Case Study: Northrop Grumman

Northrop Grumman approached EdAssist with the goal of improving employee retention and reducing administrative costs in the delivery of education assistance to the enterprise.

It was at this time that EdAssist had completed development of its tuition procurement platform, supporting both traditional reimbursement and "pre pay" processes within the tuition assistance industry. Together, EdAssist and Northrop completely reengineered their tuition assistance program from a traditional reimbursement process to a process that supported both reimbursement and a front-pay tuition disbursement solution.

Employees that are approved for a specific set of courses now receive a unique, preauthorized credit card each time they are approved for a set of classes. This unique payment card is accepted by over 98% of accredited universities across the United States, and contains the following spending controls:

• The spending is tied to accredited universities and/or government agencies
• The card may only be used up to the amount approved
• The card must be used within 60 days of issuance

This new process has saved Northrop significant expense in back-end accounting and payroll, and has had a positive impact on employee hiring and retention.

This Client has multiple populations that are supported at various levels of tuition assistance. Each of these populations are supported within the same platform based upon their defined role at login.

The software supports multiple levels of access within the system based upon the defined role of the employee. Corporate administrators have access to reporting functionality that is not available to the standard population.

In addition, the software supports placing employees on hold based upon their status within the organization. This allows for separated employees to access the system upon separation, but does not allow for them to generate any new requests. Employees can also be placed on hold when a repayment or performance obligation exists.

Finally, extensive work was performed with Northrop's back-end accounting department to reduce costs. EdAssist now provides, through the software, a single monthly report that is pulled down by Northrop and fed directly into their general ledger. This report, and the disbursement solution, reduced the number of backend transactions within the Northrop accounting department from over 9,000 per year to less than 500.