Benefitfocus vice president of technology wins top InfoWorld Award

John Smith, Vice President of Technology for Benefitfocus, has received one of the coveted InfoWorld CTO of the Year awards. InfoWorld magazine gives the awards each spring to 25 individual technology executives who have demonstrated leadership within their companies and in the IT community: Visit InfoWorld Top CTO Award for more information.

This year’s award winners recognized the fact that technology’s goals have changed, says InfoWorld magazine: “Once, forward-looking CTOs and CIOs scanned the horizon for new technologies that would improve the lot of IT. Today, as many of this year’s top 25 CTOs can tell you, technology leaders must also focus on understanding the business goals of the enterprise — and then craft technology strategies to meet those objectives.”

John Smith has been able to apply new technology to an old and complex industry problem, which has led to his promotion from Director to Vice President of Technology for Benefitfocus, the fastest growing technology company in the State of South Carolina.

With his leadership, Benefitfocus has single-handedly replaced decades of outdated Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), technology and processes in the healthcare system. Benefitfocus® eExchange is currently delivering over two million transactions a month, solving clients’ data exchange problems and enabling new Consumer Driven Healthcare technology.

Benefitfocus built eExchange in 2004, after receiving a call from a large Blue Cross carrier client with an urgent need to handle a huge volume of transactions. This carrier was growing so fast that its operations needed a new way to handle their tremendous growth. Rather than using existing data exchange technology, John Smith, started eExchange with new people, new technology and a 90-day timeline.

Benefitfocus® eExchange receives daily benefits enrollment and eligibility data from large employers in multiple formats. The proprietary engine manages all aspects of the data, ensuring it gets to the insurance carriers in their mandated formats and then feeds it directly to the membership systems. A team of data exchange experts concurrently handles all communication and reporting between the carrier, the employer and any outside payroll vendors to provide seamless data transfer and integration for employers and carriers.

Because of eExchange, the original Blue Cross client has excess capacity that enables it to process and administer claims for five other Blue plans.

eExchange technology has now adapted to additional business purposes and has transformed the entire technology platform at Benefitfocus as well as transforming and displacing outdated EDI technology with carriers both across the country and internationally. Currently, Benefitfocus is leveraging eExchange to create an integrated consumer driven healthcare platform, that allows a turnkey solution for handling benefits, health planning and health finance management. Benefitfocus has staked out a highly competitive position in the $2 trillion healthcare industry with its successful Software as a Service (SaaS) model, providing maintenance, daily technical operation, and software support for clients.

About Benefitfocus

Benefitfocus is the leader in consumer directed healthcare software and data transaction services for insurance carriers and businesses. By implementing Benefitfocus self-service enrollment, billing and data exchange, organizations can automate their business processes, reduce operating costs and errors, improve customer satisfaction, and promote compliance. Benefitfocus empowers the global consumer to take control of benefit options through a fully integrated and multi-lingual platform. Over 150 insurance carriers and their 35.5 million subscribers have chosen Benefitfocus, including companies such as Michelin, USAirways and Publix. Benefitfocus can be reached at 843-849-7476 or via the Internet at www.benefitfocus.com.