“Corporations can leverage existing data stored within the company’s HR Portals and Plan Sponsorship benefit Portal databases. For one corporation, it was like finding $250 Million under a couch cushion.”
United States Patent 7406441:
Inventors – Sr. Consultant and Manager of eBusiness Operations: Shane J. Hopkins and Principal/Global Practice Leader: Eddy Kimura of an undisclosed fortune 500 company. Patent is now owned by ACS A Xerox Company.
Summary of Patent Claim and Business Method for Online HR Portal Access and Wireless Access to HR and Benefits Applications.
Summary of Patent Claim and Business Method for Online HR Portal Access and Wireless Access to HR and Benefits Applications.
Use the data kept on employees to drive revenue generating life event triggers within the workplace. Leverage the large number of employees by forming a buying pool that is driven by life event triggers inside the HR and Benefit environments. A foundation of participating vendors will offer deep discounts to those who need to purchase items due to a life changing event.
When changing your address utilizing a self-service utility inside an HR application, you may be reminded of an upcoming personal event such as a predicted delivery date of your first child. With this life event trigger a series of offers are conveniently placed on your portal screen and may include the purchase of a stroller and infant supplies, maybe some booklets or guides to a healthy delivery. A one click purchase is offered for the ½ price stroller with a portion of the funds going to your company for letting the vendor have access to this buying pool of 175,000 employees. The annual cost to have you work in your office for the HR department is between $1800 to $3,200 per year. With a buying pool driven by life event triggers, the cost is driven down to $200 in the first year and should turn a respectable profit per employee by year two. Dusty data living inside outdated mainframes if used properly and ethically can be worth millions of dollars in just market research alone. All data is used anonymously and can help to provide actuarial data that companies will pay millions for as it helps them to predict risk, trends, profits and upcoming profiting opportunities.
This technology and business method includes the use of PCs, laptops, PDAs, Smart Phones and any hand-held devices as a tool to access an employer’s HR Intranet/Extranet Portal to administer certain aspects of their job benefits account within the employers Human Capital Management System. The integration of self-service modules for employees and managers along with life-event triggers inside the portal environment will offer the opportunity for the employee to complete tasks usually needed to be handled outside of the workplace. In doing so, the selected providing vendors, merchants and service providers are connected with the employee though highly strategic, low impact event trigger offering a convenient solution to a needed action by the employee. Example: Jane Doe is pregnant and has her due date on file in the company’s HR database utility to help in the planning of insurance needs, maternity leave, hiring temp. help and not to mention the endless work on the employees part with endless purchases of products, supplies and planning in preparation for the birth of her child. Dynamic personalized email and dynamically generated portal content provides a series of triggered content offerings making it easier to accomplish related tasks with a single click of the mouse inside the HR Portal weather at work or logged in remotely. A significant buying pool made up from a base of 175,000 employees (in this case) allows the vendors to provide deep discounts and the ability to pay a fee to the employer for being included in the buying pool environment or, even kick back a commission on a per purchase basis to the company as compensation. In the end, each employee which normally would cost a medium sized to large sized company $3,200.00 to $1,800.00 per year in HR Administration costs could be reduced to just $200 in the first year and actually turn an estimated profit of $180.00 per employee by year number 2.
The phrase coined here is “E-HR to Free-HR”.
The math is overwhelming: 175,000 employees at a cost of $1,800.00 each = a cost of $315,000,000.00 per year. Compare this to 175,000 employees at a profit of $180.00 each = a profit of $31,500,000.00 of pure profit and a savings of$283,500,000.00 less the cost of the technology. With ongoing maintenance, the company can pocket in excess of $250,000,000.00 per year directly out of the HR budget. The cost of developing and operating this integrated work/life system is further offset by the amount of time employees spend shopping online and leaving work to accomplish life event tasks outside the workplace at a higher expense to them and the employer.
Allowing an employee access to his or her 401K plan through wireless access or LAN (included in this process) allows more control, convenience and empowerment to the employee which in turn creates loyalty, retention and lock-in. It’s simply more convenient for the employee to stay at their current position due to deep administrative “rooting”, convenience and a sense of well being knowing their employer invested in making their lives easier to manage. This is a rare trait of any company in today’s dark economic climate.
Indirect benefits also result from use of such technology without the e-commerce element even coming into play. With life event trigger integration into the everyday workplace, programs for health, fitness, ethics and overall awareness in non-job related subject matter seep in with low or no impact and lessen the burden of counselors, HR enforcement, and disciplinary enforcement proceedings which all result in less time off the job for any employee and creating a healthier work environment for the entire workforce. This is not a new methodology; companies have offered company discounts on products and services for decades. This new business process and method simply takes it to a higher, efficient, logical level.
For this project, we set up a large scale portal that could handle the amount of users and data we already were managing. A mass effort to partner with 1,100 vendors was established. All plan sponsorship websites were enhanced to provide access from Sprint PCS phones, Palm VII PDA running the Palm OS and any device with a browser capable of reading HTML cards, the standard wireless programming technology for wireless access at the time of this efforts development.
The once or twice a year allowance of changing your 401k allocations and health plan options (open enrollment) was changed to 4 times per day for the 401k element. At the height of the tech boom, the day trading of your 401k plan could prove quite profitable. BenefitsWeb, a proprietary plan sponsorship portal owned then by PricewaterhouseCoopers was the first DB/DC/Healthcare Portal to offer wireless access to the backend HR system. We were able to login to the Benefits Portal, view balances and also adjust allocations throughout the day, multiple times if needed.
Data stored in existing HR systems is a priceless wealth of knowledge if used properly. Add in the habits, opinions, behaviors and actions taken by a large collective group can be worth ten times the first mentioned group. With careful handling and legal compliance, this data can be worth more than the 376 million at steak by implementing this method. Stored data on large groups of people including buying habits, decision making and many other data
Element statistics, when used anonymously, provide an entire new revenue stream with offerings of industry survey data all companies rely on to predict inventory needs, resource allocation, and early detection of market trends. Some business service providers will take such data and produce valuable white papers and survey information as a paid offering to their clients at a nice profit. All of this can be done without disclosing any single element of personal information. The possibilities of leveraging the workforce are endless and benefit all involved. Smaller methodologies can be implemented for smaller entities with the same results. Leveraging your existing resources that would otherwise sit dormant is the key to maximizing your potential to succeed and more importantly, create profits beyond projections with existing resources. Start slow, measure success and stay flexible with your approach without changing your plans or goals.
As the co-inventor of this technology, I was let go 2 days after the patent office awarded the patent. I worked on the patent claims daily for 7 years. I was not aware the patent was awarded until 23 months later just as the statute of limitations ran out on any possible repercussions.
See the Patent in its entirety with illustrations here: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7406441.pdf
Author: Shane J. Hopkins
October 19, 2010
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