Author: decisely1

Decisely significantly expands footprint and expertise, giving brokers more ways to streamline operations, increase margins and grow their business

Atlanta, GA – Nov. 7, 2017 – Decisely today announced that it has acquired the small business division of IBX. With the acquisition, Decisely deepens its employee benefits expertise and expands its ability to help brokers optimize their operations using technology-enabled services for their customers. At the same time, Decisely will add offices in three states and more than 400 small business customers across the country. The large market division within IBX will continue to be owned and managed by Alliant Insurance Services.

IBX is a respected service partner for benefits brokers, helping optimize their employee benefits operations. Decisely’s integrated employee benefits and HR technology platform helps brokers nurture small businesses so that they grow into larger, more streamlined operations. Together, the newly expanded company will reach even more brokers with more effective, integrated solutions for lowering costs, increasing margins, and better serving clients.

“IBX is a well respected partner to brokers across the country and we are excited to welcome them to the Decisely family,” said Decisely CEO Kevin Dunn. “Trusted advisors are a critical part of any HR and employee benefits offering, but it is difficult for these brokers to effectively meet the demand of and profitably serve small business clients. With IBX, we can help bring small businesses and brokers together through a high-touch, technology-enabled solution that benefits both.”

As part of the agreement, IBX will continue to service its existing broker and small business clients. Decisely will make its expanded HR and benefits platform available to IBX clients.

“We are thrilled to join Decisely as the future of small business benefits,“ said Josh Morse, former President at IBX. “We have a long history of helping brokers streamline operations and grow their businesses. With Decisely, we can leverage a premier HR and benefits technology platform to expand these efficiencies across a broader range of service areas and offer new functionality.”

The Decisely HR Platform is a centralized service hub that integrates and automates recruiting, applicant tracking, insurance benefits and payroll to simply and effectively manage an employee’s lifecycle with an employer. To learn more about Decisely, please visit http://www.decisely.com

About Decisely
Decisely is reimagining the way brokers and small businesses work together. The Decisely platform provides the best combination of benefits, HR resources, and technology to support small businesses in the United States. Decisely is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia with offices in California, Utah, and North Carolina. To learn more, please visit www.decisely.com.

About IBX

Founded in 2009, IBX was established to change the way employee benefit brokers go to market by bringing the RFP to an online platform. With seasoned employee benefits specialists representing over 250 years of combined knowledge in the industry, IBX has expanded its services to include back office outsourcing solutions. IBX has enhanced the way hundreds of brokerage firms across the country improve their growth, efficiency, and margins. For more information please visit IBXOnline.biz.

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Press Contact:
Michael Azzano
Cosmo PR for Decisely
415/596-1978
michael@cosmo-pr.com

The Best Ways To Beat Your Competition

Henry Ford once said, “Competition is the keen cutting edge of business.” With nearly 30 million small businesses across the country, you need to know how to stand apart from the crowd. Regardless of your industry, knowing your competition allows you to improve your strategy and encourages you to become more innovative. Keep reading to learn the top three ways to keep your company ahead of the rest.

Compare strengths and weaknesses.

Maybe your competitor just closed a large round of funding. What do they do with the money? They release an improved product. How do you respond? Not necessarily by releasing a new product. Think about other aspects of your business and how you can influence consumer buying decisions. Perhaps you stand out with improved customer service, increased transparency with the public, or extended warranties. Know both your own company’s and your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Position your strengths against their weaknesses.

Keep your eyes and ears open.

The internet has given customers more power now than ever. They can review your company, research other solutions, compare costs, or rant or rave on social media. Paying attention to what your target audience is saying is crucial. Whether you’re directly responding via social media or just monitoring chatter, you are showing that you care about both current and prospective customers. Some ways to listen to your audience: set up an alert any time your business is mentioned on the web (Google Alerts is free), send out customer surveys, and monitor industry trends.

Don’t underestimate the importance of analytics.

Think about the entrepreneurs who appear on Shark Tank. The “sharks” rarely invest in a business if the business owner doesn’t understand their numbers. Know how much it costs to acquire a customer, and how much each customer is worth to your business (Average Customer Value – ACV). Understand your marketing costs, product costs, and number of new customers.

In an extremely competitive marketplace, every move your business makes is important. Decisely cares about the success of your business, which is why we make your life easier with great service and great tech (so you can focus on other things, like your competition). Whether big or small, any advantage that lets you stay ahead ensures the ongoing success of your company.

Decisely Unveils End-to-End HR Technology Platform for Small Business

Platform integrates recruiting, onboarding, employee benefit administration and payroll as a single solution to deliver efficiency and effectiveness for businesses

Atlanta, GA – Sept. 12, 2017 – Small business benefits provider Decisely today unveiled the first centralized HR technology hub for small businesses. The new, expanded Decisely HR Platform integrates and automates recruiting, applicant tracking, insurance benefits and payroll to simply and effectively manage an employee’s lifecycle with an employer.

Decisely enables employers and HR teams to post resumes online at more than 75 websites, including Indeed, Glassdoor, CareerBuilder, and Google Recruiter; track candidates; send job offers; onboard new hires; execute payroll; and manage benefit open enrollment periods through a single, integrated dashboard, eliminating the hassle and expense of managing disparate HR technologies and disciplines.

“We are delivering incredible efficiencies for small business owners and HR teams with one easy-to-use system with complete visibility and management functionality,” said Decisely CEO Kevin Dunn. “With Decisely, small businesses can offer a thoroughly modern employee experience that also saves them time and money.”

Key features of the Decisely platform include:

  • Recruiting and Applicant Tracking: Research from Bersin by Deloitte shows that it takes an average of 52 days and $4,000 to fill an open position. Decisely Recruiter helps small businesses streamline the hiring process through integrated recruiting, review and hiring tools.

  • Paperless Onboarding of New Hires: Decisely eliminates the hassle and expense of traditional paper-based onboarding, managing everything from the signing of an offer letter to enrolling in insurance benefits electronically.

  • Integrated Payroll: The Decisely platform integrates key information, reporting and payroll vendors into a single, centralized dashboard via PrimePay to eliminate dual data entry tasks, saving time and reducing errors.

  • Employees Annual Renewal of Insurance Benefits: A trusted Decisely advisor is assigned to every employer and employee to help provide advice and guidance for informed decision-making.

  • Employees Self-Service Life Event Management: The Decisely platform allows employees to quickly and easily make necessary changes, including tax elections or adding a new dependent.

  • Employer Self-Service Work Event Management: Decisely also empowers employers to seamlessly manage employee work events such as class changes from full time to part time, salary changes, and promotions. Work events like these often affect payroll and benefits such as recalculating payroll deductions, or allowing an employee to enroll in benefits for the first time.

  • “Business Administrators, HR and payroll functions serve as the critical heart of a business, helping to collect and manage information and tasks throughout an employee’s entire relationship with a company,” continued Dunn. “The Decisely platform mirrors this model with the first integrated, centralized platform that eliminates the wasted time and costs of managing duplicate tasks and technology systems. We deliver the big business advantage to small businesses by creating efficiencies that save time, save money, and keep them compliant.”


    About Decisely
    Decisely is reimagining the way brokers and small businesses work together. The Decisely platform provides the best combination of benefits, HR resources, and technology to support small businesses in the United States. Decisely is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia with offices in California, Utah, and North Carolina. To learn more, please visit www.decisely.com.

    About PrimePay
    PrimePay believes in the power of small business. Since 1986, PrimePay has been helping small businesses get time back in their day to focus on what matters most. This is possible through payroll and other services that help to ensure compliance and provide exceptional support during the employee lifecycle.

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Press Contact:
Carey Godbee
Cosmo PR for Decisely
(760) 521-9068
carey@cosmo-pr.com

Broker-Friendly Benefits
Q&A WITH KEVIN DUNN, CEO, DECISELY

By Michael Fitzpatrick 

How did the idea for Decisely come about?

Two years ago, in 2015, I got together with EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants CEO John Hahn and The Carlyle Group to talk about the small-business arena and what was happening in the industry. We started having a conversation around the idea that we could build a broker-centric product in which you could partner with brokers. This was in contrast to what was happening at the time: many direct-to-employer, tech-based employee benefits were coming into the marketplace and threatening the brokerage world. We thought we could build something that was more broker friendly and that we could solve problems that brokers have with respect to margins, profitability and servicing these small businesses more effectively. In December 2016, Two Sigma Private Investments invested in this idea and made a funding commitment of $60 million.

How does Decisely help small businesses & brokers 

We’ve built a core HR platform around employee benefits for small businesses. As their broker of record, we become the small businesses’ trusted advisor. Every client and their employees have a licensed relationship manager who is assigned to them. Any time they have health insurance needs, which includes medical, dental, vision, as well as voluntary benefits, they can consult with us. We built Decisely in a digital manner so that employers can manage their employee benefits as well as life event changes, onboarding services, recruiting, 401(k), and payroll—all via our Decisely platform.

Our platform is free. We help brokers manage small businesses and nurture them into medium-sized businesses. A company may be only 10 lives today because it just started, but once they become a 100-life group, then we hand the client back to the producer or broker to start handling it. We specifically stick to small businesses and act as a nurturing arm for the brokerage firm. We have the ability to work with any brokerage, from the top 25 down to the smallest of agencies.

How does Decisely use technology to improve the benefits experience for small business?

Were we first with technology? No. We have the luxury that others have started for us. Small businesses are thinking about insurance, benefits and HR from a different perspective because of technology. Small businesses are looking to their broker to be more than just employee benefits. They’re looking for them to provide recruiting capabilities, payroll integration, and software to onboard employees. They want technology to manage all of this for them, and they are looking for something beyond what they can currently obtain.

Can you talk about how your experience comes into this?
My experience is looking at how digital technology and e-commerce will transform relationships with businesses. In 1995, I launched Delta Air Lines’ website and ran that business through the first $2 billion of revenue. This is what my real interest is here. The airlines went through a fundamental change and transformed into digital technology in ’96—20 years ago. Technology is just now starting to infiltrate healthcare, and it’s going to fundamentally change health insurance and the whole marketplace as it did the airline industry. Today, no one can imagine not being able to go online and look at pricing transparency to investigate their flights or book their flights. No one can imagine not going online to travel. In 10 years, it’s going to be the same in the insurance vertical as well. People are going to go online to do their research and transact.

People think of New York and San Francisco as hubs for startups, but you’re in Atlanta.

Georgia is a great place to start a business. Airline transportation is really key, and this is the largest hub in the world for Delta Air Lines. There is a lot of venture capital in Atlanta. It’s known for its tech community and entrepreneurs. You can think of companies here that are entrepreneurial, such as Kabbage, a small-business loan provider, and Square, a payment systems provider with a large engineering staff in Atlantic Station. You have great colleges such as Georgia State University, my alma mater, as well as Georgia Tech, which is known for engineering. It’s really a great city.

 

Originally published at Leader’s Edge Magazine on September 2, 2017.

 

With 2017 over halfway through, open enrollment is right around the corner. Whether you want to keep your current benefit plans or look into options, Decisely has got you covered. Our dedicated, licensed brokers customize benefit plans to create the most cost-effective offerings for you and your team. Discover how easy open enrollment can be with our handy checklist.

1. Compare and Contrast

Outside of certain life events, employees have the opportunity to make changes to their benefits once a year.  That period, known as open enrollment, typically begins in November each year. For 2017, open enrollment dates are November 1, 2017 to December 15, 2017. Now is the time to compare and contrast what’s best for your business. Are your current offerings the most cost-effective? Do they suit the needs of your employee population? Are they sustainable for your company? What about 401(k) plans, commuter benefits or even gym stipends?

The best way to start this process is to evaluate the characteristics and potential needs of your employees. Are most of your employees married? Do many of them have children? Questions such as these help you determine important plan attributes such deductible levels and out-of-pocket maximums. You don’t have to do this alone – that’s why we’re here. Working with Decisely makes this process a whole lot easier. You tell us what you want and what works for your company, and we provide the best options. Consider your comparing and contrasting days over.

2. Talk to Your Team

We mentioned above the importance of understanding the needs and makeup of your employees. After all, you want benefit plans that will actually benefit them. This may sound obvious – if you aren’t certain of what your employees need or want, talk to them. You can even send a survey around. Think about what will increase employee retention the most. Adding a dental or vision plan? Lowering premiums? How big do you want your provider network to be? You get the idea.

3. Set Your Budget

Think about your monthly costs for your benefit plans. One of the great things about the Decisely platform is access to an expense dashboard that breaks down your monthly benefit expenses. This information also comes in handy for future planning and forecasting; so you’ll be ready for 2018 enrollment, too. ?