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Thomsons Online Benefits, Palo Alto, CA

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2014 American Business Awards

Company: Thomsons Online Benefits, Palo Alto, CA
Entry Submitted By: Vantage PR
Company Description: Thomsons Online Benefits transforms the way multinational companies manage benefits and engage employees globally through its cloud-based software solution. The rapidly growing company has won over 70 awards for its clients’ use of technology, engagement and communication. Thomsons has over 280 clients across 60 counties, including the world’s top software, pharmaceutical and banking companies.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Software - Human Capital Management Solution

Nomination Title: Thomsons Online Benefits Global Benefits Management Solution

1. Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 525 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and performance to date:

Thomsons Online Benefits transforms the way multinational companies manage benefits and engage employees globally through its cloud-based software solution, Darwin™.

In October 2013, Thomsons opened its U.S. headquarters in Silicon Valley to better serve its U.S.-based multinational businesses using Darwin to streamline their benefits administration, governance and compliance across multiple regions and meet the increasing challenges of engaging and communicating with remote employees.

Darwin, securely integrates with benefits providers, HR systems and payroll to offer a single source of data for employees and HR managers and automates up to 90 percent of a company’s benefits processes, reducing administration costs and freeing up HR teams for employee queries and value-added tasks. Darwin’s intuitive employee benefits portal is tablet/smartphone compatible and empowers employees by simplifying the enrollment process and putting them at the center of their reward experience.

By providing an engaging user experience similar to consumer software, rather than a business interface, Darwin encourages repeated employee interaction and participation with benefits programs while constantly reinforcing the power of the company’s total reward. Managing the data, Darwin’s centralized encrypted data hub provides companies superior control over sensitive employee information. Records of all employees’ benefits transactions can be accessed instantly, and the system generates a full audit trail of all benefits transactions, giving employers the confidence that the right employees are covered at the right time.

With increasing state involvement in benefits from retirement to health care, country-specific reporting requirements and compliance regulations are easily managed from this centralized source. Darwin has a sophisticated rules engine with a single code line that can configure benefits for any country, allowing multinational companies to manage populations with varying benefits structures with reduced risk and complexity.

In January 2013, Thomsons received venture capital investment from ABRY Partners allowing the company to open new offices (Midlands and California), increase international trade (+43% YoY) and further invest in partnerships with three new global enterprise partners including Benefitfocus. This will ensure that Thomsons continues to be an innovator in the benefits software space.

Thomsons now has 350 employees (+36%), has increased turnover to more than $52.8 million (+19%) and has significantly increased operating profit to nearly $12.3 million (+204%). Following a host of innovations to Darwin to improve the user experience, the number of users has increased (+7%) with a global increase of 234%, with (+32%) employee logins and +28% increase in client reports. The improved usability led to drops in employee queries (helpdesk calls: -41% / emails: -27%). For example with Cisco, Thomsons is delivering a strategy to communicate a global, harmonized brand and reward program and engage the workforce across 8 countries. Efforts have resulted in high engagement (the login rate is 94% in the UK and 88% in Spain); an employee pension contributions increase of 48%; $1.94 million in tax savings (helping fund roll-out to other countries); and a cost savings of $48,000 to $80,000+ per country on administration effectiveness.

“To see the impact this program has made for all stakeholders is remarkable,” said Phil Smith, CEO, Cisco UK&IRE. “As well as being innovative and best-in-class from a communications perspective, it’s a great milestone for our people engagement strategy.”

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2. Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

Chris Wakely, who heads up the enterprise sales and account team at Thomsons North America, has been with Thomsons for more than nine years. He has worked in HR technology for the last 15 years, having previously been in the global accounts team at Microsoft. He has worked with leading global companies on their benefit programs and understands the important link between software and benefit management. He is passionate about the value of employee engagement in reward and recruiting programs and what software can bring to this process. Chris is a resident of Hillsborough, Northern California, was raised in London, England and has a degree in business management from Oxford Brookes University.