COBRA Outsourcing Replaces Crystal Reports with Logi Info to Increase Customer Satisfaction and Dramatically Reduce Development and Maintenance

About COBRA Outsourcing Company

COBRA Outsourcing Company (COCO) contracts with employers across the United States to provide assistance in complying with the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), which gives employees and their families the right to choose continued group health benefits in the event of job loss, hours reduction, job transition, death, divorce and other life events.

The company currently serves over 1400 employers nationwide and provides a wide range of services to employers and benefits contractors who need to manage and monitor participants enrolled in COBRA.

The Challenge

As a service to their clients, COBRA Outsourcing Company provides indepth Web-based health insurance reports for Human Resources professionals and Insurance Brokers. COBRA Outsourcing's Web-based reporting system was designed to allow their clients to see the number of participants enrolled in a benefit plan and gather in-depth information on each participant without calling, emailing or writing to their COBRA representatives.

Upon initial development of their Web-based reporting system, COBRA Outsourcing relied on Crystal Reports. Technical issues, however, created customer satisfaction, support and maintenance challenges for COBRA Outsourcing's development team.

"There were a number of technical problems that prevented us from providing the customer experience that our clients expected of COBRA Outsourcing," said COBRA Outsourcing's David Simmon.

"Limitations in the Web-based reporting hindered our clients and
required us to create work-arounds that were time consuming on our end and often confusing for our users. Our clients were becoming frustrated and when they needed help, they called us."

Faced with a growing number of support issues, Simmon and the
COBRA Outsourcing team decided to search for a reporting system that better served its' clients and simplified report development. Simmon's team identified their primary requirements and began their evaluation and analysis of new reporting solutions.

"We wanted to make everything easier for our clients," said Simmon. "We wanted a product that was easy for them to use, one that we could develop with and maintain easily and one that came in below our budget. It needed to be cross-browser compliant and enable us to provide a large amount of data to our clients in an easy-to-use, interactive format. Additionally, we needed a product that could provide more functionality than the first system."

"It was terribly difficult to create, update and maintain reports in the past," said David Simmon. "Making reports Web-based was especially complicated and they lacked the functionality that you expect from the Web. The reports that we were creating were not
cross-browser compliant and our users were required to download a plug-in in order to use the reports, something that created an additional set of problems. "

"At that time, due to issues with maintainability, we could only provide updated reports once a month. Those reports were difficult to create and they were also difficult for our clients to use."

The Solution

Simmon and his team explored numerous possibilities including upgrading their current solution and developing a solution in house. After evaluating their options, LogiXML's Logi Info stood out as the perfect solution to COBRA Outsourcing's challenge. COBRA Outsourcing chose LogiXML's Logi Info because of its overall ease of use, functionality and maintainability.

Simmon adds that Logi Info offers simplified report development, maintenance and debugging. "Using Logi Info, we were able to set up a series of dynamic reports that change as the data changes. Now, adjustments can be made on the data level, without having to refresh, or re-verify from within the report. We were unable to do that in past and it has saved a lot of development time and removed us from significant maintenance. Debugging reports is very simple now as well. All of the code in the Logi Info development platform is very easy to find and change."

Simmon was also impressed with how easily he and his team could learn and master Logi Info."We didn't have the time or resources for training on other reporting systems," said Simmon. "I learned how to develop reports and master Logi Info in a week. Its' report-building wizard walks you through report development, making the
process logical and obvious. The product was easy to use upon initial download and became increasingly simpler as I continued to work with it."

The Results

Logi Info has helped COBRA Outsourcing bolster productivity, improve the customer experience and reduce costs associated with maintenance, support and development.

"Logi Info addressed all of our problems. It was obviously easy to use and provided extensive functionality that enabled us to create more options for our customers and our team," said Simmon.

Logi Info helped Simmon and his team to improve development productivity while adding valuable functionality to their reports. "Logi Info made it easy for us to create sub-reports and data layers that improved the usability of the reports. Previously, we
would create a single master report with three subreports to provide all of the information that our clients needed. Now, we create one report and we provide more information within that one report than we could in all three of the old reports combined. Our clients appreciate the improved functionality. Their reports are now real time, interactive, more valuable and easier for them to
use."

"We have seen significant improvements since our conversion to Logi Info, " said Simmon. "Our monthly report maintenance has disappeared. Our customer satisfaction has improved tremendously and we use our time more effectively now."

Simmon adds that Logi Info has enabled COBRA Outsourcing to create more user-friendly reports that have eliminated customer support calls and enabled greater efficiency as a result.

"Customer care required a lot of time and took time away from needed development productivity" said Simmon. "Prior to our conversion to Logi Info, we were fielding calls from clients regularly. Since it's integration, we haven't received a single call. Converting our reports to LogiXML was a simple and quick process. We provided a better quality report without disrupting our clients. It was an improvement for them and it was easy for us. The results are measurable and directly related to Logi Info."

Simmon says that converting to Logi Info has helped COBRA Outsourcing reduce costs and improve overall operations.

"We have seen notable savings and an impressive improvement in customer satisfaction and development productivity since we converted to Logi Info," said Simmon. "Logi Info proved to be a flexible, dynamic reporting package that was easily implemented, improved our customer experience, and enabled greater productivity. Logi Info is a great product. It has been a major
reason for our success."