Saving thousands of hours and boosting client satisfaction with Universal Import
When you help thousands of entrepreneurs fund and manage their dream businesses using self-directed 401(k) plans, there’s no room for error—especially when it comes to compliance. At Guidant Financial, ensuring the accuracy of complex payroll and census data is not just operationally important—it’s a regulatory necessity.
But despite their best efforts to simplify the process for clients, one stubborn obstacle remained: the manual collection, transformation, and submission of payroll data. For small business owners, the process was painful—hunting through multiple reports, reformatting files, and hoping they got it right. For Guidant’s internal teams, it was even more resource-intensive—requiring follow-ups in 80% of submissions due to missing or invalid data.
That all changed when Guidant teamed up with Augmented AI Labs.
The Challenge: A Manual Bottleneck for Clients and Staff
Guidant’s clients come from all walks of life, and their payroll data arrives in every shape and size imaginable—non-standard Excel files, exported reports from obscure systems, even scanned PDFs. No matter how user-friendly the front end was, the back-end processing remained a time-consuming, error-prone task.
Each upload demanded hours of client effort and internal staff time to clean, validate, and follow up. The impact? Slower processing times, frustrated clients, and an operations team stuck in a reactive mode.
The Solution: Universal Import, Powered by Generative AI
To tackle this, Guidant Financial partnered with Augmented AI Labs to build “Universal Import”, a web-based AI portal that acts as an intelligent front door for payroll and census data submission.
Using OpenAI’s API technology, the portal supports drag-and-drop uploads of messy Excel files, PDFs, and more. It then performs:
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High-accuracy extraction (98%+)
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Normalization of irregular file formats
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Automated validation against compliance requirements.
Instead of requiring a manual review, the portal flags any issues on the spot—giving clients instant feedback and reducing back-and-forth communication.
The result is a fully self-serve experience that saves time and reduces human error—all while plugging directly into Guidant’s existing workflows.
“The Augmented AI Labs team worked closely with our in-house engineering and design team to deliver a solution that exceeded our requirements for accuracy and ease of use,” said Jeremy Ames, CEO of Guidant Financial. “It’s a true win-win that boosts client satisfaction and operational efficiency.”
The Results: From Pain Point to Differentiator
The impact has been immediate and dramatic:
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1–2 hours saved per client upload, on average
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30+ minutes saved per case for internal staff
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Over 14,000 person-hours expected to be saved internally
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More than 8,000 hours of client time reclaimed
Client satisfaction has skyrocketed. As Mel Hitchens from the Guidant team noted:
“We just had 2 weeks in a row with 100% of clients going through without any follow-up needed. 100% of them rated the process as ‘easy.’ We usually see about 82% for this metric. If you care about customer satisfaction, that is like, wow!”
The Takeaway: AI That Delivers Real Business Value
Universal Import isn’t just a cool AI demo. It’s a mission-critical tool that takes a real-world pain point and solves it in a way that scales. It exemplifies what’s possible when you combine deep domain expertise with cutting-edge technology.
For organizations navigating complex data workflows—especially in regulated environments—this is a case study in how AI can deliver measurable, repeatable, and meaningful results.
About Boaz Ashkenzy
Boaz is dedicated to building an AI-first company that empowers businesses to harness the power of GenAI through the strategic integration of AI into business operations. Drawing on his experience at Meta, where he played a role in developing innovative productivity solutions, as well as his involvement in scaling multiple tech startups, Boaz possesses a multifaceted skill set that fuels his passion for driving transformative change. Boaz is also the host of the Shift AI podcast syndicated through Geekwire.
About Augmented AI Labs
Augmented AI Labs is a leading provider of AI-driven workflow solutions aimed at enabling businesses to optimize the key operational aspects that bring value to their clients. With Augmented AI Labs, you get more than just an AI service provider; you get a partner committed to your business’s success. We strive to make AI accessible, understandable, and beneficial for all businesses, regardless of size or industry.
Our AI development team is ready to help your business at every step. We’ll guide you from planning to launch, and from training to support. Whether it’s integrating process automation or conversational AI, you can think of us as a dedicated AI partner.
