When evaluating benefits administration platforms for your agency, there are seven criteria brokers should use to compare options. We covered the first — the company's background — in a previous column, and now we'll take a look at the second — the two approaches to building a benefits platform.

I know the two approaches well, as I've been a part of both. The first approach is called the "benefit-centric" approach. The second is the "employee-centric" approach.

In 2008, we built BerniePortal using the "benefit-centric" approach. Then, in 2012 we realized that was a huge mistake and we rebuilt the system using an "employee-centric" approach. That rebuild was extremely painful, and we were only able to do it because, frankly, we didn't have very many users back then, and they were all employers for which our agency was the broker.