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Customer profile: ADVO brings Ceridian aboard

In partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the United States Postal Service, ADVO founded America's Looking For Its Missing Children® in 1985. Since then, it has grown into the most successful private-sector program of its kind and has located 143 missing children.

Headquartered in Windsor, Connecticut, ADVO is the nation's leading direct mail media company. It serves 17,000 local, national and regional retailers and reaches 90 percent of the nation's households with its ShopWise® shared mail advertising. The company's targeting technology and logistics capabilities help retailers that seek superior return on investment to target and deliver print advertising directly to consumers.

ADVO-Ceridian relationship
The dedication, creativity and hard work that ADVO applies to successful company strategies carry through to its internal processes. Near the end of 2005, they initiated a comprehensive request for proposal (RFP) process for a benefits administration vendor that had better service and additional functionality that they weren't getting from their current provider. The ADVO team wanted to find a cost-effective provider and a high quality service partnership.

Early in 2006, ADVO decided that Ceridian Health & Welfare Services was the right solution for its nearly 4,000 benefits-eligible employees. ADVO Benefits Manager, Donna Vance, says about the decision, "Ceridian's demonstration certainly highlighted the ease of use of the system and the robust reporting and premium billing systems. We were also pleased with the cost reduction we would realize. Most importantly, we knew from the start that we were working with professionals who knew benefits administration and would bring their expertise to the process -- in a friendly, customer-focused way."

ADVO wanted to work with a company that understood its needs and with a system that was flexible enough to make changes quickly. Ceridian's system and processes met these needs at an affordable price. Some of the key features were the employee enrollment and administrative views, linked to provide real time information, and the outstanding reporting and premium billing features, which also provide information nearly instantaneously.

ADVO needed automated enrollment, carrier updates and COBRA administration to provide accurate, timely and cost effective service to its employees. With Ceridian, the ADVO benefits staff could focus on benefits strategy, employee communications and compliance, rather than on the administrative tasks of enrolling employees, updating carriers and paying bills. "The flexibility that Ceridian demonstrated in the review process confirmed the partnership would be successful," says Vance.

Implementation
To meet an aggressive "go-live" deadline due to a pending contract expiration with their current vendor, ADVO and Ceridian dedicated people and resources to ensure a smooth transition. Vance stresses that a detailed project plan that defines roles and specific deadlines is an invaluable resource. She took the project plan provided by Ceridian and added ADVO's tasks to it. "Everyone involved was instrumental in making it a very effective implementation," Vance notes.

Daily phone calls with the ADVO and Ceridian teams contributed to a successful implementation. During these calls, the teams addressed unfinished project plan items, responded to requests on both sides and tightened timelines. The calls established a sound working relationship between the teams as they worked toward their goal.

Results
The ADVO employee call center team, ARC (Associate Resource Center), finds Ceridian's Health and Welfare solution very intuitive. An ARC representative is able to guide a participant through the system over the phone and they achieve a good understanding of the process.

Vance believes that through all steps of implementation, from the RFP and negotiations, to implementation, and now ongoing interactions - Ceridian values ADVO and wants the partnership to succeed.

One of Vance's favorite product features is premium billing. "The magic of the system is that at a click of a button, we're able to drive down inside the bill to look at each vendor and each plan, and go to a census listing to see who's being paid," Vance explains. "Previously, I would spend 15 to 20 hours doing pivot tables that I get now with a click."
ADVO considers the following key benefits of Ceridian Health & Welfare Services:

• Time savings. Reduced reporting time frees up benefits and IT staff to focus on other strategic objectives.
• No hidden costs. Ceridian's fee structure is easy to understand and includes most services without additional charges.
• Robust reporting function. With ADVO's previous vendor, any data request had to go through IT. Now the benefits staff can run reports and get enrollment, census, dependent and other information immediately.
• Premium billing. Payments, covered employees and any adjustments are easily accessed.
• Customer service. Ceridian's implementation analyst and account manager provided solutions in a creative and customer-focused way.
• Intuitive system. The enrollment process is easy for employees and it's easy for administrators to access data and reports.
• Additional resources. Includes all company benefits information, as well as links to ADVO's benefit partners' Web sites.

Ongoing management
ADVO went live with Health & Welfare Services in April and open enrollment is scheduled for this fall. To most effectively support ADVO, the two teams continued to meet after the go-live date to review implementation, discuss ongoing needs and outstanding issues, and talk about how things could be improved. For example, on the ADVO side, Vance cited the need to start work on carrier files earlier because of how time-consuming it is.

Ken Reichling, the Ceridian account executive for the ADVO relationship adds, "These post-implementation meetings allow us to get feedback about what worked and what didn't. We value our customer's insight and ADVO had some great suggestions, which helps us improve for future implementations."

The Ceridian team followed up from the post go-live session with a highly-detailed project plan to proactively anticipate any challenges during open enrollment. "While timelines had to be adjusted to clean up the data we received from our previous vendor, the go-live was seamless for our participants," Vance says. "This is thanks to the diligence of the team, bringing to light any issues they thought would affect the go-live. Although there were a few bumps along the way, we feel the product is far superior to our previous one."

If you'd like to update and upgrade your benefits administration system, contact your Ceridian representative today.

Sources:

1. ADVO, Inc. Web site (www.advo.com), for company business and corporate citizenship information.