The Granite List offers a digital marketplace for benefits shopping

Popular platforms such as Angi's, Consumer Reports, Amazon, Yelp, HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack allow consumers to rate and review various services, as well as navigate cluttered marketplaces. What if HR departments and their benefit advisers could do the same in assessing a seemingly endless stream of vendors?

That option is now a reality. The newly launched Granite List is a digital benefits platform that features 700 profiles across 160 categories — from cancer solutions and mindfulness to cost containment and return-to-work programs — and expects to spotlight 4,000 vendors by the end of 2021. Users can comparison shop across similar solutions: For example, a search for musculoskeletal providers will deliver three options complete with details of the product and service and what size groups can be serviced.

“We continue to grow our footprint and fill a much-needed void in the industry,” says Sally Pace, CEO of the Connect Healthcare Collaboration, which developed the Granite List platform. To identify trending topics, the site tracks data on the most popular searches every week. (Recently: analytics, wellness, PBM, financial, mental and virtual care.)

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For vendors, listings are free, though paid monthly subscriptions also are available for those looking for marketing support. For users, platform access is free, and weekly newsletters feature original content as well as material gleaned from established thought leaders and even job postings.

The sheer enormity of choices among vendors can be overwhelming for industry leaders. Lani Glancy, vice president of talent development, diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) and communications at AutoZone, receives 300 to 500 emails in her inbox nearly every day — most of which have nothing to do with her job.

“Part of the challenge with understanding providers in the space is understanding capabilities,” she says. For example, providers would need enough firepower to handle AutoZone’s diverse workforce of roughly 100,000 employees. But since DEI is a critical component of her role, she’ll also happily scan Granite List providers for minority- and women-owned businesses.

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For industry advisers, the list can serve as a handy consolidation tool. “It’s a great idea to facilitate information to brokers about niche vendors that you either may not know about, or one of the 10,000 emails that come by that you said, ‘Oh, that was cool, I could use that at some point,’ and then you forget about it and who they are,” observes Nick Boeschen, director of employee benefits at Strovis Benefits, a division of World Insurance Associates.

Boeschen recently used The Granite List to find direct primary care for a client and came across a provider he had known from a prior company. The firm turned out to be good fit. Some of the areas that Boeschen is most focused on for his clients involve cost-containment strategies, self-funding, and access to quality care through transparency to ensure the best value.

Greggor Holland, an employee benefits consultant with USI Insurance Services, says the listings will help reduce the amount of time spent researching vendors upfront and vetting the ones that reach out to him.

As more service providers and reviews appear, he expects the value of this resource will increase and allow him to spend more time with clients and prospects “trying to figure out what the root causes are of their problems and with the issues their employees are having, so I can find the right solutions to marry to those problems.”