Personalized benefits communications for multiple employee types

With more than 50 combinations of benefit levels and services for nearly 20 employee types, Macy's needed a custom solution to  streamline and simplify the management of and access to their complex benefits data.

Challenge

Corporate growth often includes mergers and acquisitions, and Macy’s is no exception. The purchase of May Company left Macy’s with 17 different types of employees with more than 50 combinations of benefit levels and services. Their previous method for distributing benefits information was via hard copy CDs and brochures which added immense complexity. Production of multiple manuals printed in relatively small quantities resulted in high printing costs, warehousing, distribution and document management.

Services:

Print & digital design User experience planning & user interface design Information architecture development Responsive website design & development Custom application development Data architecture & systems integration Ongoing maintenance & support

With more than 50 combinations of benefit levels and services for nearly 20 employee types, Macy's needed a custom solution to  streamline and simplify the management of and access to their complex benefits data.

Services:

Print & digital design User experience planning & user interface design Information architecture development Responsive website design & development Custom application development Data architecture & systems integration Ongoing maintenance & support

Challenge

Corporate growth often includes mergers and acquisitions, and Macy’s is no exception. The purchase of May Company left Macy’s with 17 different types of employees with more than 50 combinations of benefit levels and services. Their previous method for distributing benefits information was via hard copy CDs and brochures which added immense complexity. Production of multiple manuals printed in relatively small quantities resulted in high printing costs, warehousing, distribution and document management.

Screen shot of Benefits website next to the code written to build it

Strategy

Sanger & Eby architected, designed and developed a custom digital system to replace hard copy documents. By streamlining manual processes, Macy’s was able drastically cut costs, reduce human error and increase employee satisfaction by ensuring each employee accessed the information relevant to them. Employees could attain the documents they needed by using the unique key given to each hire.

Sanger & Eby created a system that allowed employees to access their information through a custom website and the company’s employee portal. The system shared single copies of the HTML documents and utilized one custom site search. We developed an automated script in Python using the Django framework to automatically generate 50 customizations of the website for the different benefit levels behind-the-scenes, further streamlining the process.

As the employee portal was an internal site, we coded the system to ensure the correct documents were displayed without passing any personally identifiable information (PII), thereby ensuring private information remains private.

Tech stack

The following languages and platforms were used to bring this project to life:

Languages

Python
HTML5
CSS

Frameworks/Tools

ASP.NET
Django
Microsoft Excel

Results

Converting from print to digital resulted in a decrease in manual labor and increase in productivity for the Macy’s Benefits team. They saw a huge savings in printing and distribution costs, as well as reduced paper usage and waste which supports the company’s sustainability efforts. This simpler system provided for a higher accuracy in information delivery which ensured satisfaction among their employees.

 

Do you need help consolidating systems or managing complex data? Let’s talk!