Meet Rippling’s trailblazing Partner Advisory Board

Published

Jun 3, 2024

Rippling recently hosted our first Partner Advisory Board summit, where we brought together the most innovative employee benefits brokers and accountants. These industry leaders, with whom we share hundreds of clients, share our obsession with delivering best-in-class client experiences. The Board’s mandate is to supercharge the way Rippling’s partners serve their clients.

With the largest R&D spend in the industry, Rippling’s benefits broker and accountant partners are a vital part of helping us understand the pain points of our clients and solving for them.

During our time together, we focused on three major themes: 

  • The growing importance of a hands-on approach to partnership
  • The business value of insightful analytics
  • The powerful efficiencies AI offers to our partners and their clients

Below, we’ll unpack each of these themes and share some of the insights our Partner Advisory Board highlighted during our inaugural summit.

A hands-on approach to partnership

One theme we uncovered was how our partners are taking a more hands-on role when it comes to technology. At many companies, HR teams are continuing to run lean, which means more junior HR professionals are tasked with handling increasingly complex systems.

Simultaneously, the complexity and regulations related to managing HR and benefits have grown as well. As a result, HR teams are leaning more on their brokers and accountants for help on everyday tasks, along with understanding and managing technology.

To support our partners’ work, Rippling is investing in three key areas:

Educating our partners with accessible and timely enablement material, and a dedicated partner success manager to train and enable them on the platform.

Investing in partner efficiency by automating partners’ most time-consuming work such as managing compliance. For instance, Rippling reduces the risk of access-to-care issues during the enrollment process and allows you to preview deduction amounts via an enrollment test wizard before benefits go live—helping avoid mistakes before it’s too late. 

Simplifying the user experience for our partners and their clients alike. Rippling’s unified platform simplifies operations, allowing clients to manage everything, including benefits administration, payroll, 401(k)s and expenses through a single, intuitive interface—no certifications or extensive training required.

The business value of insightful analytics

As advanced reporting becomes more important for staying competitive, so does the data it enables. Our board members noted that they are increasingly being tapped to help with data analysis and reporting. Clients want to see data-backed recommendations, and they expect their brokers and accountants to have it on hand. 

Rippling’s data capabilities offer that much-needed competitive edge. To support our partners, we offer powerful reporting, including intuitive dashboards and accessible analytics features, to give them the knowledge they need to differentiate themselves. And the capabilities on our roadmap will help our partners find patterns in plan prices for age groups, identify prospects, forecast health plan costs, and much more.

Embracing AI is to drive efficiencies

AI isn’t only making headlines, it’s already making a significant impact on businesses. Our partners explained that they’re increasingly searching for smarter ways to handle back and front office work like data entry and training employees. 

With this in mind, we’re working closely with our partners to identify the meaningful ways Rippling can leverage AI to increase backend efficiency. This includes preventing duplicate data entry, flagging and resolving data inaccuracies or compliance violations, and providing in-product guidance.

From input to action

As Rippling continues to grow rapidly, listening to the voices of our customers and our partners remains at the top of our priorities. However, one of Rippling’s greatest strengths is that we not only listen but also take action. We’re very grateful for all the deep insights our advisory board members shared with us, and we’re excited to hit the ground running to execute on all the bright ideas to come out of this event.

To learn more about the latest product releases and our future plans, reach out to partnerprogram@rippling.com.

Accountant and HR Consultants

Brad Williams, Founder and CEO

theFinanceStack

Lorraine Gauvin, Chief Operating Officer

Swift HR Solutions

Elliott McDonough, Co-founder

Centricity Solutions

Kevin Graves, President/COO

CommonWorks

Dan Luthi, Partner/COO

Ignite Spot Accounting Services

Colman Edwards, Senior Director of Technology

Countsy

Shauna Huntington, Founder/CEO

Fortiviti

Sharrin Fuller, Chief Executive Officer

Core Financial Pros

Daniel Rafeedie, Founder & CEO

PaySteady

Brokers

Ali Sajadian, Co-founder

benely

Matthew Kaiser, National Practice Leader, Employer Tech Consulting

Alliant

Jordan Mondschein, Regional Technology Solutions Director

Marsh McLennan Agency

Stephen Galvan, Assistant Vice President, Workforce Technology Solutions

Lockton

Kisha Moliere, VP and National Practice Leader

McGriff

Emily Sugars-Tuupo, VP of Sales

Newfront

Howard Metzger, President

MBL Benefits Consulting

Matt Roberts, VP of Growth

Sequoia

Brett Davis, CRO

Bennie

Kim Dierdorff, Employee Benefits Operations Leader

Acrisure

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.

last edited: June 12, 2024

Author

The Rippling Team

Global HR, IT, and Finance know-how directly from the Rippling team.