BAN’s public site is the organizations’s primary marketing tool. Offering insights to both BAN’s product offerings and annual member Conference, the site highlights the benefits of BAN Membership for all independent health insurance brokerage agencies. The World Synergy team created an entirely new look and feel and used user experience research to re-organize the data into a better flow for all users types.
The Virtual Office application is the backbone of BAN’s business. This is where BAN Member Agencies come to find valuable resources, to ask questions of the BAN experts and of their peers, and to collaborate on various initiatives. Prior to this redesign, the Virtual Office in SharePoint 2013 both looked and felt like a traditional SharePoint application. The World Synergy team endeavored to make it feel like an application, or a site - and to make it responsive for use on mobile. The end result was a completely transformed experience for BAN and all of its members.
Note: Due to client confidentiality concerns, full images of the Virtual Office site are not available to share. The samples below include content written by me.
The Smart Compliance Application is BAN’s greatest revenue driver - a subscription application sold by BAN Member Agencies to their clients. This licensed package assists BAN Member Agency clients in maintaining and managing their compliance with Department of Labor standards and guidelines in two ways:
1) Smart Compliance provides both self- and professional-level assessments designed or completed by BAN expert resources to help an organization determine whether or not their business is compliant - and take steps to get there, if necessary.
2) Smart Compliance provides a confidential and secure repository for all company documents to be filed with the Department of Labor and provides guidance as to what will be needed should an organization be selected for a DOL audit.
When World Synergy took on the task of moving this application from SharePoint 2010 to 2016 and upgrading the program, it looked like exactly what it was - a SharePoint document repository with little in the way of User Experience Design and/or Information Architecture. Through contextual investigation, user interviews, and an iterative and collaborative IA process, our team transformed the application to present a simple, 6-step process:
1) Licensed Smart Compliance clients complete their Compliance Profile, including data that will be required to complete their DOL filings.
2) The company’s profile data is used to populate their Compliance Calendar, which notifies them when specific documents are due to the Department of Labor, executives, employees, or other entities.
3) Licensees complete a self-assessment, which determine whether professional intervention is required.
4) Following the results of their assessments, Smart Compliance leads HR partners through the forms and documents required to achieve or maintain compliance. Where necessary, Smart Compliance helps these teams prep for a DOL audit.
5.) All completed documents are placed in a secure and compliant Client Vault for access by company users or the DOL.
6) On-going, continuing education opportunities are offered to subscribers, in case of changes to Department of Labor policy, or new legislation such as changes to the Affordable Care Act.
The result is a modern application presented in an intuitive, user-friendly format, rather than a SharePoint document library, and that provides an enormously improved experience to BAN Members.
As a scope bonus, the My Partners Best application was redesigned and upgraded to SharePoint 2016 MPB gives smaller BAN clients a simple tool that enables them to brand their HR and compliance documents with their organization’s identity. A member company uploads their logo, contact and location information. World Synergy reviews and prepares the logo file to be inserted into document templates, and stores the prepped logo for future use. Company users then choose their documents and the logo they want to apply, process the information, and receive a fully branded document to be shared across their organization. The experience for MPB was re-branded to match the other BAN assets and the user interface updated to simplify this process for Member Agency clients.
