Summary
Plan design may be one of the most consequential and uncertain responsibilities a benefits leader holds. Amanda Smith, AVP of Product Transformation at Benefitfocus, shares how evaluating certain data can help employers move from informed instinct to evidence-based decisions. This blog details the following insights:
- How Interactive Reporting helps benefits leaders identify issues, investigate their causes and make more informed plan decisions.
- The role of the insights-to-outcomes methodology in connecting high-level metrics to the employees and plan activity behind them.
- How a dedicated benefits administration provider has the opportunity to distinguish itself from HCM platforms, not just in the data surfaced, but in partnership and service.
Why Benefits Leaders Need More Than Static Reporting
Q: Benefits leaders are under growing pressure to make optimal plan design decisions through balancing cost, participation and employee needs with less guesswork. What was one of the core challenges your team set out to solve, and why was this a good moment to address it?
Amanda: The core challenge was our realization that benefits data had become something employers collected but struggled to act on. They had reports (sometimes a lot of reports), but those reports were likely static, scattered and disconnected from the decisions they needed to make. A benefits leader might see that participation in a plan was trending down, but couldn't easily investigate what or who was driving the change, why, or what to do about it.
This was the right moment because expectations have shifted. Employers aren't asking for more data, they're asking for more clarity. They want to understand their plans, evaluate whether they're working and confidently and knowledgeably make changes.
Q: Plan design has traditionally involved some level of guesswork, with benefits leaders reviewing enrollment data, making changes and hoping for the best. How is that picture changing, and what does it look like when a benefits leader can move from static data to a clearer, more actionable understanding of their plan?
Amanda: The leap-of-faith approach is exactly what we're working to replace. Traditionally, a benefits leader would pull a report, look at enrollment numbers, maybe compare them to the prior year, and make decisions based on what they could see. But this was often limited to a snapshot in time. If something looked off, the investigation that followed was manual, time-consuming, and likely incomplete.
What we're seeing now is a shift toward dynamic, connected data. A benefits leader can look at a visualization, notice a trend and click directly into the member-level records behind it. They can filter by population, by plan and by payroll changes and suddenly the "why" behind a number becomes visible. That changes the conversation from "something looks off" to "here's what's happening, who's affected and what we can do about it."
Turning Benefits Data Into Actionable Insights
Q: Benefits leaders may be pulled between high-level metrics and the detailed plan activity behind those numbers. How does having both the strategic signal and the supporting evidence in one place change the way they can evaluate plan participation, costs, payroll variances or population needs?
Amanda: This is one of the most important shifts, and it's something we hear about consistently. When a benefits leader sees a high-level metric, such as a change in payroll deductions or a shift in election patterns, the natural next question is "Who does this affect and why?" In the past, answering that question meant leaving the report, opening a different system and manually piecing things together. By the time they had an answer, it might have been too late to act.
Having both the strategic signal and the supporting evidence in one place helps a benefits leader move from question to answer without losing context. For example, they might see that participation in a voluntary benefit is declining, filter to the specific population where the decline is concentrated and access contact information to reach those employees with targeted communication. Instead of piecing together information from multiple sources, they can investigate the issue and identify the affected population in the same workflow.
Q: We talk a lot about our “Insights to Outcomes” framework. How does this methodology help employers turn what they see in their data into actual plan design, communication or administration decisions?
Amanda: Insights to outcomes is really about what happens after you spot something in the data. If a benefits leader sees a gap in spending account participation among the eligible population, they can investigate payroll data, election patterns and benefit comparisons to understand what's behind it. From there, they have something concrete to act on, whether that's a plan design change, targeted employee communication or an administrative adjustment.
What to Look for in Benefits Reporting Beyond Your HCM
Q: Some employers today rely on broader HCM platforms that include some level of benefits reporting. How does a dedicated benefits administration provider stand apart from an HCM platform, not only from a service and partnership perspective, but considering other offerings like Interactive Reporting?
Amanda: HCM platforms are built to serve a wide range of HR functions, and benefits reporting is one piece of a much larger puzzle. For a dedicated benefits administration provider, benefits reporting is a core part of the experience rather than one component of a broader HR platform.
Interactive Reporting is one of the ways we put that depth into practice. Because our reporting is built specifically for benefits data, it connects elections, payroll, spending accounts and benefit comparisons in ways a general-purpose platform typically can't. The difference also extends beyond reporting. We help employers understand what their data means and support them as they evaluate plan design changes or questions that emerge from the data.
Q: When a benefits leader is evaluating whether to rely on their HCM's reporting or look for a dedicated solution, what should they be asking about? What are some hidden gaps they may discover only after they've tried to make a plan decision with limited reporting?
Amanda: The most important question is: can I move from a metric to the people behind it without leaving the system? A benefits leader might have a perfectly good dashboard showing enrollment trends, but when they need to understand who's driving a change, they likely hit a wall. The data is there in aggregate, but the path to the individual is blocked.
Also, some HCM reports show the current state, but not how that state developed over time. When a benefits leader is trying to evaluate whether a plan design change from last year is working, they need to compare across periods. If the reporting can't do that, they're left guessing. Those limitations may not be obvious when you're simply reviewing a dashboard. They become much clearer when you're trying to answer a specific plan question.
How Interactive Reporting Supports Benefits Plan Decisions
Q: Interactive Reporting is one of the ways we help benefits leaders put the insights-to-outcomes methodology into practice. The latest release expanded the data available to include Payroll Census, Payroll Changes with Attributes, Spending Account reporting and Benefit Comparison. Can you take us through how these views work together and what kinds of plan design questions they help benefits teams answer?
Amanda: Payroll Census provides a broad view of the population and their compensation data. Payroll Changes with Attributes goes deeper, showing how payroll deductions and contributions have shifted over time and what's driving those shifts. Spending Account reporting helps employers understand how employees are using their Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs). They can see whether participation is growing, whether contributions are keeping pace and whether employees are taking advantage of these offerings. Benefit Comparison lets benefits teams look at how different plan options stack up against each other, which is essential for evaluating whether a current plan structure is still the right one.
When you put these together, a benefits leader is equipped to answer questions like: Are we seeing a shift in how employees are allocating their spending account contributions? Is a payroll change correlated with a change in election patterns? Are certain populations opting out of a benefit that would serve them well? These are the kinds of plan design questions that used to require assembling separate static reports. Generally, by the time those reports were ready, the window for action may have closed.
Q: For employers who may be assembling separate static reports today, what does the transition to Interactive Reporting look like?
Amanda: Interactive Reporting is designed to be easy for administrators to adopt because it is embedded directly into the Benefitplace experience they already know. There is no separate reporting application to navigate. Administrators can simply select a report and begin exploring their data using intuitive filters, visualizations, and detailed datasets, while seamlessly referencing enrollment information for additional analysis.
Using Benefits Data to Understand Employee Populations
Q: Plan design isn't just about the big picture, it's also about reaching the right populations, whether for communication, enrollment support or targeted changes. How can data help benefits leaders identify and act on those population-level needs?
Amanda: This is where expanded datasets and filters are really meaningful. A benefits leader can start with a broad trend, such as lower-than-expected participation in a voluntary benefit, and then isolate the specific population where the gap is most pronounced. They can filter by attributes like compensation band, location or election status, and the data helps them see exactly who is and isn't participating.
What makes this actionable is that the data includes contact details. Once a benefits leader identifies a population that could benefit from increased participation or education, they can reach out directly. That creates a more direct path from identifying an opportunity to addressing it through focused communication. Instead of sending a blanket communication to the entire organization, they can focus outreach on the employees most likely to benefit from it.
Using Historical Benefits Data to Evaluate Plan Changes
Q: Historical context is a key part of evaluating whether a plan design change is working. How does the ability to look back, compare across periods and see trends over time help employers understand whether the decisions they made last year are still working?
Amanda: Point-in-time reporting is essential here. It allows employers to view data as it appeared on a selected date, which means they can compare enrollment, payroll or spending patterns from one period to another and see how things have changed. Without historical context, a benefits leader is looking at a single moment and guessing whether it represents a trend or a temporary fluctuation. With it, they can distinguish between the two. They can see whether a participation increase after a communication campaign was sustained or whether it faded.
Looking at What’s Next for Benefits Reporting
Q: What are the opportunities you see for continuing to evolve how benefits leaders interact with their data? What are you hearing from customers about what they need next?
Amanda: Our customers want more proactive insight. They want to see what's changing earlier and spend less time confirming things they already suspect. For us, that means continuing to connect data across more dimensions and making the information easier to act on. That's where we're focused as we continue to evolve Interactive Reporting, so our customers can confidently take action based on proactive data.
