2022 is just around the corner. But as one year ends, companies all across the tech industry are already thinking ahead to the projects they’ll pioneer in the 12 months ahead.
Tech is all about forward-thinking innovation. That said, in asking industry professionals what game-changing projects they’re most excited to be working on, what becomes abundantly clear is that tech is wonderfully diverse, filled with talented teams investing their time and energies into forging the future of technologies in practically every arena.
Take these two senior product managers at promising tech companies. At Northstar, which enables employers to offer financial wellness as a benefit, Swati Sehgal is eagerly awaiting the next stage of the fintech company’s bold bid to democratize better financial health. And at Garner Health, which guides clients toward the highest quality providers, Danielle Clanaman is working to improve the company’s analytics with a project that will enhance its ability to help employers ensure the best possible care for employees. We asked each about the year ahead.
Northstar helps employees make financial decisions with confidence. Working with leading companies to provide one-on-one financial advisors and personal finance tools as an employee benefit, Northstar helps employees make the most of their compensation and benefits, and helps companies support and retain more diverse teams.
What’s the coolest project your team has planned for 2022?
The project I am most excited to build is Northstar’s Total Compensation Menu. Our goal is to help employees understand the ins and outs of their compensation package — from salary and bonuses to equity, benefits and so on — and specifically how they can use each piece to support their financial goals.
When employees use Northstar and work one-on-one with their Northstar financial advisor to create a personal financial plan, they will be able to refer to their salary, see upcoming bonus details and model equity scenarios, among other services, to see how their employment can affect their goals.
It’s a tool I’ve personally searched for what feels like a hundred times. Every time I’ve evaluated job offers or tried to plan out when to exercise equity, I’ve looked for self-service tools to understand my options, model different exercise scenarios and learn about tax implications. The result has never been anything less than multiple Google searches, talking to peers, opening 20 tabs and trying to puzzle it all together piece by piece. At Northstar, we get to build the tools we have always wanted to have in order to make sense of our financial lives.
How will this project help you grow professionally?
When it comes to solutions having to do with money, the product and engineering teams’ responsibility isn’t just about building a product. It’s about building trust and helping our members answer questions without sending them to multiple places to piece together their next step. We want to deeply understand compensation, benefits, equity, taxes and how they all come together to shape someone’s personal decision. Then, we want to translate this into a friendly experience that makes finance feel accessible. This project is an opportunity to hone so many product management muscles: to learn something in depth, simplify without losing value, build to benefit our members and to earn their trust.
What impact will this project have on your business?
The employers Northstar works with put a lot of time, money and energy into designing compensation and benefits packages to attract and retain employees. However, it’s not easy for companies to showcase these to employees or to offer individual support with regard to how employees can use them. Northstar’s Total Compensation Menu helps employees understand each part of their package and learn ways to put their money and benefits toward their financial goals. This tool can help companies solve the problem of getting employees to understand and utilize thoughtfully designed compensation packages.
The employees Northstar supports are often unsure how to use parts of their compensation, such as equity, and therefore don’t use many of the benefits offered to them. Northstar can serve as a one-stop shop where they can learn about their compensation and work one-on-one with a personal financial advisor to understand which benefits may be relevant to them, create a financial plan and make decisions to support their goals.
A unique employee benefit and health tech startup, Garner Health uses data science to steer clients toward the best-performing doctors. By conducting analytics on individual doctors, changing the financial incentives baked into normal health insurance plans, and offering consumer-friendly tools, Garner guarantees employers 10 percent or higher savings on health costs.
What’s the coolest project your team has planned for 2022?
In 2022, we are kicking off a project to accurately identify network ties between physicians and to better understand how doctors collaborate with one another. This project will also involve incorporating this insight into our rankings.
How will this project help you grow professionally?
This project will help me expand my knowledge of how to translate insights from healthcare into data and algorithms. It’s technically challenging and has a very high impact.
What impact will this project have on your business?
This project will allow us to precisely understand referral patterns, to holistically evaluate care delivered by teams in specialties like oncology, to incorporate the performance of a physician’s non-physician clinicians in our evaluation, and to thoughtfully track continuity of care.
Continuity of care and care coordination are crucial for ensuring the best patient outcomes. It’s also important that we measure physicians fairly and accurately, for both the physicians themselves as well as to help our members make the best decisions.
