eVerge Group Blog

eVerge Group is now live with the full suite of Fusion HCM products – HR, Benefits, Payroll, Workforce Compensation and Talent Management.   Fusion Benefits and Payroll went live in January 2013.  This blog focuses on our recent Open Enrollment success in Fusion.

We have a split benefit plan year with FSA plans running on a calendar year, while the medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans have a plan year beginning April 1-March 31.  Part of the conversion effort for our January Benefits go live included new 2013 FSA elections, as well as current benefit elections for each employee.

Beginning in February, efforts focused on preparing for Open Enrollment in Fusion.  Our target timeframe was the first week of March for employees to use Self Service to make new elections that would become effective April 1.   This week was chosen to ensure completion of all elections before spring break, as many employees take vacation with family during this school holiday.  This also allowed sufficient time to review and audit these first time Fusion elections before sending data files to vendors.

The following changes were included for the April 1 plan year.  All Fusion configuration changes were made initially in our Staging test pod.

• Two medical plans were reduced to a single plan.  The eliminated plan was end dated in Fusion so it would not appear in Open Enrollment options.
• New vendors were chosen for the dental and vision plans.   No configuration changes were necessary since initial set-up for these two plans was generic and did not include anything vendor specific.
• Rate updates were made for medical, dental, and vision plans with an effective date of 4/1/13.
• All other necessary benefit configuration tables were updated to include the Open event (Enrollment, Designate Requirements, etc.)

After necessary configuration and rate updates were complete, we did a full range of testing.  We wanted to understand how various enrollment combinations would be handled online through both the Benefits Service Center as well as employees through Self Service.  The following items were part of testing:

• Manually triggered an Open event for sample employees; this allowed an initial review of plans included for election, current plan enrollments were coming forward as expected, new rates shown for plans, etc.
• We have a yearly April 1 “Age Up” for life insurance calculations that required a Fast Formula.  Testing ensured that new salary amounts and ages as of 4/1 were included in calculations.
• Once all necessary updates were resolved for sample employees, we then used the delivered Evaluate Scheduled Event Participation process in “Roll Back” mode to confirm which employees would receive an Open event.  This allowed us to verify the count of US employees, as well as confirm that our India location employees would not have an Open event created.
• Used the delivered process in “Save – Database update” mode to create an Open event for all US employees.
• Completed sample enrollment changes through Benefits Service Center as well as Self Service Benefits to ensure expected results.
• Reviewed online enrollment results as well as Element Entries and amounts created for Payroll deductions.
• Ran Payroll Quick Pay processing on sample employees to confirm correct April deductions.
• Used the delivered process to Close Enrollment events for all employees.
• Generated files using the delivered Benefit extract process to generate enrollment files for all vendors with new April elections.

Once testing was complete, we made the necessary configuration updates in our production pod.   We then manually triggered a few Open events for Fusion team members to quickly review.  Once we knew these looked accurate, the process was run for the rest of the employees.  We found the process took significantly longer to run in our Production pod than we had seen in the Staging test pod.  Some analysis was completed by Oracle to determine if there was any reason for the time variance; nothing significant was found.  All employees had an Open event – which was the ultimate goal!

The HR Manager had previously communicated about the upcoming Open Enrollment process so employees were ready to begin reviewing and updating their elections.  While we have a computer-savvy employee population, a brief enrollment training video was prepared by the HR Manager that employees could refer to while making their online elections.

 All employees were asked to review their elections as part of the Open Enrollment period.  Although we did extensive parallel payroll testing as part of go-live efforts, this was the first opportunity many employees had to review their benefit elections online in Fusion.   The open enrollment employee participation rate within Fusion was 98%; this was tracked by reports we developed to identify when an employee had “touched” their Open event.   We were very pleased with this result.

Below is a sample screen shot of what the employee sees while making elections online:

 At the end of the enrollment period, audits were completed for elections to ensure all employees had valid elections.  The extract files were then generated and sent to the various vendors – allowing them time to generate new ID cards for employees in advance of the April 1 coverage dates.

Below are some of the lessons we learned during our first Open Enrollment experience:

• Do not assume anything related to go live configurations will automatically work for Open enrollment.  It was necessary to add the Open life event in each plan you wanted to display in the event, as well as collecting covered dependent data, etc.
• Updates to Contact data through Benefits Self Service while there was an active Open event caused issues with conversion row elections.  We continue to work with Oracle on this item and have temporarily suspended employee access to Contacts to ensure no negative impact on coverages and related payroll deductions until this is resolved.
• The “Print Benefits Report” functionality on the Self Service Benefits Overview page produces inconsistent data.  This is currently an open SR being evaluated by Oracle Support.

 Next steps for Benefits …

• Collecting life insurance beneficiary data via Self Service Benefits
• Allowing employees to submit life events via Self Service Benefits
  • Marital Status Changes
  • New baby/children additions
  • Other life event changes – loss of dependent, gaining other coverage, etc.
  • BenefiX extracts to our medical, dental, and vision vendors

The author of this article/blog is Laurie Long.  Laurie is a Senior Fusion HCM Implementation Consultant resource for eVerge Group with more than 20 years of Software Packages implementation and support experience. To learn more about Fusion and how we can help prepare for your upcoming Open Enrollment efforts, please contact us at 888-548-1973.