Bil Westerfield, President of Magpie Health Analytics, founded the company in 2014 after spending over a decade as a data scientist at healthcare organizations. Always interested in entrepreneurship, when Bil saw that projects at the organizations he was working for weren’t always able to achieve their goals, he knew it was time to start Magpie Health Analytics. The company is comprised of team members with a unique combination of healthcare and data science expertise.

• “In contrast to projects from places I worked at before, I started my company to make sure that our clients were fully satisfied with the analytics they were receiving.”

Magpie Health Analytics has been using Gusto from the start for all of its payroll needs. When the team started growing, Bil began looking into offering health insurance benefits, so employees could start providing healthcare plans to their families.

When Bil talked to other small business owners, they said they regretted buying directly from different providers because of the amount of overhead time and costs required to manage each of the various vendors for health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, 401K, and other employee offerings. They wanted to go back and were finding it very hard to untangle themselves from these providers and go back to a single platform like they wanted to.

As a lean, small business, Magpie Health Analytics needs to avoid unnecessary costs, maintenance, and red tape that aren’t integral to its core business. Bil quickly realized he needed a single, integrated platform like Gusto that would send him a curated list of plans to suit the needs of his diverse team – instead of working with multiple healthcare providers to offer a variety of plans.

Moreover, along with payroll, Magpie Health Analytics was already using Gusto’s HR tools too. Gusto provides Magpie’s team with one place for team management, payroll, and healthcare benefits.

• “The benefits advisors were great at providing helpful guidance when we decided to offer benefits for the first time. Now that we’ve gotten into a routine, the Gusto platform is so easy to use we can just manage it within the platform itself — or reach out via email if we need anything.”

• “I like things to be on an easy button. With Gusto, a small business like ours can avoid taking on a lot of overhead and they give us all we need — payroll, HR, and benefits managed all in one place. Plus, the annual curated list of health plan options with different carriers makes renewals easy”

• “As we've grown over the years, it's really easy to add new employees, onboard them, get them enrolled in benefits, and then manage all the payroll aspects through Gusto.”

Having a streamlined platform also allows Magpie Health Analytics’ administrator and office manager to only spend a few hours every month on healthcare benefits, payroll, and team management, instead of the company needing to hire another person to handle these tasks.

In addition to making it easy to offer the best healthcare plans for Bil’s employees, Gusto also simplifies the process of providing healthcare benefits across multiple states. Navigating rules and regulations across different states is a complex process for employers. With Gusto, Bil has been able to quickly hire the right people and offer the right benefits regardless of where they are, while having peace of mind around compliance. Magpie Health Analytics now has employees across ten states.

• “Compliance help is one of the things we love the most about Gusto. We just hired a new employee in a new state we weren’t established in. My administrator was able to sit down and follow the instructions in Gusto to get our company registered and compliant with that new state. With quick links to the websites and instructions on what to do, it was easier than expected to finalize payroll and healthcare benefits for our new employee.”

• “With Gusto, I know that all the rules and regulations are taken care of and we don't have to worry about it.”

To best serve their clients, Magpie Health Analytics employees need to have a deep understanding of healthcare policies and programs. They also need to know the analytics techniques used in healthcare to drive insights out of data. Given the unique combination of skills needed, Magpie Health Analytics has to be a competitive employer.

Offering robust healthcare packages is one of the ways the analytics organization is able to attract quality talent – especially since Magpie’s employees are healthcare experts themselves. Looking ahead, Bil is exploring offering FSAs through Gusto to continue meeting the needs of his team and become an even more attractive employer.

• “We are in the business of analyzing health insurance data. That's what we do, working with payers, so it’s a natural fit for us that we should be offering the same benefits that we're analyzing on a day-to-day basis.”

• “Gusto is constantly adding more benefits and I’m excited to look into offering HSAs and FSAs all managed in one single place.”