. Accuracy of Data: Given the multitude of vendors and benefit plans, ensuring the accuracy and up-to-date status of data pulled from both benefits enrollment and payroll was crucial. Verifying the validity of this data was a critical step for accurate reconciliation and analysis.

The Solution:

To address these challenges and fulfill Edlong’s objectives, we adopted a meticulous, multi-pronged approach:

  1. Data Gathering: We collected detailed data from each benefits vendor – Mutual of Omaha, Cigna, MetLife, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. This involved careful coordination with each vendor to gather up-to-date and accurate information about employee enrollments and payroll deductions.
  2. Reconciliation Process: We systematically compared the benefits costs against payroll deductions and benefits enrollment for each vendor. This meticulous process helped to identify any discrepancies, potential errors, and areas for improvement.
  3. Validation: We ensured that employee enrollments accurately matched their elections for each of the different benefit plans. This ensured that employees received the benefits they had elected, regardless of the provider.
  4. Report Preparation: Upon completion of the analysis, we prepared a detailed report summarizing the benefits offered by each vendor, along with our preliminary findings. The report highlighted areas of strength and opportunities for improvement within the benefits administration process, and took into consideration the complexity of working with multiple vendors.

In addition to the written report, we prepared a comprehensive presentation that visually showcased our findings. This approach allowed Edlong’s team to easily understand the data across different benefit vendors and plans.  

The Results:

The benefits analysis and reconciliation process allowed Edlong to gain a thorough understanding of their benefits administration. This process revealed the underlying issues with the benefits costs, enrollments, and payroll deduction discrepancies, highlighting exactly what needed to be adjusted and how. Additionally, it confirmed that employee enrollments matched their elections.

Our report provided valuable insights into the benefits administration process, emphasizing potential areas for improvement and opportunities to further streamline their systems. With our findings, Edlong is now better equipped to maintain its high standard of employee satisfaction and continue its legacy of being a leader in the industry.

As a result of this project, we were able to support Edlong in its commitment to its employees, contributing to their mission of enriching the lives of everyone they touch.

Testimonial:

“Our experience with INT was fantastic; they provide a product tailored to your needs, which sets them apart from other vendors in the space. We worked with Bobbie M. by request and were not disappointed. Bobbie is extremely personable, thorough and knowledgeable. At a moment’s notice, Bobbie would set time aside to answer questions or give an update on our progress. If you are looking for a partnership that leaves you feeling valued, INT’s services could be a good fit.”

-Kami Hunt
Human Resources Manager