e benefits scott johnson executive summary

Running head: HUFFMAN TRUCKING COMPANY E-BENEFITS

IMPLEMENTATION

1

Huffman Trucking Company E-Benefits Implementation After-Action Report

Scott Johnson

CMG/510

11/7/2011

Nancy Wallace

HUFFMAN TRUCKING COMPANY E-BENEFITS IMPLEMENTATION 2

Huffman Trucking Company E-Benefits Implementation After-Action Report

Executive Summary

On January 5, 2012, this Huffman Trucking Company initiated a project to implement a

health benefits election system for their company and employees. Proposals ranged from

purchasing and supporting an off-the-shelf system to primarily print election forms that

employees would then sign and mail to their benefit providers, to building a system from scratch

in-house, and the E-Benefits system proposing to customize and integrate their Software as a

Service (SaaS) benefits election system has a hosted, co-branded solution for the Huffman

Trucking Company employees. The project was concluded fifteen weeks later on March 19,

2012.

As an existing platform with existing-integration with major human resources benefit

product providers across the country, it was assumed and proven that the SaaS model was the

best choice for Huffman Trucking Company.

Huffman Trucking Company, a modest user of technology, chose to outsource most of

their information technology department several years ago and retains only a problem-ticket

intake and coordination staff for directing internal needs to the outsourced service providers. As

a non-technical company with limited internal technical staff, it was immediately assumed that a

complex system for managing 401k investment selections, health care plans and options, life and

disability insurance, and pension integration would be either an insurmountable task, or a very

basic system of limited functionality or advantage to the company. Adding the development of a

customized system or managing the implementation of a commercial one under the existing

outsourcing contract would also represent a significant change of scope and also a substantial

increase in the overall annual contract amount. As a SaaS system offering, E-Benefits retained


hardware integration costs as part of the package offering, and only passed through costs

associated with Huffman Trucking Company’s unique requirements.

The goals of the project were straightforward, to implement a commercially-available

platform, customize it to match the present and anticipated future Huffman Trucking Company

human resource benefits offerings, and conduct training at all Huffman Trucking Company sites

for interested-employees to attend while recording the same for future online streaming from the

web for those that are unable to attend in person. E-Benefits integrated this streaming

functionality as embedded video streaming within the Huffman Trucking Company portal site

provided.

With the majority of the Huffman Trucking Company workforce consistently travelling,

and likely accessing the system from relatively unsecure locations, such as truck stops, roadside

rests, and other general highway travel locations, Huffman Trucking Company required a two-

factor authentication system for the provided portal site, consisting of an additional RSA

keychain token provided to each employee presenting a 90-second expiring personal

identification number to be used for each login. The cost of the RSA system was an add-on to

the E-Benefits system and integrated on a time and materials basis.

The vision for the platform was to allow nearly-real-time access to traditional human

resources benefits such as health and dental care options, self-service production of membership

identification cards, vacation and sick leave balances and requests, and financial benefit

interaction – such as reallocation of funds in a 401k plan.

All of the envisioned features and goals were realized on the final platform, with an

added possibility of substantial cost savings for Huffman Trucking Company in the future. With

the pre-integration with all major benefits providers in the “back end” of the system, E-Benefits


also has provided a de facto marketplace for their client companies to shop among competing

providers for benefits plans and services for their employees. Prior to open enrollment each

year, the company can compare offerings and pricing from other prospective companies, and

easily prepare and submit the necessary information required for an accurate quote generation

through the built-in reporting functions of the E-Benefits system. Workers compensation, health

provider plans, and 401k servicing companies can be “price shopped” each year, for

consideration of new providers at a lower cost, or to negotiate from a position of strength with

existing providers.

Lessons Learned

Working with a SaaS provider has been a new experience for Huffman Trucking

Company. With the lack of any locally-installed hardware, the vendor did not include any time

allocation or resources in the proposal for review of the current Huffman Trucking Company

environment. While not necessarily important from the vendor’s viewpoint, Huffman Trucking

Company does still employ some aged mobile equipment in the trucks and maintenance hub sites

and it was decided to add a review and survey of existing systems infrastructure based on

documentation provided by the outsourced desktop and network support provider. This added

several days to the overall project and resulted in a change order of $5,297.54, well-within the

contingency budget allocation.

Training a mobile workforce like that of Huffman Trucking Company proved extremely

challenging. Bringing everyone “home” to attend a training seminar is very costly from the

company’s perspective, since their travel is the company’s revenue. After evaluating the

problem it was determined to hold the seminars on a published schedule at each major company

location and make a copy of the video of the best version permanently available on the E-


Benefits Huffman Trucking Company portal site. This presented two benefits, eliminating the

need to curtail the company’s revenue for several days, which would have cost substantially

more than the project itself, and provided a convenient method for training future hires without

adding additional burden to the human resources or information technology user-support staff.

Project Cost

The initial project budget estimate was $89,965.00 for implementation of the system

based on the Request for Proposal requirements and E-Benefits’ proposal of services received.

Change orders expanding the scope of the project increased this to $95,262.54 for labor, and an

additional $11,363.00 as a travel and per diem expense, with actual hotel and airline travel

invoices remitted for direct cost reimbursement. Change orders were specifically for the vendor-

provided survey of existing systems and infrastructure, and expanding the training provided to all

Huffman Trucking Company sites, rather than the initially-scoped headquarters location only

with streaming video to other locations. This increased the training budget by several days, as

well as the travel expense required.

Generally, phase and task estimates of time and cost provided by E-Benefits were very

accurate, and were likely the result of numerous previous implementations of the same system.

Some tasks represented unforeseen complexity, while others were completed on-time or early.

Overall, the project was completed below-budget at an actual cost of $87,521.98 for labor, and

$12,768.13 for travel and per diem, a total of $100,290.11 and $6,336.12 below budget.

Compared to other system options considered, this represents a cost of less than the cost of two

people to maintain an internally-hosted system, while the first year’s license fee is less than the

cost of hardware and software licensing would have been for an internally-driven project. On a

recurring basis, the license, maintenance, and support fee of $125,000 for the E-Benefits


platform is less than the cost of retaining the same two internal support personnel for an internal

system. Additionally, E-Benefits will include all future system and operating platform upgrades

within their annual fee. The two-factor authentication system from RSA was provided and

integrated with the Huffman Trucking Company portal site at a final cost under separate time

and materials invoice of $6326.11 including hardware and software.

The project labor cost by week is broken down below as a cash-flow analysis:

Year Quarter Week Actual Cost

2012 Q1 Week 1 $ 3,647.13

Week 2 $ 17,120.08

Week 3 $ 11,929.26

Week 4 $ 8,232.19

Week 5 $ 6,085.20

Week 6 $ 9,655.56

Week 7 $ 4,212.00

Week 8 $ 3,615.07

Week 9 $ 3,945.73

Week 10 $ 11,648.20

Week 11 $ 4,199.80

Week 12 $ 3,231.76

Week 13 $ -

Q1 Total $ 87,521.98

Q2 Week 14 $ -

Week 15 $ -

Q2 Total $ -

2012 Total $ 87,521.98

Grand Total $ 87,521.98

Project Consulting Labor Fees by Week

Conclusions

The E-Benefits system has been a great success for Huffman Trucking Company and represents

a critical step in reducing on-going costs, creating greater profitability for the company, and

potentially playing a key role in reducing one of the largest company expenses, human resources


benefits, in the future. The Software as a Service model is a perfect fit for companies like

Huffman Trucking Company that don’t do technology for a living. SaaS allows Huffman

Trucking Company to focus on its key purpose – providing transportation services for its clients

and increasing loads hauled per mile.

It is the strongest recommendation of the project team that future enterprise application projects

be considered with a cloud provider or SaaS sourcing with the long term goal of reducing the

high cost outsourced desktop and network support contract over time.

e benefits scott johnson executive summary

Documents