SAP Benefits Administration: An Overview and Key Considerations

Benefits are a crucial part of overall employee compensation. Companies spend a lot of time figuring out the balance of benefits that ensure they are attractive enough to bring in and retain talent. To ensure the employees can access those benefits, administration is required. This can be a difficult practice if done manually, and many organizations have turned to technology to help streamline the benefit administration process. SAP doesn’t develop its own benefits administration software, but it does sell a Benefitfocus tool under the SAP Benefits Administration branding.

SAP Benefits Administration: An Overview and Key Considerations

Benefits are a crucial part of overall employee compensation. Companies spend a lot of time figuring out the balance of benefits that ensure they are attractive enough to bring in and retain talent. To ensure the employees can access those benefits, administration is required. This can be a difficult practice if done manually, and many organizations have turned to technology to help streamline the benefit administration process. SAP doesn’t develop its own benefits administration software, but it does sell a Benefitfocus tool under the SAP Benefits Administration branding.

Administrating benefits is more crucial in the United States because of the much higher occurrence of employer-provided health insurance vs. other countries. Because of that, many benefits administration tools are designed specifically for organizations in the United States.

Benefits administration solutions will typically help digitize and automate processes and documents for the following benefits:

• Health insurance and related benefits
• Disability and life insurance
• Paid Time Off (Vacation, holidays, service days)
• Leave (Sick/Parental/Bereavement)
• Retirement accounts
• Wellness plans
• Rewards and recognition

There are now benefit administration offerings for enterprises large, medium, and small. Beyond SAP’s branded offering, Human Capital Management (HCM) vendors such as Alight Solutions offer benefit administration solutions that integrate with SAP. Other companies that are focused on SAP SuccessFactors services, such as Rizing, can help companies implement benefit administration tools. There are also companies that provide more specific tools—Phenom offers a platform designed for administering rewards and recognition.

Key Considerations for SAP Benefits Administration

• Employee satisfaction should be a priority for companies that want to retain their top talent. Benefits are a part of that, but so are experiences. Employees don’t want to have to work to use their benefits, and the best companies are focused providing positive employee HR experiences. In our recent HR technology research,the top performing companies were 15% more likely to promote employee satisfaction through better experiences.
• Benefit administration tools typically provide self-service functionality. For example, and employee can request time off and a manager can approve it without any HR intervention. Employee and manager self-service can reduce busywork for HR teams.
• Along with self-service, automation is key to extending the effectiveness of your HR employees. Benefits administration tools can help automate benefit enrollment processes, automate tracking leave balances, and more. This leads to less manual work for HR practitioners, less steps for errors to be made, and easier reporting.