Fall is usually the time to celebrate pumpkin spice everything and sweater weather. But for those of us in the group benefits space, it’s a sign that our busiest time of year is here — open enrollment.

For benefits software partnered with Noyo, our API technology works behind the scenes to help give employers, brokers, and carriers a frictionless open enrollment experience. We deliver the right information at the right time with an unparalleled level of transparency into each step of the process.

Here’s how Noyo streamlines open enrollment season for benefit software platforms.

Why open enrollment is usually so stressful

Current technology like EDI — the primary method for exchanging employee data — is slow and unreliable. This makes open enrollment an especially difficult time of year as data volumes spike.

3 pitfalls of traditional open enrollment:

1. Building and maintaining EDI files. It can take 10-14 weeks to build a new EDI file for each group and an additional 2-3 weeks to process enrollments at the carrier. No wonder insurance cards take weeks to arrive!
   
   

2. Lack of transparency. There’s no easy way to know when plan decisions have been set up at the carrier, so it’s often unclear when new plan year enrollments can be submitted (or whether the new plans were even installed correctly). Additionally, ben-admins often contend with blackout periods where no files can be sent at all for either plan year, making it extra difficult to track changes over time.
   
   

3. Bad data. No two carrier’s systems are alike, which makes for inconsistent processes and data structures. Add in a high volume of changes and lots of people involved, slow processing and delays in coverage are almost a guarantee.

How Noyo streamlines open enrollment

With Noyo, open enrollment becomes much faster and more efficient because data is free to move bidirectionally between benefits software platforms and insurance carriers. The Noyo API  is built to manage open enrollment complexity, automating high-impact workflows, eliminating file-based work, and enabling true change confirmation with near real-time transparency.

What open enrollment feels like with Noyo:

1. No blackout periods. Benefits software can send current year changes and enrollments for the next plan year all via the Noyo API. Our technology automatically validates and confirms member changes within the carrier system in 4 days or less, no more error reports or manual reviews.
   
   

2. Clear change windows. Since Noyo is in sync with the carrier, our system knows to check whether a group is set up so we can automatically notify benefits administrators that enrollment can begin. No more lengthy email chains and long delays.
   
   

3. No files, no problem. Changes are sent via API, so there’s no file configuring, updating, or testing needed. Noyo keeps group data in sync with the carrier, automatically confirming every member change is processed correctly, as well as running frequent data audits in the background. We'll surface any discrepancies in our reconciliation tool for fast resolution.

“Noyo's APIs are critical for providing our customers a modern, hassle-free experience. Their digital interface with insurance companies solves a major pain point and allows the entire industry to innovate.”- Parker Conrad, CEO, Rippling,

How it works: The open enrollment experience with Noyo

Reimagine open enrollment with powerful automation and clean, trusted data at every step.

• Before open enrollment: The season kicks off as usual, with communicating plan decisions to the carrier. But since you’ve also submitted them to Noyo via our Renewal Readiness endpoints, we know what to expect and continually check the carrier system until groups are ready for enrollment. When that happens, we automatically notify you.
  
  

• During open enrollment: Since you’re using the Noyo API to enroll members and dependents in coverage, all member changes are protected by Noyo thanks to our round trip confirmation and programmatic issue detection features. So if an issue should arise, we’ll flag it in our Reconciliation tool for you to resolve before it impacts members.
  
  

• After open enrollment: It’s time to celebrate the end of the season! Still have a few changes trickling in? No worries, you can continue to send current year changes, including new hire, QLE, termination, and demographic changes, via the Noyo API.

“I used to have to keep track of so many rules for open enrollment... Now, I just let Noyo’s APIs handle it, and I can be confident that everything is done right.”- Grant Reeves, Director of Customer Operations, Sana,

It’s time to make open enrollment way less work

Benefits software who use Noyo's data platform are automating the flurry of open enrollment changes faster and more reliably. The result? A better relationship with carrier and broker partners, happier employers who get access to benefits faster, as well as time back to focus on other value-added work.