Retirement and fringe benefit plan administration

The client provides highly specialized employee benefit plan designs for construction companies and contractors working on federal, state, and local government contracts. Regulations like the Davis-Bacon Act and state prevailing wage laws require these workers to receive specific wages and benefits. That means contractors need more than software. They need a partner who can manage the strategy, execution, accounting, and reporting behind it, accurately, for every party involved.

The organization had run on the same MS Access system for 15 years. It had served them well, but it was stretching its limits. Enhancements were getting more complicated and more error-prone, and the system offered no way for the customer participants it served to access their own information directly. The leadership team saw real room to grow the business, but knew growth on the old system wasn’t sustainable. They needed a real step up in technology, not another patch. They considered the alternatives first: living with it, managing client-by-client nuances through labor-intensive spreadsheets, or an off-the-shelf platform. Nothing off-the-shelf came close to what they needed, and doing nothing meant staying exactly where their competitors already were.

Gavant rebuilt the platform from the ground up, working closely with the client’s team throughout. A new back-office portal was built around how the staff actually worked day to day, eliminating the external spreadsheet tracking that had been filling the gaps. A new customer-facing portal gave participants direct access to real-time data and self-service benefit management, taking that burden off back-office staff entirely.

“We felt like we had more than a vendor. We had a business partner,” said Jeff, the client’s Co-CEO. “The team took everything we said to heart, and gave us milestones of progress, so there were no surprises.”

The client had its biggest year yet. “We grew the business over 60% that year, and we were on track for another 50% the year after,” Jeff said. The new system became part of how they sell. Prospective clients now see the live customer portal itself during the pitch, a level of polish competitors couldn’t match. Ninety-five percent of participants shifted to real-time online lookups or self-printed statements, cutting real printing and mailing costs. Audits got easier now that documentation is attached directly to transactions, and reconciliations that used to eat up hours now take a fraction of the time. The client even rewrote their internal procedures into a training guide off the back of the new system, so new hires ramp up faster.