But 2Interact has now moved far beyond regular Benefits Management and Pensioner Payroll for the public and corporate sector. Instead, their systems can now track and manage pensions and benefits of an entire country’s population. That is what 2Interact decided to focus on with their next market move by launching Interact’s Social Security Administration System (“Interact SSAS”) as an extension of Interact HRMS: Interact SSAS is a portal application which consists of a suite of modules solely built to target the global market of international social protection schemes. 2Interact’s timing could not be any better considering the pressure these social protection schemes have been under since the pandemic.
Because of the rapid increase in demand in many geographies, 1Global HRMS LLC was created to be dedicated to selling, implement and supporting Interact HRMS and Interact SSAS in specific geographic markets, while 2Interact focuses solely on software development.
Country-wide social protection schemes typically need to track all employers, all employees and their dependents, track contributions made over many decades, process claims and ensure compliance of all stakeholders with the country’s social security laws.
The massive impact of the pandemic has exposed the fact that still many government entities are running on outdated, non-scalable, and non-modifiable systems which were not ready to handle large internet traffic resulting from the sudden and high demand for relief.
2Interact is now offering social security organizations a complete portal that allows them to manage the entire cycle of registration, contributions/social security tax filing, benefit claims filing and processing of benefit payments. All of it is managed in Interact SSAS, a single user-friendly portal that is based on the existing and proven Interact HRMS portal solution.
Following is the conversation that Manage HR Magazine had with 2Interact’s VP, Marc Van der Ven, on what makes his company steer ahead of the other players in the Benefits Administration space.
What are the market pain points of your customers that have manifested as opportunities for your solution and approach?
We like to think big when we look for a market opportunity to address, and while our software can already manage a single company’s benefits plans, and we can also support the typical healthcare benefit provider with our software, there is nothing bigger than the government-run nation-wide benefit schemes that exist in most countries today. We noticed even before the pandemic that this key market segment was being ignored by many software vendors as there were no comprehensive purpose-built software solutions available for the social protection sector whose needs are so unique.
In the social protection sector, which consists of social security or national insurance and pension organizations, many organizations are using outdated systems which are not taking advantage of the opportunities that the internet offers. This has been acceptable and ‘good-enough’ for a long time. But with the pandemic this sector was hit by a multi-pronged attack: first, the need for benefits and relief was instantly sky-high, second, due to lockdown and curfew rules, the social security offices sometimes had to close or reduce their business hours leading to greatly reduced capacity, and third, when the offices were open, members or beneficiaries had to maintain social distancing and could not come in to take care of their needs. And finally, the existing IT systems in place, which were largely paper-driven, were frozen in time on old code for which no developers were available in many cases to handle the specific new requirements, tremendous volume, and the new benefits to be offered, the associated conditions, and calculation rules etc. Even worse, many systems were crashing as they were not designed for scalability and could not handle the sudden flow.
With Interact SSAS, we are addressing all those issues with one single solution: by offering a portal-based solution that can be deployed in the cloud or on-premise and is developed using the popular LAMP/WAMP open-source technology stack. All beneficiaries and pensioners can interact with social security online without having to visit any offices. All registrations and claims can be submitted at any time, 24/7, regardless of social distancing rules. The social security staff can work from their offices or even from home to process the same registrations and claims without having to wait for any paperwork to arrive. Employers can report salaries and pay social security contributions online without the need for in-person visits.
Finally, because our systems are specifically designed for maximum flexibility and configurability, we make sure that clients can adjust and add new benefits or new rules as the regulations change, which is critical when dealing with challenges such as the pandemic which governments are still grappling with today.
While many social security and insurance organizations have been behind on technology for a long time, we are now offering them a chance to make their technology platform one of their main strengths instead.
Marc Van Der Ven, VPInteract SSAS is fully configurable, this means that all business rules are setup in the policy setup area of the product through parameters
Why is it important to have configuration capabilities in the software when it can be customized and you are providing support to the client?
Interact SSAS is fully configurable which means that all business rules are set up in the policy setup area of the product through parameters. This parameter-driven approach means that any new benefit, any new calculation method for a benefit or for a social security contribution tax, etc., can be set up in the system through configuration instead of through source code changes. This flexible approach ensures that our systems can support not only any requirement of a regular Social Security or National Insurance system today, but we can also support their requirements in the future when laws and regulations change. Those changes will just require parameter changes. It is important for our clients to ensure they can continue to upgrade their systems in the future and the cost of ownership this way remains predictable
and affordable.
Could you illustrate all that was discussed above with the help of a customer success story?
One of our clients in the Caribbean is a government agency that operates a national social security benefit scheme, and until now, most of their work was paper-driven. Processing transactions has always been very labor intensive, and as a result, there was always the risk of duplication and the potential for errors in the work that the staff were doing. Employers usually had to visit the offices to file and pay contributions or social security taxes. Pensioners and beneficiaries until now have always had to visit the local social security offices to conduct their business and ensure that they have all the paperwork with them.
All of this is changing now that the client can offer online services using our portal. Instead of spending time on data entry or correcting mistakes resulting from transcribing data from paper forms into their previous system, the staff will now be able to focus their time on serving their clients. All data that is entered is automatically available for every authorized person to see through the portal, and there is no more dual entry as we have one seamlessly integrated system which includes the online portal. New rules which are coming into effect because of the pandemic can quickly be configured into the system so that new benefits can be offered where required.
How do you make sure that your offerings help organizations to meet real-world requirements?
In our company, we don’t work with silos of information and we stay very close to our customers. The client is King, and we all work with our clients and worry about their success because if our client is successful they will tell 10 others. Therefore, we respond quickly to client needs, we involve key people from development, professional services, and management in project decisions for each client. If we find any gaps in functionality or opportunities for improvement in our products either based on client feedback or simply as a result of the work we do, we will investigate further and see how we can fill those gaps with straight-forward and user-friendly features.
Can you provide us a sneak-peak as to what lies ahead for your firm?
We have always been technology enthusiasts, although we don’t use technology for the sake of the buzzwords. We carefully look at what can make the most difference for our clients and then look for the best manner in which to deliver it to give them long-term benefits, scalability and flexibility. In our roadmap, we are now focused on adding more decision tools for our clients, powerful business intelligence, artificial intelligence, leveraging smartphone apps and expanding the use of web services and APIs to make interfacing and data exchange easier. In addition, there are constant improvements on the user experience for both our direct customers as well as our indirect customers, the end-users of our public portal solutions: employers, employees, pensioners, and beneficiaries.
