HighRoads Launches The Lab

Real-Time Market Insight Drives Employee Benefit Plan Design for
Competitive Advantage in Hiring, Retention and Satisfaction

BOSTON (April 14, 2008) — HighRoads today launched The LabTM, the industry's first real-time, unbiased benefit benchmarking tool, giving employers immediate competitive insight for attracting and keeping a quality workforce. The benchmarking portal arms Human Resource (HR) teams to negotiate better pricing and map plans more closely to the needs of their employees, with unprecedented access to peers' employee benefits plans and costs.

The Lab answers HR teams' burning questions: "What are my peers paying? What plans are they offering? How do my packages stack up?" The ability to analyze and compare detailed plans and pricing against the best-in-class allows benefits managers to strike an effective balance between attractive benefits packages and costs.

Because HighRoads presents aggregated information from more than 4000 actual plan designs – including HMO's, PPO's and CDHP's – complete with associated costs, rather than self-reported survey data, benefits managers can trust the integrity of the information. In addition, the data is dynamically updated in real-time so The Lab reports reflect the most current plan data available at anytime throughout the year, instead of information frozen in an annual report.

"Thousands of hours and countless dollars per year can be spent performing market analysis on competitors, without ever arriving at the level of detail and information that's included in The Lab," said Tom Emerick, former Vice President of Global Benefit Design for Wal-Mart Stores, inc., and now President of Emerick Consulting, LLC. "This is what HR teams need – real-time access to the latest benefit plan details and costs of user selectable peer groups."

Web-based and intuitive, employers can use the Lab year-round to:

  • Formulate competitive benefit strategies in advance of RFP's or renewals
  • Assess how current packages measure up to peers' or historical plans
  • Stay ahead of ever-shifting trends with insight into actual and proposed plans
  • Support union negotiations with fact-based insight into comparisons by company size, industry and locations

"Side-by-side comparison of benefit plans is one of the most valuable ways a company can assess how well it is positioned versus the competition," said Michael Byers, HighRoads president and COO. "With The Lab, HR teams can stand tall as they bear ever more scrutiny and pressure to improve the ROI of healthcare spending."

Available now via unlimited-use subscription service, access to The Lab costs just $4,995 per year. For a free one-time trial, visit The Lab.

HighRoads has automated HR processes for more than 100 Fortune 500 employers along with over 700 of their suppliers, consultants and outsourced administrators for nearly a decade.

In addition to The Lab, HighRoads' HR managed service includes a full range of e-procurement, renewal, SPD and supplier performance management services. These hosted solutions aggregate and centralize HR program information, improve critical decision-making ability and ensure compliance. Each solution is delivered and supported by HighRoads HR Information consultants, an experienced team with domain expertise in corporate benefits, technology and process reengineering.

ABOUT HIGHROADS

HighRoads, Inc. (www.HighRoads.com), is the only company providing employers year round access to real-time, unbiased benchmarking data for HR plans and pricing for complete market visibility. HighRoads HR managed service aggregates HR plan and supplier information into a central repository, dynamically fueling its real-time benchmarking tool, The LabTM, while automating the entire HR supplier management process. HighRoads has automated HR processes for more than 100 Fortune 500 employers along with 700 of their vendors, consultants and outsourced administrators. Clients include some of the world's largest companies, such as General Dynamics, Honeywell, IBM, Kraft, Staples and Textron. Founded in 1999, HighRoads is a privately held company headquartered in Woburn, Mass.

HighRoads Company Contact:
Lori Dustin
(781) 503-4030
ldustin@highroads.com

HighRoads Media Contact:
Megan Boyaval
(617) 969-9192
mboyaval@corporateink.com

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