Getting from Point A to Point B at Lower Cost and in Less Time

In the American mythology, few things represent freedom as much as a car and the open road. Renting a car can mean a lot of different things. For the business traveler it can mean getting to the meeting to make the sale. For the leisure traveler it can mean getting straight to the fun.

Improving the HR function should bring with it - for the employee and the employer - that same sense of freedom and access to new horizons. For Dollar-Thrifty Automotive Group, engaging Hewitt to help with its total benefits outsourcing meant an opportunity to get to the goal of greater transparency and higher quality with reduced costs, while improving the lives of employees.

We sat down with Derek Williams, Senior Manager for Benefits and HRIS Projects at Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group and Craig Maloney, leader of Hewitt Associates' middle market division, to get their perspective on what it takes to get on the road with a major benefits outsourcing program.

HROA Connections: Put things in the broader context for us: what major business challenges caused you to consider an HR transformation project at Dollar Thrifty?.

Derek Williams, Dollar Thrifty: We're a Fortune 1000 company with over 8,000 employees in the US and an additional 600 in Canada, operating separately under the Dollar and Thrifty brand names. With operations in 32 American states and throughout Canada, we have a lot to manage in our core business of renting vehicles, tailored to tourist families and some business travelers. Therefore, we like to outsource when it makes business sense so we can focus on our core..

As a company, we've always been very progressive in our health and welfare benefits for our employees and their family members. We've been very aggressive in how we design and structure benefits and have invested a lot of energy in evidence-based medicine, as an example, to help drive better health outcomes for our covered participants. We tend to favor data-based approaches like this that reward medical practitioners and have direct, tangible, demonstrable benefits for patients. To drive to these kinds of outcomes, we need to husband our resources and really focus our efforts..

Even before the current economic climate set in, we were focusing on how we could free up more resources to focus on our core business and deliver better outcomes for our covered participants..

HC: Where are you on your transformation journey?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: Last year [2007], we realized that our existing service provider was not meeting our needs. We engaged in a competitive analysis to review the market and multiple providers. Though we studiously reviewed the data, our gut feelings kept bringing us back to Hewitt. I can't really say anything negative about them. I've been in HR for over 20 years, with a career that's spanned benefits, payroll, employee relations, etc., and I have to say this was absolutely one of the most flawless implementations we've experienced in our history. When I'm asked what they did wrong, I can't find anything. If there were failures, they were on our [the Dollar Thrifty] side. .

We kicked off in October 2007 and went live January 1, 2008 with a scope that covers dependent audit, auditing all new hires for health, medical, and vision. We also included Web site design, customer service, benefits administration and enrollment. .

One of the great things that came out of this is better communication with our employees. We asked Hewitt to create a mini-dashboard benefit portal for plan participants that shows pieces of information on the company, messages from our president, strategies the company is taking, etc. To cover our employees without access to computers at work we've introduced kiosks at our sites for self-check-in. Through these online services employees can access a set of tools to manage their benefits, including things like wellness initiatives, estimator tools, and more..

Craig Maloney, Hewitt: One of the key principles we used at Dollar Thrifty and really throughout all our engagements, is to never let the administration dictate the strategy. Administration is a fraction of the total healthcare cost. If you can't enable the reduction or stabilization of the overall healthcare cost trend, something's wrong. That's where the synergies between ReallifeHR and Hewitt come in and why our portal capabilities and suite of tools are key. These tools let the employee control their own benefits and costs and feed data back to the employer so they can monitor the overall trends..

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: We use these tools to continuously monitor our trends and outsource where applicable. Health is your greatest financial asset - both as an employee and as a company. The estimator tool helps employees to focus and align with what they need in the future. They can use these to estimate future healthcare and benefit costs based on future life circumstances. .

Maloney, Hewitt: We bundled the portal and modeling tools with Dollar Thrifty's goals to provide employees with the platform they need to make better decisions..

HC: How does HR play a role in tackling the major business challenges facing Dollar Thrifty?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: We're helping employees manage their total compensation and meet their needs by providing 24X7 access to employees any where in the world. Hewitt's system is very easy to use on the front-end for employees and on the back-end to administer as well. The data is ours and Hewitt respects that. When I need something, they're very responsive. This level of flexibility and fluidity in supporting our employees has allowed us to be more competitive in attracting and retaining the people we need and to make them more productive at work because they have the tools to take care of themselves and their families. .

HC: What specific hurdles have you had to overcome?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: From an implementation point of view, very few hurdles. The challenge is always making sure our providers understand our programs and our company, but that wasn't much of an issue with our Hewitt team. We loved our team. We buried them in data and they dug out. They have outstanding tools. The team came up with outstanding ideas for overcoming our business challenges. When we encountered unique challenges to our circumstances, they could adjust and find solutions. .

Maloney, Hewitt: We take a different approach to client service. A good implementation is really focused on the data and the documentation. If the data is in bad shape coming in, there's more work to get it ready to go into the system. We are fortunate to have a good partner in Dollar Thrifty. They'd been outsourced previously, so that made it easier. Not perfect, but made it easier than the typical in-sourced client..

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: Communication going in is vital. The reporting relationships across our team were outstanding. The technical consulting efforts from Hewitt far exceeded any project we'd ever done. It's vital to have a technology consultant on staff that understands the business. From a back-door perspective, our billing reports are more accurate. I'm more confident that I can get the right information I need. And my employees are happier because they've got better access to the information they need..

Maloney, Hewitt: For this service delivery model and platform, we take a very different approach than many of the other players out there: we don't switch teams during the process. Because of the ease-of-use of our technology and processes, our implementation and ongoing support teams are the same. That means we can reduce or eliminate the awkward hand-offs and losses of accumulated institutional knowledge. There's ongoing knowledge throughout. This is very unique in benefit outsourcing and BPO generally. We're looking at extending this model to other parts of the Hewitt business..

HC: Please say more about this team model. Problems that crop up in implementations due to bad hand-offs between the provider's teams is a recurring theme we hear from our buyer members. What was done differently at Dollar Thrifty that allowed you to avoid these issues?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: This continuity is absolutely critical in outsourced projects. We've made that a requirement across other parts of our business. My carriers tell us how outstanding a job Hewitt did. This is such a difference compared to other experiences we've had. .

There's a hand-off of information and knowledge that's missed at these hand-offs between teams on the provider-side. I don't care how good a job you do at documentation, some things get missed. The accumulated institutional and personal knowledge is invaluable. .

Maloney, Hewitt: Part of our ability to execute on this model and maintain team continuity comes from the underlying technology. If you think of some of the legacy systems out there in other processes, the technology is older and requires larger or more technical teams to manage. That requires you to specialize as a member of a team. With newer, more nimble technology, your teams don't need to be as large or as specialized. We have a team lead, senior analysts, junior analysts, and teammates that focus on data and technology. With this core team, they can back each other up. .

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: With this structure, I've got my go-to person in the Hewitt team leader and she's also my go-to strategist. I've also got my go-to data person, and so on. Then there are working level relationships with the people that work for me and their counterparts on the Hewitt team..

Maloney, Hewitt: To make the model work, we look for really good tri-athletes. They've got to have the core abilities and we train for the knowledge and skills. .

HC: What other innovative practices/tools/methods have you used?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: I'd say the team continuity model we just discussed was a really big one. In addition, I'd point to our approach to testing and a very streamlined approach to project management. The process isn't overly burdensome. We're all very open. I come from a PMI [Project Management Institute] background, and that's pretty rigid. Hewitt has the right level of rigor, but they mix that with the right level of flexibility and transparency. Their style of managing the implementation was very open. They really managed my expectations and clearly communicated the art of the possible. I never had to escalate issues..

Maloney, Hewitt: I'd also point to the implementation toolset. Providers and clients get into trouble when they over engineer things. We keep our tools easy to use. .

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: This was really key. They [Hewitt] asked us what formats we wanted. They could take our needs and adjust to them flawlessly. The simplistic nature of the technology makes it really easy..

HC: What specific performance indicators do you monitor? Improvements in cycle time? Volumes?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: I look at a number of different parameters, like billing reports and call volumes. I also go into the system and pull data myself. We're SOX compliant so that means we're audited on the billing side. Our insurance carriers expect flawlessness and Hewitt's really helped us get there..

I can't emphasize enough, though, the role of open communication as the bedrock for project success. We have ongoing monthly meeting, but we don't let things wait for that. We're always planning out a year in advance and looking for ideas from Hewitt..

Maloney, Hewitt: On our side we look at customer satisfaction and implementation timeliness very closely. We gather lots of feedback, not just to improve the service at the client, but also as part of our product development. The input we get from Derek and his team gets fed back into our product development group for them to consider as they weigh new product improvements and other developments. I also study data accuracy pretty closely and the gating and milestones for implementation. .

It's important to try to strike the right balance so we're not spending too much time measuring and not enough time servicing. We need to be a partner that is an extension of the HR departmemt..

HC: What's next?.

Williams, Dollar Thrifty: Well, now we're working on a single, integrated portal for all benefits information for employees. They should be able to see all the information through their personal dashboard. .