This post was written by Sheree Tallerman, CEO of PlanPerfect. Sheree and PlanPerfect are only associated with Stax.ai through a software provider-client relationship, i.e. PlanPerfect is a client of Stax.ai and utilizes both the Trust Accounting and Client Experience Platform.

Instead of doing a typical case study, Sheree has written this entire post herself to reflect her thoughts about Stax.ai and the services it offers to PlanPerfect. Such a format allows for our clients to more freely express themselves and communicate the value seen from utilizing Stax.ai without it going through a third-party author/editor.

We hope you thoroughly enjoy reading this - we definitely enjoyed receiving this from her!

It Happened One Day

I was “discovered” by Tony Delfino before PlanPerfect was ever an idea. It was the mid-1980s and I was working in the library of a Los Angeles accounting firm, filing tax management guides for $5 an hour, when Tony – who owned a TPA firm in the same building – offered me a job at $10 an hour. "It wasn't exactly Johnny Carson discovering Joan Rivers," I like to joke, "but it changed the entire trajectory of my career."

Tony became my mentor, and later, my business partner. In 2008, we co-founded PlanPerfect. After Tony’s passing in 2014, I led the firm through a decade of transformation. That period saw the firm embrace tools like Stax.ai and its overhaul of manual workflows – changes that reflected my vision for a more modern, efficient TPA practice.

Today, what began as a hallway conversation in Century City has evolved into a decades-long career – one that’s seen a local partnership grow into a nationally recognized firm known for precision, personalization, and innovation.

A Search for the Lowest-Hanging Fruit

As PlanPerfect grew, so did the complexity of its operations. My firm built its reputation on balance forward and combination plans, particularly those integrating 401(k) profit sharing with Defined Benefit and Cash Balance Pension Plans. These plans demand intensive administration and generate high volumes of data, often involving multiple accounts and thousands of pages of brokerage statements.

The growth brought strain. Combo plans produced a flood of monthly statements. One full-time team member was tasked solely with scanning, sorting, and filing them. Meanwhile, gathering payroll and census data involved repeated follow-ups and manual uploads. Despite robust platforms for plan administration and actuarial work, three key inefficiencies remained:

• Sorting brokerage statements

• Managing trust accounting

• Collecting census and payroll data

The search for the lowest-hanging fruit – simple improvements that could free up time and reduce errors – became my priority. Off-the-shelf scanning tools and workflow systems were evaluated but fell short.

Then, at a 2023 virtual TPA consortium where Stax.ai showcased its brokerage statement sorting tool, I knew I had found my lowest-hanging fruit. While implementation took time, Stax.ai handled much of the heavy lifting.

That early success led to deeper adoption with trust accounting added next to speed up reconciliation, followed in late 2024 with CX.

Frictionless Annual Data Requests Become Reality

The final piece of the puzzle was CX, Stax.ai’s payroll integration and census export tool. For years, gathering annual census data had been one of the most frustrating parts of plan administration, requiring constant follow-ups and manual uploads from clients.

So when Stax.ai CEO Naru said they were coming out with CX, those were magic words. Hook, line, and sinker, I was in.

Four months into starting our onboarding with CX, we fully transitioned off PensionPro.

Together with brokerage statement sorting and trust accounting, CX completed the transformation. What once took days of manual entry, sorting, and reconciliation now takes minutes. The team is free to focus on planning, advisory work, and delivering a better client experience.

Clients don’t want to fill out spreadsheets – and we don’t want to chase them. We wanted our process to feel as seamless and effortless as an Amazon return: frictionless, intuitive, and client-friendly. This gets us closer to that goal.

At PlanPerfect, we didn’t overhaul our processes just for the sake of technology. The goal was always to make administration feel simple and painless for clients. CX not only eliminated a longstanding source of frustration but also solved a problem that had persisted for years, giving us the tools to work smarter, not harder.

Frictionless Admin: A Myth No Longer

Looking back, each step toward automation has brought us closer to the firm I envisioned – one that blends precision and personalization with modern, efficient processes.

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If like Sheree, you'd like to free up your team's time by "turning days into minutes" and "focus on what matters most", schedule a call with our team and we'd love to understand your specific needs and see if there's a fit.