Planning Analytics Blog

Your analytics thought partner

Planning Analytics and Biting Into Big Data

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Planning AnalyticsAdding It Up

The company with the most data doesn’t necessarily win. It’s the one that understands how to use data, and for what purpose. Having a clearly stated objective helps narrow the universe of possibilities into a set of relevant choices that can be explored and refined. Keeping the business goal in mind also helps to keep analyses, and the analysts, on the right track.

Breaking It Down

  • Bottom line; if people truly want to realize big data’s potential, it’s time to start breaking the process down into pieces that the company can adequately manage. There are so many tools available today, and with the right approach and support almost any organization can figure out how to gain from a coherent big data strategy.
  • Unicorns are few and far between, so data teams and business units need to work together to meet business goals. Data scientists represent phenomena using data and models, and they are expected to understand what the business is trying to achieve. Conversely, business leaders should have at least a business-level understanding of what can be achieved with data.
  • Machine learning allows companies to discover patterns, develop new and better models, and improve their predictive capabilities, among other things. The massive scale and speed allow organizations to explore problems in ways that would not otherwise be feasible, which sometimes leads to intriguing new questions.
  • This is particularly true in the reforming and revitalizing the healthcare delivery processes we use in this country. Get to understanding what makes both the patient and the provider are willing to do to change their behaviors and watch how assets are more effectively utilized.

Get your hands dirty. Try and fail. Partner up with a pro. Hands-on experience (guided by experts in early go-rounds) helps people grow accustomed to using data. That builds confidence and, over time, can increase the scale and scope of data-informed problem solving and decision support.

Talk with us about your planning analytics objectives, current processes and needs. We’ll impartially show you how to get on the path to where you want to take your organization.

We’ll give you insights into trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level. Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512-478-3848.

Get Your Business Intelligence on Top and Stay There!

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Today’s data-driven companies have a competitive edge over their peers. How? They are generating breakthrough insights by bringing together all of their structured and unstructured data and analyzing it together – all at once.

Competitive EdgePlanning analytics is the key to unlocking the insights from your customer and patient behavior data – structured and unstructured – because you can combine, integrate and analyze all of your data at once to generate the insights needed to drive customer acquisition and sustain loyalty.

For example, you can use insights about the customer acquisition journey to design campaigns that improve conversion rates. You can also identify points of failure along the customer acquisition path – or the behavior of customers at risk of churn to proactively intervene and prevent losses.

And you can better understand high-value customer behavior beyond profile segmentation (for example, what other companies they shop from, so you can make your engagement content even more targeted).

Why? Did something unexpectedly happen to adversely impact the outcomes of their decisions?

If so, what was missing from the analysis and underlying assumptions? Could they have avoided some of these unsuccessful investments?

When planning the strategic direction of the business, organizations, like yours, strive to create returns that will satisfy (even delight) stakeholders. To the extent that you know the future to be uncertain, the measurement and impact of this uncertainty must be captured in your strategic planning process. Know what you don’t know and build from that base.

Hands-on experience (guided by experts in early go-rounds) helps people grow accustomed to using data and specifically big data. That builds confidence and, over time, can increase the scale and scope of data-informed problem solving and decision support.

Talk with us about your planning analytics objectives, current processes and needs. We’ll impartially show you how to get on the path to where you want to take your organization.

We’ll give you insights into trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level. Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512-478-3848

Planning Analytics in 2016

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These pics tell stories.

You know you’re just overwhelmed! 2015 year-end reporting and presentations that bring all of their accompanying stresses. And then getting up on top of your promontory to look at where your prospects are going, what your customers and stakeholders want and need and how to leverage on that huge and variable investment you continue to make in human assets. Fun?

What we offer here as actionable visual models and tools are focused on H R and the roles of big data in human asset management ranging from recruitment and productivity to retention and replacement costs. Here’s a thought…grind through want you think you need to lead from a position of strong business intelligence and simultaneously be willing to experiment with your data and try some new things to get insights you might miss.

We start by borrowing an Infographic on the Four Vs of Big Data. This is a good encapsulation. Perhaps you put it on your launch page so you see it daily. IBM is the source.

The Four Vs Of Big Data
And then on to a simpler, but very powerful step chart of where H R is any particular days of the week in any one of an array of organizations. And please make the connection that you could just as easily change the H R Analytics Maturity Model to the Corporate Business Intelligence Maturity Model.

HR Analytics Maturity Model

Planning analytics in 2016 is a really big deal. And don’t forget the security perspective.

Do you need more tools to get your data into a visual storytelling format? Take a look at the Stanford University tool; http://vis.stanford.edu/wrangler/ Or talk to us before you commit your valuable assets.

We can get you off to a hot, fast start in 2016 to enhance your BI priorities and capabilities.

We’ll give you insights into trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level. Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512-478-3848.

Some related reading that you may find useful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_planning

http://hitconsultant.net/2015/10/27/dells-mandi-bishop-challenges-data-analytics-healthcare/

Mobile in Healthcare – Planning Analytics Wins the Day

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Health Care ConsumersWe have talked, actually written, more and more about why healthcare providers need to connect frequently and seamlessly with healthcare consumers as those consumers use mobile more and more to manage their health and wellness. And because we are in the heart of the action with key healthcare systems and their leader, we have a true sense of this transformation becoming more urgent to the health of the healthcare system in the U. S.

Behold! McKinsey has done some homework on this too. Read on a little deeper to see some of what they have found and are willing to share. For our blog readers who sit in leadership chairs, we really encourage you to see how you can move mobile up in your food chain and how your planning analytics tools can help you do this – now.

Using Mobile to Accelerate Progress

The latest edition of McKinsey’s Consumer Health Insights survey reveals that people want and actually make use of digital solutions. Some 63 percent of respondents said they would prefer a single app that could hold all of their data (including medical records), 68 percent reported behavioral changes as a result of using devices to manage chronic conditions, and 37 percent stated an interest in implantable chips to capture health data.

At this point, however, consumer adoption rates and awareness trail some of the hype surrounding these solutions, so penetration and usage rates may take longer than expected to grow. Mobile value chain players that can identify where within the ecosystem to act, which solutions con­sumers really value, and how to make those solutions appealing and accessible will be the ones that reap the rewards of digital health.

Mobile Has Roles Throughout Healthcare’s Consumer Decision Journey

In the healthcare space, the consumer decision journey (CDJ) model includes the following steps: access and awareness, comparison and choice, financing and payments, consumption, wellness, and advocacy.

At last count, McKinsey identified nearly 180 companies that offer health man­agement technologies across the CDJ and across stakeholders from consumer self-health monitoring to technologies that create provider cost and quality transparency.

The analy­sis shows that digital health companies offer these solutions across the decision journey to benefit both patients and healthcare enterprises. ZocDoc’s self-scheduling system, for example, facilitates patient access to healthcare, while healthcare enterprises benefit from epidemiological and treatment predictions of data companies like Predilytics.

Solutions and Data Integrators – the Critical Link Between Healthcare Consumers and Service Providers

The fact that the digital health ecosystem currently lacks integrators that can help consumers make sense of the many available solutions, means that many con­sumers are probably overwhelmed by the choices companies are offering across the CDJ. For this reason, it is likely that the next wave of the digital health evolution will focus on the development of a more integrated consumer experience across providers and platforms.

Another fragmentation issue involves finding ways to take all of the data generated during the CDJ and integrate it to make healthcare appealing and easy to consume for the average patient. As stated earlier, the investment community is clearly interested in the digital health play, contributing an estimated $4.2 billion in venture capital funding during 2014 alone— nearly as much as the three previous years combined.

All of this money is fueling the current rapid innovation cycles, and investors range from early-stage funders of “bleeding-edge” technologies with an eye toward fundamentally disrupting the healthcare business model to multinationals investing in mid-tier solutions and beyond.

We can get you off to a hot, fast start in 2016. We’ll give you insights into consumer mobile trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your healthcare consumer experiences to a higher level.

Is that just what you needed to hear?

Come see us at www.managementinformationanalysis.com and then call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512-478-3848.

Business Intelligence: What Gartner Says Often Happens

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Planning Analytics MeetingHere’s a brief of what one of their newest reports says. Please read the entire sentence:

“In 2016, the IoT and the demands of the digital enterprise will require data management and business analytic professionals to take specific action to enhance their data and analytics architecture, environment and approach to put data at the heart of the organization.”

And because we know that marketing is the engine of the enterprise’s Formula 1 entry in creating the exceptional customer experience and value, we offer these sage comment to get your attention. Yes, these wide-eyed realists cover a lot of ground, and yes you need to be hyper-aware of “what’s next”. We’re happy to share:

http://marketingland.com/data-analytics-2016-industry-experts-weigh-153793

We can get you off to a hot, fast start in 2016. We’ll give you insights into trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level. Is that just what you needed to hear?

Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512 478 3848.

More on Data Visualization for Strategic Planning

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Data VisualizationThere are three main steps to completing a data visualization. Steps 1 and 2 are interchangeable and may sometimes occur simultaneously

  1. Formulating the question you want your visualization to answer or the story you want your visualization to tell
  2. Gathering, understanding, and sorting the data
  3. Applying the visual representation

Examining the Data

  • Do you have all the data you need?
  • Does it include all the variables that you are interested in?
  • Are there any obvious errors in your data?
  • Is there any data that is missing?

Understanding the Data Types

  • What type of data have you acquired?

Transforming for Quality

  • Do you need to clean up your data?
  • Do you need to fix any errors or fill in any gaps in your data?

Transforming for Analysis

  • Parsing (splitting up) and variables, such as extracting year from a date value
  • Merging variables to form new ones, such as creating a whole name out of title, forename, and surname
  • Converting qualitative data/free-text into coded values or keywords
  • Deriving new values out of others, such as gender from title or a sentiment out of some qualitative data
  • Creating calculations for use in analysis, such as percentage proportions
  • Removing redundant data for which you have no planned use (be careful though!)

Do you need more tools to get your data into a visual storytelling format? Take a look at the Stanford University tool; Or talk to us before you commit your valuable assets.

We can get you off to a hot, fast start in 2016. We’ll do the heavy lifting to transform and load your data into meaningful sets, mobilize and monitor your planning analytics so they enhance your BI priorities. We’ll give you insights into trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level. Whew, that’s saying a lot. Or is that just what you needed to hear?

Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512 478 3848.

 

The Rise of the Algorithms!

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Predictive AnalyticsThere are at least three major predictive analytics conference coming up in 2016. Does this signal the rise in predictive analytics algorithms? Here are some of the highlights:

  1. The Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit, San Diego, February 18-19, 2016, provides a platform for leading executives to share unique insight into the innovations that are driving success in the world’s most successful organizations. It is the largest gathering of Fortune 500 business executives leading initiatives in Data, Marketing & Customer Analytics, as well as Machine Learning, Personalization and Advanced Data Science.
  2. Predictive Analytics World for Business, April 3-7, 2016 in San Francisco, is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors and business thought leaders. The conference focuses on concrete examples of deployed predictive analytics. Hear from the horse’s mouth precisely how Fortune 500 analytics competitors and other top practitioners deploy predictive modeling, and what kind of business impact it delivers
  3. Predictive Analytics World Healthcare, September 27 – October 1, 2015 in Boston, is packed with the top predictive analytics experts, practitioners, authors, healthcare thought leaders. It focuses on real-world examples of deployed predictive analytics. Attend and witness today’s rapidly emerging movement to fortify healthcare with big data’s biggest win: the power to predict. This conference assembles the industry’s leaders to deliver case studies and expertise, revealing how predictive analytics improves patient care, reduces costs and brings greater efficiencies to the healthcare industry

While it’s still a nascent market, the promise of using predictive analytics to increase revenue growth is real. Early adopters have seen compelling, demonstrable ROI from their predictive analytics programs. These early adopter wins are spurring investment from a larger swath of the market, particularly among companies with demonstrated marketing automation success and high volume funnels.

We can get you off to a hot, fast start in 2016. We can help you extract, transform and load your data into meaningful sets, mobilize and monitor your predictive HR trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level. Whew, that’s saying a lot. Or is that just our story?

Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation. 512-478-3848.

Taking Steps To Become A “Data Business”

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ShopperThis is a classic and classy piece published in the Deloitte University Press series last year.

Here is an excerpt you can use to check your action list and see where you are in becoming a new-age business adaptation – ready and able to compete by knowing who your prospects are, how they become customers and then how you create and deliver an exceptional and remarkable customer experience. The full article is here: http://dupress.com/articles/steps-to-data-analytics-business

  1. Step one is to envision what your offering will be. This step applies no matter what business you’ve been focused on in the past. You may have previously sold drugs (I mean the legal kind), banking transactions, mobile phones, cars and trucks, or watches, but now you could be selling data, analytics, and insights around those offerings as well.
  2. Step two is to think about the legal implications of your offering. You’ve probably already begun to collect some data that your existing products and services spew out as exhaust.
  3. Step three is to ensure that you can create your new data product or service from an operational standpoint. This is the same type of activity that your organization has been doing for a while to support internally oriented applications. Companies wishing to do data products have to ensure that they collected or acquired the right data over time, that it was cleaned and integrated, and that analysis tools are able to give customers the insights they need around the data.
  4. Step four is to try out a business model for your data product or service. Who knows for sure whether customers will be willing to pay for your new product by itself, or whether you will have to bundle it in with existing offerings?

Who knows which data or insights they will value most? Who knows how much you can charge? Nobody really knows these things, which is why you need to begin a series of iterative activities to find out.

We can help you mobilize and evaluate your data product options, monitor your predictive trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level.

Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation that can enhance your data management investment so you can make savvy asset management decisions. 512-478-3848

Simply Irresistible. It’s A Powerful Force. It’s Mobile Custom Apps!

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Like the lyrics from a No 1. chart-busting blue-eyed soul tune from the when you were still looking at girls:

“She’s a craze you’d endorse, she’s a powerful force
You’re obliged to conform when there’s no other course,
She used to look good to me, but now I find her . . . wait for it . . . simply irresistible!”


It started with Google and WordPress getting together. And Google decided that your company web site needs to be “mobile-friendly”. Same with your company blog. And, of course, WordPress has a custom template for that to make sure you can be found on the net when your prospects, employees and colleagues are searching on their tablets or smart devices.

And now it’s really official. A few months ago, IDC publicized their FutureScape web conference to address the following; ten essential imperatives enterprise mobility stakeholders must address as they prioritize, develop, and execute their mobile app strategies in 2015-2018. Their top decision imperatives covered topics such as:

  • Solving for the top barriers to broader enterprise “appification”
  • Extended desktop, standalone, or custom: The right app for the situation and the right resources to get there
  • Getting ahead of the intelligent service delivery wave
  • Taking advantage of the mobile API economy
  • Security’s new perimeter(s)
  • Organizing IT for its new mobility and 3rd platform charter
  • Additional topics included: winning over the mobile-only generation, emerging app architectures, the role of the cloud, service-enabling the mobile line-of-business, mobile application lifecycle management and app development distribution in a heterogeneous client environment.

Recently, we have noticed more buzz you need to know on custom app development trends;

  • Studies show that 70% of companies are embracing mobility and building out their own custom solutions. Have you delayed your own app development projects for cost or security concerns?  If so it’s time to get started. According to new research released by IDC, 2016 may just go down in the books as the Year of the Enterprise App.
  • IDC found that data integration troubles will cause 45% of app development initiatives to be delayed or go over budget. With an established APIs tier, companies can mitigate many of these issues and add velocity to every mobile app development project in their program.
  • There’s no way around it: mobile apps are taking over businesses of all sizes. According to these trends, it’s looking like 2016 and beyond will be huge for “appification.”

Do you see why you need a strategic partner that is an extension of your team?

We can help you mobilize and monitor your predictive HR trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals, flag shifts in your markets or financial operations and even lift your customer experiences to a higher level.

Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation that can enhance your data management investment while you “go mobile” and make savvy asset management decisions. 512-478-3848.

Lean IT in Healthcare Delivers More

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Once Upon A TimeOnce upon a time in a land far, far away, some top industry consultants got together with some gallant healthcare executives to drill down into ways to make their IT investment more responsive, delivering measurable value. This is an excerpt from that story. Could you benefit from the lesson at the end?

This is the beginning and middle of the story. It’s an article from McKinsey & Company’s industry-specific authors focused on applying “Lean IT” to healthcare.

“In our experience, it’s often possible to increase IT productivity by 20 to 40 percent through the application of lean and to reduce the delivery time of new applications and functionality by 10 to 30 percent through more rapid iterations. As a result, lean not only reduces IT costs directly but also enhances revenues by accelerating the deployment of digital technologies.

In many respects, the IT department of a typical healthcare provider is similar to the IT functions of companies in other sectors. Each IT team deals with the common challenges of keeping servers running, rolling out new applications, and supporting end-user devices, such as PCs, tablets, and smartphones. And delivering data that supports the range of C-level responsibilities from strategic planning to supply-chain logistics in a changing clinical services and payment landscape.

So, as we have reported here in a number of earlier posts and comments, hiring is one of the toughest decisions most healthcare provider face in staffing their IT teams. And closely aligned is the need to have the analysts focus on prepping and evaluating the massive data that is aggregated, from inside and outside data sets, so that it can be leveraged into both short and long-terms planning excellence.

Lesson; wherever that healthcare provider is along their path of preventions, patient engagement and revenue life-cycle management, they are aware that expedited delivery of usable data comes more readily when they choose to outsource data integration to talented teams of specialists.

If you want a very quick, real-life story that epitomizes what outsourcing can do to unclog the information and decisions-making pipeline, take a look here.

We can help you monitor your predictive tendency trends, measure progress toward a set of quantitative goals or flag emerging shifts in your patients’ health challenges or your financial operations. Call us to start a neutral and friendly conversation that can enhance your lean IT strategy and data management investment while you make savvy asset management decisions. Just call us – 512 478 3848.