When Carmen Cooper first started as Human Resources Manager at Sage Intacct (formerly Intacct) in 2006, the employee benefits experience looked a lot different. Carmen partnered with Sequoia to help create an HR operations infrastructure that would engage employees and support the company’s growth. Fifteen years later, Cooper and Lily Nguyen, Sage Intacct’s Human Resources Generalist, recall the advancements made in simplifying the benefits experience for the company’s 1,000+ employees.

Leveraging technology for open enrollment

Carmen would be the first to tell you that Sage Intacct’s open enrollment in 2006 looked very different than its most recent. In that first open enrollment, Carmen and the Sequoia team were running around the office trying to print enough handouts for all employees so they could research and make their selections. In 2020 the whole experience went virtual with everyone working remotely due to a global pandemic. 2020 also marked the introduction to employees to an all-new Company Benefits Site which put all the research, comparison tools, and other information about coverage and costs in one destination.

In years past, this was a labor-intensive process with Carmen creating Excel spreadsheets to populate an employee’s cost for specific insurance plans and the corresponding coverage they might want.

“It showed how much it would cost to have a PPO plan to cover three dependents for example. Because you know, that’s what really matters to people – they want to know exactly how much the plan is going to cost them out of pocket.” 

With the Company Benefits Site, the burden of building a spreadsheet year after year was taken off Carmen’s shoulders. The secure website lays out all the company’s benefit offerings in one personalized, interactive place, so employees can easily find the answers they need.

“It’s all right there in a beautiful, helpful, pre-built plan comparison chart on the company benefits site. It is so much better than I could have ever imagined,” Lily added. “The new comparison tool was probably our employees’ favorite feature.”

“Being able to compare the cost of their current plan against what their cost would be to move to an HMO plan or HDHP plan was so easy,” Lily said. 

“They no longer need to open three different tabs and click back and forth to see the differences. It was all right there.”

Lily, who supported the rollout of the site to Sage Intacct this year, says she could not be happier with the experience they’re creating for their teams.

“I loved being able to tell employees, ‘Hey there’s only one area you need to go to. There’s not a million different PDFs you need to download. It’s just this one simple link that you or your dependents can access any time you need to.’”

From an employee perspective, it’s great that Sequoia makes everything a one-stop shop. I can quickly see everything that is available to me.

Reflecting on the changes

Looking back, Carmen couldn’t help but laugh at how much the employee benefits experience has changed since she first started. 

“From my perspective, between the tools we had and the ease of use from an employee viewpoint, this OE was very different than my experience with Sequoia years back. A decade ago, employees had to use PowerPoint or PDF to see anything. Sending mailers and emails to our employees with their plan documents was all we could really do.”

Now, Sage Intacct can share all of their offerings with their employees on one website that can also be accessed on their mobile phones.

“The ability to do that is pretty amazing. The journey that we’ve been on with Sequoia, from where the products were over a decade ago, to where they are today, is very impressive.”
 

*At the time of this interview, Carmen Cooper was Sage Intacct’s Senior Director of People Operations. In January 2021, Carmen left Sage Intacct and is now Head of People at Aeva, Inc.

When Lily Nguyen first started at Sage Intacct two years ago, her role as an HR assistant was limited to completing immigration paperwork and implementing learning and development programs. However, when a new role in benefits administration opened up, Lily accepted, hoping to expand her skillset and move forward in her career. There was only one problem.

“I knew nothing about benefits back then. Maybe I could tell you what a PPO is or what ‘deductible’ means, but that was pretty much it,” Lily explained.

Though she was apprehensive, Lily was determined to be successful and leveraged all the resources available to her, including Sequoia, who Sage Intacct had partnered with for over 12 years on employee benefits.

“In the beginning, I talked to our Sequoia team probably every day, just because I had questions about everything benefit-related.”

Employees would reach out to Lily asking about premiums, spending accounts, or benefit elections, and at times, she said, she started to feel overwhelmed. “Thankfully, any question that came my way, any benefits I didn’t know about, Sequoia was always there and quick to respond. It’s an HR person’s dream.”

Meeting Leadership Expectations

One of the first big projects Lily worked on was a benefits analysis for Sage Intacct’s parent company, Sage Software.

“The leadership team really wanted to understand what the market competition was in the Bay Area, given that they are headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. They wanted to know how our offering compared to other Bay Area companies, looking specifically at compensation and equity, benefits, and the total rewards package.”

Lily knew that the leadership team was most interested in numbers. What were employees enrolling in most often, what was the gender split, and most importantly, how did Sage quantitatively compare to the market?

“For example, maybe our compensation was at the 50th percentile, but we were leading the market with our benefits offering. I needed to get the numbers that supported every claim we made,” Lily said.

“Without Sequoia and HRX, I have no idea how I would have pulled everything I needed to provide a complete report to the leadership team. Not only does HRX have the internal information of who is enrolled and where, and insights to our demographics, but we also get to see the broader market data whenever we need it. It’s so much faster and more accurate than anything I could get on my own.”

I really don’t think I would have been as successful in my role or able to help our employees as effectively without my partnership with Sequoia.

Continuing a Close Partnership

Now an HR Generalist, Lily is feeling much more confident as she moves through daily tasks and projects. Still, she works closely with Sequoia to make sure the operations are running smoothly to support Sage Intacct’s 1,000+ employees, especially now that the company is primarily remote.

“I really don’t think I would have been as successful in my role or able to help our employees as effectively without my partnership with Sequoia. Anything we need to help us make our decisions faster and help us run more efficiently as an organization, they’re always there.”