Making HR Management Easy as Pie

Jan Collins

Or, how EasyHRweb, LLC, makes Human Resources administration simple.

In the late 1990s, after more than 20 years in the insurance industry, Joseph G. Stone decided there was a better way of approaching benefits enrollment and management for employees. Using the then-very young World Wide Web, he figured, was the way to solve a number of problems he saw in how employers and insurers went about performing various Human Resources (HR) tasks.

"People thought I was referring to wrestling matches when I talked about ‘www’ back then," Stone remembers with a laugh.

Today, Joe Stone is co-founder and president/CEO of EasyHRweb, LLC, an award-winning, Internet-based vendor of web-hosted applicant tracking, benefits enrollment, and benefits management software that provides "one-stop" HR administration for businesses in commercial, public sector, and education markets (http://easyhrweb.com). The company, he says, is "dedicated to developing best-of-breed technology to alleviate the everyday burdens of manual processes for human resource departments. We’re a total technology solution for HR."

Based in Columbia, South Carolina, with a second office in Atlanta, EasyHRweb is housed in a downtown building owned by the University of South Carolina’s Columbia Technology Incubator. That program, begun in 1998, provides housing and support for entrepreneurs—particularly high-tech entrepreneurs—to help them commercialize their ideas and produce successful, freestanding businesses, thereby creating additional jobs in the community.

Stone’s company (originally named EasyBenefits) is growing rapidly. In late 2005, Charles B. Wall III, at the time, co-founder and senior vice president of KryoTech, Inc., with more than 25 years of experience in the computer industry, signed on with EasyBenefits as chief technology officer. Wall holds seven patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office relating to computer systems.

Wall and Stone reformulated EasyBenefits, renaming the company EasyHRweb in June of 2006, each becoming a co-founder.

"We essentially restarted the company as a truly technology-oriented company that was better positioned to solve the HR problems our clients were experiencing," Stone explains. EasyHRweb more than doubled the number of clients in 2007, growing the business by 200 percent. In 2008, Stone foresees "more substantial growth" for the company as it attracts private-sector clients and adds to its public-sector base, which until recently was mainly the K-12 education sector.

The South Carolina firm also brought on board six new high-tech, high-paid employees in 2007. "We are bringing in the right people and focusing on delivering a cutting-edge product for the marketplace," says Stone.

Joe Stone, left, and Charles Wall. Photo by Gary Zeigler.

. . . the Web-hosted software program reduces manual operations involved with managing job applicants, benefits enrollment, ongoing employee benefits management, supporting links to payroll systems, as well as other HR administration functions.

As explained by Stone, EasyHRweb offers clients "a chance to remove the piles of HR paperwork mounting on their desks." This is done via a Web-hosted software program that reduces manual operations involved with managing job applicants, benefits enrollment, ongoing employee benefits management, supporting links to payroll systems, as well as other HR administration functions.

Specifically, the firm supplies affordable electronic applicant tracking and HR benefits management processes that are highly customizable. The client-specific customizations are made mostly through a set of checklists, which automatically move through the system.

There is increasing interest in EasyHRweb’s product, says Stone, because the paper process for job applicants is "very expensive and time-consuming." The process can also be potentially problematic because of a 2006 federal law that requires employers, if they are ever sued, to produce all interview notes, job applications, and other paperwork concerning the plaintiff who has filed the lawsuit.

Here’s how the EasyHRweb process works, according to the company’s Web site:

Information "such as an individual’s demographic information and hiring documents is gathered into the system, and begins to move throughout the organization. Unlike in the original [paper] system, the information in the acquisition process will not need to be collected again. Now, information is collected and stored in an individual’s profile in real time."

Information can be added, edited, or removed from the profile during the new-hire process. The profile data "will then move into the benefit management stage, allowing for the completion of standard HR procedures."

The data, remember, is captured on the front end of the hiring process and only has to be entered one time. And once hired, applicants can control their own benefit decisions 24/7.

One major success for EasyHRweb early in 2008 was the completion of a multi-phased, Web-based, nationwide "virtual" benefits enrollment pilot for a major financial services client. As Stone explains, "the enrollment group included the 16,000 or so advisors and their dependents, who are the firm’s 1,099 employees located in all 50 states and U.S. territories. This is the first virtual enrollment of a group of this size ever attempted, working with different insurance carriers and benefit plans; we demonstrated that benefit groups of this size can be virtually enrolled over the Internet.

"HR people are looking for these kinds of sophisticated solutions," says Stone. "We can save the organization time and money, make them more efficient, and help them with any future compliance problems."

The products that Stone’s company offers are not unique, of course. EasyHRweb has competition from larger, better-known firms such as Oracle. "But we can more easily customize our product," says Stone, "and, our product is both cutting-edge and affordable." Stone adds, "Our virtual benefits enrollment solution for companies and association groups is a unique offering in the industry.

We're a total technology solution for HR.

Joe Stone, a 53-year-old native of Georgia, got into the insurance business during his last year at Georgia Southern University. "I thought I’d hate it, but I loved it," he says.

During the 26 years that he worked for Colonial Life and Accident Insurance Company in Columbia as marketing director for state government development, he became intrigued with the idea of using the Web as an HR tool. Eventually, in the early 1990s, he struck out on his own, first starting a counter-top business, and then a profitable distribution company out of Raleigh, North Carolina, which was later sold to investors.

In 1998, he formed EasyBenefits.

Stone is an active member of the South Carolina Technology Alliance, the Central Carolina Economic Development Alliance Committee of 100, and the Atlanta CEO High-Tech Council. He served as technology chair for the South Carolina Health Underwriters Board, as well as a Steering Committee member for the Columbia Technology Entrepreneur Council.

Stone has high praise for the city of Columbia, the University of South Carolina’s Columbia Technology Incubator, and the university’s Center for Manufacturing and Technology (CMAT), all of which have been "so supportive of our company. There is so much going on in the technology arena in Columbia and South Carolina," he says. "It’s just a matter of getting the story out."

Stone’s company has twice won the Palmetto Pillar Award for the application of Internet technology in HR and employee benefits management, and he and Wall continue to enhance their products for both commercial and government clients.

"You have to have a good product, and you have to constantly re-evaluate yourself versus the competition to make sure you’re still one step ahead, especially if you’re a small company," Stone acknowledges.

"I think persistence is the key," Stone says. "If you persist at your vision and your passion about what it is you believe in, then you’re going to get other people to believe in it, too. ¨