July 08, 2014 : A year ago when Appirio said it was hoping to use data collected from employee wearables to negotiate a better deal on its health insurance bill, it seemed like a stretch. Could information that Appirio cobbled together about how many steps a couple hundred workers took each day convince an insurance company to lower its rates?
It turns out Appirio cut a significant chunk from its insurance bill by doing just that. "When our [insurance] renewal came up for 2014, they shaved 5 percent off our renewal because of what we invest in CloudFit," said Shannon Daly, vice president of HR Operations for Appirio. Five percent translates to $280,000 for Appirio, a consulting company that builds cloud projects for business customers