How Can I Sign Alabama RFP

How can i document type sign rfp alabama

questions today also during today's presentation we will ask for your feedback by voting on a few polling questions which will appear in the polling panel also on the right hand side of your screen all you need to do is check the radio button that corresponds to your answer in that panel and then click Submit please note the polling questions will only appear once the poll has been activated by the host so stay tuned for that and finally if you experience any technical difficulties today go ahead and chat your issue to our host using the chat panel also on the right hand side of your screen so to review the Q&A panel is for content related questions and the chat panel for logistical or support questions if your technical issue is of a more serious nature you may also reach out to webex technical support the phone number I'm about to give you is toll-free in the US Canada and it is eight six six two two nine three two three nine and now we will Paula just a moment while I start the recording and with that we are ready to begin today's event sponsored by business Oliver and hosted by employee benefit advisor and employee benefit is news excuse me I would like to introduce your moderator for today and that is Jennifer Daniel Jennifer you have the floor thank you very much and thank all of you for joining us this afternoon we're very excited to spend the next hour sharing with you what we called the art of conducting an RFP and I would like to start by introducing our presenters today I am Jennifer Daniel VP of career development here at business over my background was on the carrier side before coming to business silver I have in-depth knowledge of voluntary benefits enrollment and I have worked very closely with our service center and our marketing team to support those insurance products and support Benefits Administration so I will be moderating our event today and we have the esteemed around America Chi with us with Drupal Mark Gucci I'm gonna have been in this business for 18 years her business is group amar Pucci and they run well over 20 different Benefits Administration rfp's every single year and they've been doing that for the past ten years Brenda brings a wealth of knowledge to us and with her firm they support employers advisors carriers service providers and investors as they're looking to vet different technology vendors and we also have wind-up stage on channa Han Jahn president and founder of business over first was founded in 1998 business offers one of the largest benefits administration firm in North America and here we work with brokers consultants and carriers and from an RFP perspective we run well over 200 different RFPs every single year and that doesn't include all of those that are just more on the informational the price check people that are just kind of checking out the market between Rhonda and John we have a lot of knowledge and wealth of experience in the room we hope that you find this very helpful the topic is very popular we have a lot of people we appreciate all of the attendance but if you have questions we will definitely try to get through those at the end let's go ahead and jump in and we'd like to start with a polling question we want to make sure that we are crafting our message to the people who are on the phone so if you would mind letting us know which best defines your role are you an analyst technology consultant a broker advisor a carrier or an employer HR professional we'll just give you a moment while those tally up there antastic okay that's what we expected and hopefully you can all see those results as well or you will be able to as soon as we close the poll here and move on looks like we have a good split amongst the four different options the largest being in the employer category I think we'll see shortly here what those results are so you know as well as who is on the phone and who we're talking to yes let's go ahead and share that okay so it looks like we've got about 48 percent our employers 29 to summer in the broker category 16 analysts and 7 percent on the carrier category so that helps alright let's go ahead and jump in and you know one of the one of the questions you have to start with before you even decide which path to go down and should I do an RFP or not is it the right time to do that right I know that you can a lot of you do a lot of consulting in the space obviously so give us your background and your taken RFP or not that's the question tear each other firm Thanks um so why do it well first of all you have some kind of corporate procurement rules that dictate that you have to run one and you see that a lot especially in the governmental side of the business but then probably more importantly especially now because of what's happening with clients with ACA did you Pepsi no leadership dictating that you need to look at our mission and maybe you don't have any automation so that's one reason then of course another reason that we see a lot is there's changes in the leadership and they decide to go in a different direction or there's changes of your partner maybe your partner's been sold and you don't think that they're going to be around long terms of service you because of they might have been purchased by and then it last but not least they have what I call the unhappiness factor where you're just unhappy with your current provider and you don't think it can be exact so those are the reasons that we see people go into our people economy see people that go into our RFP for a couple of reasons one there's folks that just want a price check because there wasn't a validated budget or they're looking to put money in their budget for next year and I just want to understand pricing or most importantly there's not enough time to actually do a good job at the RFP which requires a lot of investment of time and I would just say in our season of pain that we're in right now the month after fourth quarter open enrollment clothes a lot of pain that's coming through my email and my voicemail are people who did not invest the right amount of time to pick their partner so time investment is really important here and then last but not least you kind of lack buy-in from the stakeholders so I should have many times the benefit team really wants to do this but I t's not on board they oppose not on board payrolls not on board so that's some reasons to do it and some reasons not to do it Tyrande if it's not time to do a full-blown RFP you know talk to us about some of the other options that are out there what might make sense for those folks that are listening sure well you can also do a request for information looksies much that anymore mainly because the web is created so much transparency a lot of folks will do request for information just to figure out what's going on in the market see request for pricing which is you know to validate pricing especially when folks are going through a renewal you may just want to understand are they under are they over a market check for us is not a fold on RFP it's kind of in kind of um figure out within the market and get some pricing and we tend to do a market check with clients that are smaller and don't have much complexity you can get away with that and not doing arm pain in those groups and then of course you know to go to the RFP and you can see from this graph that we've got a lot of time attached to doing that so yeah those are the range of options that we kind of provide to our clients okay typically when you think of RFP you think of data and questions and numbers that's done we know about the relationships you can you speak about aspects of it yeah I mean I think from the provider side of things you know we're excited to participant in our RFP because what it does for us is it allows us to start the long term relationship most of these relationships are three to five year relationships at a minimum and so when you have an RFP process and you have somebody leading the RFP process you get is the opportunity to minimize you know risk the risk that you're going to run into obstacles and during the implementation process that you didn't know you didn't you didn't think to you know to tease out and so on the provider side I think it really helps us be more effective in the implementation process and keep the relationship off in the right way and reduce risk on the client side I think they also have a lot of risk you know if you think about their risk the risk of it not going well and not you know not setting the systems up right not setting the right service expectations the legal the financial risk the surprises that some of the participants asked about you know what you know how do you avoid getting 'is it you know surprise fees that you weren't expecting this is what the RFP process is about it so I think you know I think Rhonda and her team and other folks in the industry of the Runnings it's their channel and just a tease all those details to the top but there's a lot of value in it because it is a long-term relationship it so but I think you do a great job of pulling together the RFP and so I know let's get into details of what the RFP process actually looks like so we think about it from the standpoint of outcomes we want for outcomes from the RFP the first one and the most important one in the one that I see everyone missed on is let's really define requirements upfront on a piece of paper that gets the employer to a place where they are 80% now the implementation half when they go to the kickoff meeting and so we find a tremendous amount I'm defining requirement but then on the flip side you want to do a solution review and assessment so you want to understand can the provider actually meet the requirements so we're doing that piece as well and then really important is the financial investment we want an outcome that gives them plural budget and a real budget not a big budget so we see a lot of service providers in the market who are what we call for you to death and they really don't they'll provide of all the fees or someone's not thinking about all the fees that are happening and so we're trying to create a budget where it doesn't feel like you're few just because you have the budget for it and then of course last but not least identify the partner yes so those are really the outcomes that's what you're trying to get out of an RFP let's talk first about the different steps that we're going to cover so the shopping step that's one that a lot of people seem to forget and you know going out and looking at what's available then you have to prepare that request for proposal so you know what types of questions need to go in there how do you educate your service provider and what you're truly looking for releasing the request for proposal and managing those responses so who are you going to go out to how many vendors are your service providers are you going to invite to the table and then once you get those answers back how do you evaluate truly who you're going to keep and not keep and who you're going to invite to a final squeeze notation so the finals meeting and the service fighters will selection those last two steps we're not going to spend a lot of time on today we're going to focus most of our efforts on those first four steps so before we launch into shopping we would like to do another poll question the word curious to know how many of you on the phone have actually excusing backwards on there I've actually been involved in about administration RFP process so we're going to take a few minutes here yes or no questions secret of what the audience what's your experiences from the honest perspectives like we're telling up alright so we'll go ahead and close that hole and we'll share those results with you so we can see exactly how many folks have have been hurt in the process and might have some good questions to share with us as well let's jump into the first step of the RFP process which is really the shopping experience Rhonda do you want to talk a little bit about importance of that step you said I know that sometimes it's been overlooked and I know John you have some comments too about from benefits administration partner how important that is there who goes first yes in the from the provider side I think it's a it's a great experience I think it you know it's not always done in every step of every you know every artsy that's out there and I think you know when you look at the shopping experiences typically you know you you get the opportunity to meet the client talk a little bit about your organization and do a you know a condensed demo and discussion but I think there's a lot of value in that because you get to understand you have cultural alignment you get to show your functionality off I get to have a talk about the requirements of the client at a high level and you know it's kind of like the first date and you learn a lot about the prospective client so you know but from your perspective Rhonda I know there's got to be some value in it for you as well woody used to Adam well I didn't used to actually do the shopping experience and I learned over time and it was really really important to get folks to see what's in the market but also more importantly to be very efficient about time because it takes a lot of time to do these to cut the market down so when we do shopping experience we're going to expose our clients to six eight service providers in the market but the way we're going to do that is we're going to have a meeting for download a conversation about the company and it's really to get them involved in okay here's what's available in the market and pretty quickly what happens to us as people start to say nope they're not for me yeah I really like them and that's how we get down to a shorter list of people to actually receive the RFP and that's really about time for us but also it's about getting folks to understand here's what's available in the market so what's your what's your experience you know I have to think about it you know a lot of times these are long-term relationships which what's your experience with you know client reactions you know dealing with recommendation engines decision support aca-compliant and saying they're saying gosh you know I haven't been on the market for a while what does this look like yeah I mean folks don't know what's in the market right they're not shopping for this every day you're not in it every day and so what happens to us a lot of times is someone will say I just need some technology for enrollment and then we have them go shopping and all of a sudden things oh you mean you could do this and you could do this and you could help me with a CA you could give me a service center and I could get all this stuff off my plate that's great you've opened up my eyes and I want to change my objective of my RT and I want to change the services I'm looking for so that's here what happens when when we walk through that shopping experience so ideally the purpose of that is like you said to identify the partners to identify the people that you want to move forward with so that shopping phase is very very important and then you move from there into what were called the second phase which is preparing the RFP and the goal of that is to provide the current state of the buyer to the service partners that you're going up to right so it's helping them identify who they are what they're looking for before you're even starting to ask those questions about the vendor and the service part of what they can provide back to your clients so it's a two-way street right rather talk to us about the importance of providing information both direction sure so back in the day our page is to be judged questions back to the service provider and we found that you know it's really a three dimensional conversation starting with the shopping experience but what's really really important for us is to get as much information as we can about the employer group and get it on a piece of paper to actually provide to the responders so they can decide if they want to respond maybe they can't handle it or ende reduce risk for me it's all about reduced risk I am a risk-averse person um so number one you know we started a company detailed why do my company background we really want that purpose of that RFP very clearly stated because we keep pointing back to it as you go through the process we want to look at expectations of the partner time instruction stuff like that but then the real real need of this is let's identify all of the current and desired state and that's three to five pages of RFP our RFP where we go through about 25 different items women have a couple listed here but we walk through what are the current processes what's the current benefit structure what's the current HR technology structure with the current table processes and then we also turn around and say well this is what's current what is ideal and what are you going to be doing in the future are you getting a new system that we have to think about are you in an acquisition mode do you have high turnover so we ask all kinds of questions to get that on a piece of paper because it helps the service providers really respond to the right way and then last but not least in that process we said a ton of employer documentation to everyone so that everybody can take a hard look at eligibility structure eligibility rules what are the file integrations that have to take place and especially we talk about counts for financial commitment just how do you price this effectively so John you want to talk a little bit about things that I know that's a source of contention sometimes I do but before I let you up there's a lot of things on here that I know are hard to gather right and I know that sometimes part of the painful process of running in RFPs there's some work by of course to you but also by the client to get to these details so when you you know teach through this and you're trying to get to some of these things that you so easily put on here like eligibility structure and eligibility role what are the eligibility rules one of the ten what's the conversation the dialogue back to the team to say and the buy-in to go back to that client back to their team and say we're going to go get all these so to your team or somebody like you can assemble that because I think whether it's you know the group plural group on their own doing this or if they have a consultant or an advisor helping them think it's all the same challenge how do you assemble all this what makes sense to assemble so we do a couple of things first the first thing we do is we just went through a dialogue we have a lot of questions and we document what we think is happening and then we also have this big to-do list at the end of the first kind of initial discovery meeting that we do and that to-do list things like could you please send us over your benefit guides your benefit communication material your account structure at your carrier your eligibility and so we try to gather as much information as we can and then we put it into a kind of a nice package that the service providers who are going to respond can look at and understand okay how complex is this group where am I going to trip up what kinds of challenges am I going to have but this takes a lot of time to organize and awesome what we find is employers don't have all that information and so we're going to spend a lot of time trying to dirty into it and get it on a paper so that we're not digging into it during implementation and it becomes a real issue so run this so some of the folks on the phone some of the questions in advance and I think several of them fall into this section under kind of educating and the party doors if you will and a lot of them is you know how do you identify the pain points of the client and make those clear to the service providers that you're talking to and I not really we're talking your conversation was sometimes are just too much for high-level well the service was terrible well how do you get to the root of that so that the possible future service provider can create an answer that will solve that problem so I dig in Jennifer I'm old enough that as a master I want a really under and with the pain is because a lot of people identify pain and it's an acne or the word digging in and we're saying well you don't like mr. Center what don't you like about the service center what would make it different so we went through a process earlier this year and the biggest pain point about the service center one the people aren't educated and trained so what we ended up doing is we identify that and brought that upfront an RFP and then we had a lot of questions later about how do you educate and train your folks in the service center but we're really wanting to dig into pain because a lot of people tell us they're in pain and then let me walk through it if they're not really ok so that's how we do it's a lot of what you're uncovering in the shopping process and that first preparing RFP process really you have to write a lot of details on those in this section in order to make sure that that service provider can provide answers that are valuable because done you know you get a lot of vague questions and the therapies and it's hard for you to create answers that differentiate us correct yeah no I mean I think the challenges are on both sides for you know the provider the prospective provider who's trying to turn the business and and for either the consultant trying to also help with you know I'm in pain so they said it's like going to the doctor to say you know what's your pain well I hate call over and and I think the the challenge with that is you've got to get to some of the details and I think when we talked about a two-way street on this level we're talking about is if you say service center as an example is your pain then how do we get to is it you know what is it is that the education like Rhonda you know suggested around the representatives is it that they don't have a good access to data is it the availability is it the their ability to close the case out in the first call resolution kind of metric or what it and so we're always trying to tease out you know what is the specific pain what do the volumes look like if there's pain you know if there's volume associate with that pain what that does is it puts us in a better position to provide a price a budget will kind of prize it that the client knows and can count on into the future and it avoids the surprise pricing that I think we talked about before so providing data to that potential service providers of BP so that they can answer the questions correctly but how do you crack those two dish those questions detail enough so that you get the information background that should truly evaluate the service writers that are out there so talk to me about the second phase of this part so I love the name of this webinar about art because running an hour P process is an art not a science and crafting our P questions is an art and not a science and I would just say that when we start to craft questions what I say to my team is you need to think about what you want back after the answer and after every arti we sit down and we evaluate what are the bad answers that we got it was probably us asking the bad question right and so that's really really key for us is how do you actually write the question to get what you're asking fact for and that's part of the reason that we identify all those requirements and processes because the questions are going to directly relate back to that which is going to help the questions be a lot better okay and in John from your perspective you know answering all of these are piece 200 of them a year so how are you making sure that you're digging in not providing the standard pat marketing answer but truly giving the details that that I Rhonda are that employer wants to see yeah I mean I think that RFP process you know your your sales your sales team would probably love to provide the answers to our keys right because that may be the best answers ever I think the key is that you have people who really are engaged and involved on your RFP team that know things like what is your product program you know where is your technology going how do you define service and how do you find and define service expectations because if you're if you're getting a tough RFP you know one that's thorough one that's complete you know as Rhonda's folks you're one that's driving a lot of intelligence back at you that I think you owe it as a respondent as a potential provider to take that serious and really lay out your current state as an organization and your future state as an order so that that can be matched up against where the prospect of client is going and so this is a really key phase and there's a lot of there's a lot of proving it that goes on but I think if you're doing that you take that seriously and you do it well it sets up again a good long term relationship and so with my background in the voluntary space in the service center space to me that seems to be an area where those questions are never detailed enough do you integrate with voluntary carriers well yeah that's a bad question right so how it is which voluntary carriers for which products do you integrate and yes it was the UI process and how does that handle today and so some more details the better I think of the moral of the story and to John's point proving it so it's surrounded we're talking earlier about if they can't prove it then you're questioning if they can do it down the road right if they don't have a recent review as a recent date on it good questions you know the question is are they really committed to their security review so they're really committed to the audit so remember I said that this is a three dimensional process and the thing is is not only do we ask questions but we also ask for lots of documentation from the service provider and we're trying to understand do the answers to the questions are they backed up by reality and so I'm not from Missouri but I wanted to be shown to me so when folks don't want to give us that documentation it tells us a lot about whether they're real or not whether they've got their buttoned up and they have their act together around the things that are really important to our clients absolutely well and I think I mean I think the other piece are from the provider perspective is if you don't question you think is an incomplete question as part of the RFP process we're gonna build on it so back to your example if they ask the question about voluntary and you provide more specification exactly how you're gonna handle the product but then what happens if people fall out of the online you know kind of experience how do you support them from a chat mechanism in your service center how did it all come together so I think it's incumbent off upon the provider to be engaged you know with whoever's preparing the from the RFP as well to make sure that your answer is a complete answer and you're helping them get to the right place you can see some of the obstacles or barriers they might run into down the road and so you you've got a you know really provide the additional support to prove it Rhonda earlier we talked we touched briefly on timing of all of this so of this phase of it preparing the RFP how long do you think you really need to spend that have a really good RFP to send out to your providers we budget around 30 hours and if it's a really complex case it's more and if it's with someone that doesn't have their documentation organized then it's even more yes like I said we're trying to set up for implementation okay I think it just helps us understand expectations yes you mentioned if you don't have time to do it don't tell me yeah so you have your process ready to go you sending it out and you just set your hands off and you're good right it's out you're done and close it off right no we're just starting the dialogue on our knees just getting up so you release the manage therapy and the goal there is to obviously make sure that the providers have therapy they have the questions respond to but you you've been very consistent with us that there has to be an ongoing dialogue so we need to dig into a question or you're not getting what you need there still has to be that back and forth it's not just as the winner submit your answers and we're done no because one we don't have two questions correctly sometimes do we didn't actually do really great discovery because we didn't really understand what the client was telling us and three we get the answers back and we don't understand the answers so for ongoing dialogue we don't shut it down we don't shut it off during the whole process because it's really really important for me okay the risk averse person I don't want any surprises later it's no surprise parties I want them to be as tight as I can't wait to get started so the dialogue for me it's really really important so John what about from service riot perspective I know you know we've had our peas where this is your jobs I baked you can call them this time at this cake and ask questions and then you can answer any more questions so there's a third time that has to go on yeah I mean I think there's a lot of approaches to it so I mean you have approaches where yet you know you've got a window to submit questions back through email responses that's one of the methods out there there's also folks who you know will have a conference call and all potential providers can attend the conference call you know which can be a can be an awkward party and then you know you've also got you know Canada if you have any questions you can have a dialogue back before I think there's pluses and minuses to all of them and certainly I think one of the things that folks are sensitive to is the number of amount of time that I put in it from the provider side just from our perspective from business solvers perspective we're willing to put in more time because we think clarifying things that were confused about making sure that we're seeing pricing exhibits the same way talking through you know perspectives on service level agreements often times you know it can't be a one-dimensional conversation it's very hard to do with one dimension if the if the opportunity is complex or there's just things you don't understand about it so we're living to them want to put the time in that we think that dialogue is absolutely key to pretty no surprises and reducing the risk of the partnership so Rama I'm curious do you ever evaluate the service providers on if and when and what types of questions they follow up with on RFP is that part of your evaluation process yeah because we can tell right away if they don't really do it or they don't understand it so it's Vance's questions that indicate you know they don't understand how long as Christ's work that tells us something about the provider so one of the things that I see a lot of is kind of Fabrice - people not investing in the response and that's part of the process okay so the elf in the room usually and this part of the pricing so it's that middle box clarifying that financial commitment obviously that's you need a price you want to employer wants the price so John talked to us about the importance of this page and how do you leverage this data to do your bracing letting you know the pricing you know exhibitor process in RP is all across the board and we talked about some folks colleges with a request for pricing or request for information that has pricing but when it's all across the board like that you know the RFP team in particular gets you know kind of torture terrorized by trying to you know provide consistent answers and trying to make sure that the information they're giving back to whatever organization is gathering it whether it's employ or broker advisor or or you know consultant firms is consistent and it's something they can benchmark and something they can use and they can compare you know apples to apples instead of you know apples to pineapples and so I think the key in this dialogue is you can you can set that alignment you can say are we giving you whoever's on the other end of the process the right information so that you can do that comparison and without that dialogue I think there's actually there actually can be a lot of rework where you've got to have a lot of back-and-forth to get it into a compa ison process and that you know that's the key outcome of this process so I think it's a very complex or can be a complex an important step to make sure the pricing is transparent it's well understood anything that you're providing caveats around as well understood because if this is done well it's my belief that this should roll right into the contracting if you're you know fortunate to be selected this is a portion of the RFP that you can say it was laid out here we all agreed to it we understand what it is and we understand you know the contingencies around it surrounding you said that you know there are patients to take care of 80% of implementation well and I would also say one of just follow-on to what John said because this pricing is tricky and complicated cuz it's based on all kinds of different pounds and different things that are going to happen um one of these we do is we actually get the pricing review it clarify it and then we have anybody who's bidding sign off on our rendering because I don't want my poor client calling in you're saying I only budgeted X but now I need why how come you didn't figure this out for me so we're pretty clear that we want the service providers to take a very hard look at how we rendered that pricing and sign it before we even get to contracting and implementation yeah and I don't know me and Rhonda maybe want to build on this but one of the things that I know you know when you get to different kind of way pricing is presented you'll see everything from you know the cost of it per employee per year per employee per month and then you'll have maybe one off you know for example and then you got hers new pieces coming from the ACA so I think it hasn't become less complex I think it's become more complex because we also again have some of the changing requests do the ACA one version just pops up I know we're going to take questions at the end but this is a good lunch of addresses you know are you we're talking about technology RFPs which are different from this your product RFP and I know we have different folks on the phone do you want to just kind of lay out some of the differences of you know why technology RFP this process is a little bit maybe more complex sure I mean it's different because one thing if not quote-unquote commoditized we've all been running our P's for medical dental life vision for years and years and years and years and while that business continues to change this business is actually very early stage and it's not in a box right now and different providers come at it very different ways whereas in insurance product world everybody's coming at it from the same place under the same kinds of pricing constraints and so it's just more complex I think the other thing is that in general you not only biotechnology you're buying outsourcing and you're buying a partner and a lot of times folks don't look at like their life insurance as a partnership but it is a partnership because it's a lot of us or stuff and the folks that are better provide the services are touching your employees in one way or another and so I think that's important because I think there's a big difference great great point so we have our scene we get the answers back and a lot of our questions that we've gotten advanced are around how do you evaluate based on the RFP so that last step we're going to talk about is reviewing those responses and the goal there is to really narrow down those providers to two or three that you want to take to the dance that you want to do a silence meeting with that you know they're there folks that are definitely contenders to be the next Bachelor if you want to go that way but let's let's talk about how can you evaluate it so you have all these answers on paper run back how do you what way in what ways out how do you decide who stays who goes well if at the end of the day it's all about the requirements of the employer so that's kind of number one gonna dictate but I will just tell you that when we review on a submission we're looking for really two things one we're looking for reality versus marketing language really really important I can't tell you how many times we get answers to a question or cannot answer to the question its marketing language which tells me they don't like the answer they don't want to give us an answer so that's where that clarification comes in but then ii ii ii worked has been commitment levels through this process so we'll get our page that have different class names in them and look at our piece where people are using the rfp machine and they didn't really read the question which means they didn't answer the question that's not a commitment to this client it starts right at that process if they're committed to being in this game in the dance at this party they gotta do that work because that's just going to go through the whole relationship it starts with putting that our p together to act just like you would act once you have a client and you're supporting the client ongoing having fun absolutely in john i know that we have you know three core tenants up here and in security risk and implementation and capabilities and so many times you're taken if you don't have the first one did a second to even matter yeah i mean i think again this is a kind of a two-way street kind of concept as well i mean on the one side as a provider you've got to make sure that you have you know best-in-class and the scattered you know we talk about it as from a security risk just starting on the left and moving right if you don't have that covered if you're not having third-party evaluations on in multiple categories across your people your process and your technology then you probably you know are not going to be successful in setting expectations of the client that they need to have this covered off right I mean this is something that they're counting on you to cover up their reputation is at stake their employee independent data is with you and this is something you have to take very seriously so I think when we look at it that's important part of the risk framework and I think it's also important to understand how does the client see it because oftentimes clients have their own risk framework they may have their own technology review process and it's important to teach that to the top to make sure that if there's another set of review processes you need to go through that you're prepared to do that I think as relates to implementation of course you know part of this process is Rhonda talked about is you're getting hopefully 80% of the information you need but I think it's absolutely critical that you have your methodology laid out it's clear about how you run your processes as the provider so you're helping them understand because there's a lot of a lot of ways to build a house and the clients looking at you saying you know what is this going to look like when it's done and how do you go about doing it right I don't know what are your thoughts on the implementation bucket because that's a big bucket a huge bucket and it's a huge bucket on both sides because often what I see is providers that don't take the lead and implementation which it is their job but then unfortunately on the other side the employer not putting a time and energy into it and then wondering why it doesn't work so that's kind of what I see is implementation is huge and frankly we all know this if the implementation does not go well it's really hard to recover on both side it's really hard to recover and that's all about setting expectations and it's not just hard to recover you know in the first you know three and a half four months to the relationship right this is a long term lingers right so I think that that's an important piece of that how do you how do you prove it in that type of what comes to the top of your mind I mean sometimes on the security side that's easy going say do they have an asset basic you know be doing intrusion eyes things like that those are things that you can go through and say prove it but on the implementation side where you look for how do you know that there's any quality in that category I want to see the documentation that's going to support implementation I want to understand the different phases of implementation I want to understand the feedback loop the feedback cycle I want a piece of paper that says here are the roles and responsibilities of the client at these times here are the roles and responsibilities of the service provider at these times but I want to know how much time how much time you respect my client to talk can I have a serious conversation with them about do you have the time to do this because if you don't your outcomes going to be back yeah I think that's something that a lot of prospects of defiance really really appreciate so they can set an expectation they can look at it and say how's this going to fit into everything else we have to get done because they start their day jobs right right how about on the capability side I mean that that's really not just a check in the box that you know these are things and we're looking at if both sides are trying to figure out let's make sure our capabilities align because if they go then what we get into is surprises down the road surprises and implementation all I thought you're going to do this now it could be a surprise or a fini perspective or it's a surprise up I thought you had it you didn't catch the ball yeah that's a combination of how do you answer the question what kind of documentation is semi and then you know I'm back from I'm anthem from Missouri again show me the back and the days of not showing the back end of these systems are over people have been burned so many times by provider saying they can do something where they can't so now I have people who say what I'm Emma no I the funders not even important to me anymore I went to the back end because I'm tired of the HSA not working or the rehire thing not working right so I'm a baby let's look at the back end too so we talked about Korean risk implementation capabilities there's four other buckets that I think we need to get done real quick and I want to make sure we leave time for questions because we're getting some good ones but so many culture in history you have to have a culture alignment right Rhonda how do you evaluate that I think if we can start to the first date right and start to the first date you know if you're going to like this person or not right and you know this culture thing and the culture is really really important because this is an ugly painful business yeah you know times in our relationship we better make sure our cultures are aligned together to be partners there and you know from my perspective plays support is huge so if we're not identifying upfront and providing you with details on how we're going to support those employees because as you mentioned we're touching those employees and we're you know we're their line of sight into their benefit information so being able to identify you know what type of employee level support is available and now with mobile and chat and service center and I know one of the things that is important to our place is that recorded calls you know having a parent see into seeing exactly what conversations are taking place yeah I know that's really big I mean I think that that's just something I'll call the other day where the service center hasn't been prepped very well for the issues and then there was the he said she said because there was no recording for the calls and he created a lot of drama around what was really going on and I think the other thing I'll just say is is that there's a trust factor when you let you're turning your employees over to these service providers until that trust things got to kind of start inside that culture piece right there anything you would add John on the season legal or the appendix item well I mean even legal again it's you know if you're a good provider as part of this RFP process and you know you move down the road in two different steps in this process you know in getting all the way to finance which I know what I'm talking about today but part of this is understanding it easing to the top again to build a trusting relationship what are your you know potential client what are the things you need to do on your side because we're in this together so there's a you know strenuous legal process vetting process or you have to work inside of your master service agreement and not ours and how are you bringing those things to the top again and making sure you address them as soon as possible because you don't want to say you know all right we've been selected you're doing the high five everybody's really excited now you've got several things you're backing up on including legal compliance technology audits all those things if we assume we're all on the same page then until we ask the question until we bring it up so we have a conversation it breaks down the excitement of moving forward it and it starts relationship on the wrong foot I would turn around and say you know as a firm goes as business overdose we like to provide a lot of additional kind of information and there are appendix to prove the things that we're talking to to prove out the questions what do you look at knock out factors in the appendix submission um I look at how good the doctor - well first of all did I get everything I asked for and then how good is it so for example we have four security colleges and procedures sometimes I get them in their dated 2011 now that means that there's a disease those people are not serious about security so that's kind of what I look for from China I want to backpedal from one minute around what you were talking about about the legal and we kind of missed this a little bit in here and I just want to say that one of my very first our team the service provider have been selected and all of a sudden I became in legal came in and you know what we had to go to someone else because I team legal had standards that the benefits folks didn't know anything about and so now I bring all those people put in ahead of time to understand the requirements so we don't get surprised later excellent point absolutely so Jonah's we're kind of wrapping up the RFP section can you give an idea from your perspective of you know how long does it take for you to complete truly do a great job completing an RFP and and can use help you get feedback from the Rondo's of the world from the other advisors on where you stand on how we're doing yeah no I mean I think a couple things one I would go to there's several you know people that have to come to the table to complete an RFP professionally you know and so in our organization will be outreach to several you know organizations inside of our organization to make sure so my guesstimate Jen would be that you know we've got 8 to 12 hours in preparing an RFP response per specialy just to make sure that we've got you know some of our answers we reviewed it and it's headed in the right direction that's just the RFP team when you start to go around and you start to pick it you know the different pockets of people and said what's updated from last or what do they need to know what's coming forward just depends but you can have a lot of time in this this is a time consuming if you do it well and you really completed maybe across the whole team you have 50 hours in this process but it's a big deal and it depends again a lot on what is the RFP what's the type of RFP what's the complexity of that RFP because then our five response is going to be far less and I think the good news is you can really tell from the client side when you get to the finalist process if they've read your responses and they're really in tune with what you responded to so there's another benefit to the bride or in the next steps of the process where there's alignment now they know where you stand they kind of know your future vision and that really is a great thing to have for both parties fantastic I appreciate your insights and your thoughts on those questions and we have one last poll question that we're curious about as far as upcoming webinars and when and obviously this was helpful but i we want mind launching that last poll question and the question is you know would you be interested in a series of webinars on the final steps of the RFP process so you know how do you do a find a successful final meeting or how to evaluate a partner's implementation process if you want minded answering those that will help give us direction on future webinars and where we take this and funded they're doing that I have a question for you that came in so for folks that don't have access to a random er come to your group emergency and there may be new or to their broker who has clients who are thinking about using mine admin they haven't gone there before you know web administration isn't rated by a moody standard poor's they invest like insurance products are so where can they go just to get general information on the providers out there well I start with the Webster's right I mean we're all trying to Karen out there then you know that's where I would maybe start but you know there's a lot of them there's a lot of experience in the market I would be checking with my peers you know people have good and bad experiences and they could talk to you about them I think the other thing is that um just a really evaluate kind of I use this framework evaluation to kind of narrow down the list but you have to really understand there's there's a group of service providers out there that are low-cost and sometimes people mention people are looking for there's a group of service providers that have incredible technology but no services there's a group of service providers out there that have great services with bad technology and I think you have to kind of wait all that in terms of what your what your objective is you got to think that through but there's a lot of ton of information out there okay thank you we're gonna head and close that poll it looks like that would be something most folks would be interested in so we appreciate your feedback there did want to let you know that we will be sending out not only copy of the presentation to everybody but a copy of our RFP IQ document it really summarizes a lot of what we talked about today and provide you with some of the information that we feel is important to include in that RFP so what would like to know or take a few of the questions that came in so we're going to start with a mental pull those up for me Rhonda the question is showing the back end is critical but how can you how can the client truly evaluate the back end capability without going into the technical case build part of the back end rather than just the administrative dashboard if you will and the reports menu so when I sit back and that's what I meant and that so it says you know make it again show me from Missouri but I might as well be show me how it's gonna work load up some data show me the transaction that's what I want to see so where I fit background I'm talking about the backend that the service provider is using to configure the case that's the backend that the administrator is using to administer their book of business done what's your thought on that well I mean if you're if you're back in is good then I think what you're proud to walk through and say this is how we know that you know this is how easy it is this is how highly configurable it is this is how you know you're gonna have a quality result this is how you can inspect the you know setup if you want to around your plans around your you know the way that your eligibility groups are structured and so I think it becomes a great conversation especially the clients coming off a difficult relationship where if they don't have trust in what's going on in the back end okay Rhonda is an interesting one how do you identify these dates or where responses when you're incoming there are theories month well I've been doing it for a really long time so it's easy for me but I are satisfied but based on didn't answer the question they don't have the technical you know response this is exactly how we do it and in my repeat I don't say do you do this and you answer yes or no I say how do you do this and you can tell is that the marketing response or if it's a real response so that's how I do it okay and then let's upload about performance guarantees there's a question on there about you know what what about them when you use them what do they look like cancel this is interesting because one of the things that I continually run into it someone is really unhappy with their current service provider they're going to announce which they found someone new and they want to impose all the bad things that they actually experienced with the old service provider into the escalation for the new service provider okay so let's face it no service providers are perfect but they all have different issues so using your past pain to create a service level agreement Cetner new pain is not going to work I think you got to start with trust and then you know what happens with us and sometimes we're in kind of what I call marriage counseling environment trying to help people heal fix the relationship because it's got a little bit straight we'll create custom service level agreements based on the issues other things think that's something that I think we'll cover in a future webinar too because I think SLA is our hot topic people want to know how to craft them and how to set them up so we'll use that going forward um this is a good one I know something your both of you are passionate about which is timing so what's the ideal timeline for an RFP process what time of year to melt RFP start and when does that cycle begin for most companies and he did not x over first I think it did I think it just depends on size and complexity of the organization the larger the organization that obviously the earlier they should start so if they wanted to make a change in 15 they you know if it's the case that you know 5,000 lives or greater you know they probably should have started last fall that that would be ideal oftentimes that doesn't happen and so what Rhonda common and how quickly she's seen it go from a process because you can run a faster process I think you have to be more dedicated as a team whoever that our team is to going faster running faster but I think timing are really based on when you want the lives yes so you know we recommend highly that people go by the outside open enrollment that doesn't always work sometimes people have to go live for open enrollment so I paid I would say that the timing is critical and I would also say we are an environment where there's far more demand than good capacity so if you can wander slack get it in early yeah fantastic we are about out of time we're gonna start with this one last quick question Rhonda and I think we covered a little bit earlier on but what about the client that just wants lower cost what do you recommend for them they just want to reduce their cost so here's my mantra for 2015 please stop negotiating the service out of the cost so they want more cause we can certainly find the lower cost provider but there's going to be the trade-offs to that so you have to lower your expectations you want lower-cost and I think this is where I kind of struggle with when you're in commoditized environment sometimes with some insurance coverages you can negotiate cost all day because it doesn't matter in this environment I've seen people negotiate the service of the cost every day and then find themselves entangled on that note we would like to thank everyone for joining us this afternoon we hope that the webinar was beneficial we look forward to having you join us in our future webinars they'll be more detailed