Pros
Amazing coworkers who make the day to day manageable as the organization continues to make decisions focused solely on profitability by Q4 2016.
Cons
Where to begin? A company that has so much potential is slowly crumbling from the inside out. Poor process and documentation has always been a setback, but the "sell sell sell" mentality has caused frustration for all customers promised more than the software can deliver. Praise those who bring in money, regardless of customer health or happiness from the sales experience. Setup for failure from day 1. The company refuses to invest in those workers who are knowledgeable and worthy of being part of leadership. Instead, they are leaving to join other companies to be compensated for the value they provide. Benefitfocus pays based on position/role and current salary - not experience, talent, or education. Negotiate as a new hire or you will be lucky to increase 5k in 5 years. Promotions may get you there in 2-3 years. The only thing that matters right now is profitability, so sell sell sell anything you can and cut cut cut the spending. OE 2017 is going to be profitable, but the fallout will bring to light the poor business decisions made to sacrifice quality work for globalized cheap labor. Which brings me to the #1 reason Benefitfocus is destined for failure: Valuelabs. Globalization is a strategy to outsource regular jobs for lower cost. It makes sense, but you may not realize Benefitfocus has partnered with the most incompetent, incapable Indian company on the market. If I had to guess, they are cheaper or discounted in some way. The poor souls forced to babysit them (US workers) are responsible for cleaning up their awful work and held accountable if customers complain. I can't wait for the same Indian company that was chosen by BF to lead the "QCoE" or Quality Center of Excellence initiative responsible for improving software quality. To this day, their work has improved our quality of work in no way, shape, or form - similar to their colleagues taking jobs as regular associates and proving incapable to provide value. These workers are fired and recycled to another department to keep business for the India team and hope the new team can find some use or value from the "internal experienced" GR. Honestly, I am surprised they are able to get to work daily given their ability to follow instructions or use common sense. This false hope is being drilled into the minds of our customers, so BF will make sure it's a success - right? Let me inform you that this QCoE team yet to make a flow chart that correctly illustrates our current process workflow and have not been involved in the actual work or know how the work is done. Most intelligent Americans need a few months to a year to be proficient on the platform, yet the Indian workers can do it in less time, less training, less work experience, and no understanding of how healthcare or benefits work. These people are the experts to advise tenured workers on how we can do our jobs better? Anyone believing this idea is realistic is either an absolute moron or a member of the Benefitfocus Leadership committee. The BF marketing is positioned for providing a false identity to tell customers and suspects that we have a quality improvement initiative. As usual, this will prove to be no more than false hope for customers promised a better experience and more commonly delivered more issues than before. Anything that the Indian team is involved with will be an epic failure, and my hopes are they QCoE will finally bring this to light and show executives their true abilities - or lack thereof. My fear is that their work will be blamed on current employees to shift accountability and let more hard workers be let go to ensure the leadership and execs keep their inflated salaries and undeserving bonuses for being profitable - at the expense of destroying everything the company once represented.