Frequently Asked Questions

  • EzOE works with HR leaders, benefits administrators, and HRTech product teams through three lanes:

    1. Content and research that makes open enrollment less of a mystery.

    2. Courses and workshops that build real platform fluency.

    3. Advisory engagements for product leaders, HR leaders, consultants, brokers who need someone who's actually lived inside the system.

    Think of it as the benefits education you never got — finally delivered by someone who helped build the tools you're using.

  • The best first step is booking a discovery call. We'll spend 30 minutes figuring out where the friction lives — whether that's your enrollment process, your team's platform knowledge, or your product roadmap — and map out what kind of support makes the most sense. No pitch decks, no packages you didn't ask for. No cost.

  • Most benefits consultants come from the broker side. EzOE comes from inside the technology — nearly 15 years architecting benefits solutions at an enterprise HCM platform, working directly with HR teams, brokers, and developers. That means we speak every language in the room. And we teach, not just advise.

  • Advisory is $275 an hour, available as a monthly retainer starting at $1,650 for six committed hours. Benefits systems assessments are fixed price starting at $3,500. Project work, meaning an open enrollment rebuild, a benefits configuration overhaul, or a rescue on a stalled implementation, typically runs $15,000 to $60,000 with a not-to-exceed figure written into every agreement.

  • Advisory is a small number of high-judgment hours, usually spent deciding what to do rather than doing it. A single conversation about eligibility logic before open enrollment can change what an employer spends for the next three years. Project work is bulk delivery over weeks, and volume buys the rate down. The two are priced differently on purpose, so buying more hours never costs more per hour than buying fewer.

  • Yes, and the pricing is the same. Public entities generally need a not-to-exceed total, a purchase order, and a defined term before a requisition can start, and all three appear in every quote. Net 30 to 45 payment terms are fine. Contracts and invoices are issued under BenITFItsU, the registered entity operating as EzOE, which is the name to use for vendor registration and your W-9.

  • Sometimes, and not always personally. Routine administration inside a system that is already running correctly is delivered better and more cheaply by a consultant from the EzOE network, with oversight rather than direct hours. Describe what you need and you will get a straight answer about which of those two you are looking at.

  • Advisory is capped at four retainer clients at a time. Open enrollment season fills first, usually by midsummer. When the calendar is full you will be told that rather than being sold a start date that cannot hold.

  • Email natalie@ezoe.co or book directly at ezoe.co. Response time is typically within one business day. (No contact form black holes here.)

  • Engagements vary by scope — from single workshops and speaking sessions to ongoing advisory retainers. Pricing is transparent and scoped before anything starts. If you're a mid-size broker or HRTech team, ask about the Shield retainer tier.

  • Direct, warm, and a little bit chaotic in the best way. You'll get someone who asks the questions your vendor rep glossed over, who translates technical complexity into language your team can actually use, and who genuinely gets excited about open enrollment season. (Yes, that's a real thing. Yes, it's fine.)

  • Two employers can ask for the same thing and need very different work. Cleaning up benefits configuration for a 200-employee company with one carrier is not the same job as one for a city with four bargaining units, three carriers, and an ACA filing problem. Publishing a single number for both would mean one of you is being overcharged. What is published here is the floor, so you know before the first call whether the budget is in range.

  • Rates for this work run from about [$75] an hour for administrative support to [$275] and above for architecture and rescue engagements, and the spread reflects who is doing the work rather than what it is called. A lower quote usually means a configuration resource executing decisions somebody else already made. Every EzOE engagement is delivered by someone who spent almost 15 years inside UKG as a lead business analyst, product owner, and project manager, and nine years before that running HR systems for a Florida municipality. When your project needs hands on a keyboard against a plan that is already written, a lower rate is the right call and you will be told so.

  • Four things, all named in advance so none of them arrives as a surprise on an invoice. A compressed timeline against an enrollment date already committed to employees or carriers. Work inside an open enrollment or year-end blackout window. After-hours, weekend, or go-live night coverage. Rescue work on a build somebody else started, which carries the cost of finding out what was done before anything can be fixed.

  • Yes, when the scope is written down and agreed to. Fixed fee protects you from an open meter, and it works only when both sides know what is included. For discovery, advisory, and rescue work where the scope cannot be pinned down honestly at the start, hourly or a prepaid block of hours is the fairer structure. One third is due at signing on fixed-fee work.

  • Five things: employee count and how many legal entities or benefit groups, which carriers and how many plans, your enrollment or go-live dates and whether any are already committed, whether this is a new build or a fix to something running now, and who has authority to make decisions. A quote comes back within two business days.