Executive Summary
IIS Benefits helps businesses manage employee benefits by coordinating employer groups, brokers, carriers, benefit plans, and enrolled members. The company needed a more organized system for managing prospects, insurance submissions, client relationships, and complex member data. IIS Benefits partnered with Cornerstone Solutions to customize Zoho CRM around its business processes and create a repeatable member-import workflow using Zoho DataPrep.
The resulting system provides a clearer sales process, more consistent data, and a stronger foundation for managing benefits operations.
The Challenge
IIS Benefits manages several connected types of information throughout the benefits lifecycle. Employer groups, brokers, carrier submissions, plan designs, employees, and dependents must all remain correctly associated. The company needed a solution that would:
- Create a clear process for managing prospects, clients, and sales opportunities.
- Organize carrier submissions and supporting RFP materials.
- Standardize member census files before importing them.
- Connect employees and dependents to the correct employer and benefit plan.
- Reduce manual cleanup and improve data consistency.
- Give users a system that was easy to understand and maintain.
Implementation
Cornerstone Solutions configured Zoho CRM to reflect the IIS Benefits sales process. Leads represent prospective employer groups, Contacts track brokers and other individuals, Accounts represent client organizations, and Deals track qualified opportunities. Fields, layouts, conversion mappings, related lists, and filtered views were refined to help users find important information and move records through the sales process more consistently.
A submission structure was created to track multiple carrier submissions and related RFP materials from the appropriate Lead or Deal. Layout rules display or require information based on the type and status of the record, keeping the system focused for users. CRM was also configured to track employees and dependents as individual member records.
Each member can be associated with an employer account and benefit plan, while spouses and dependents remain connected to the correct primary member. Cornerstone developed a Zoho DataPrep pipeline to prepare member census files for CRM. The process standardizes dates, ZIP codes, relationship values, and other fields before importing the records.
The pipeline then creates member records, associates them with the correct employer and benefit plan, and links dependents to their primary member. Separate testing and production pipelines allow changes to be validated before they affect live CRM data. Cornerstone also provided training and reference materials so the IIS Benefits team could manage future imports and maintain the system.
IIS Benefits now has a more connected process for managing prospects, submissions, clients, benefit plans, and members. By combining a customized Zoho CRM with Zoho DataPrep, IIS Benefits gained a more dependable foundation for managing both sales activity and member information as the organization continues to grow.
- A CRM structure designed around the company’s actual sales and benefits processes.
- Better visibility into carrier submissions and supporting documentation.
- More consistent member data through automated cleansing and transformation.
- Correct relationships among employer groups, benefit plans, employees, and dependents.
- A repeatable import process that reduces manual preparation and cleanup.
- Improved usability through focused layouts, views, training, and documentation.
