Management Information Analysis

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Indiana Uses Data Analytics to Reduce Infant Mortality

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Infant MortalityAs recently as 2011, Indiana had the sixth-highest infant mortality rate in the nation, at 7.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. Last year, soon after taking office, Governor Mike Pence announced the launch of a data analytics project to identify the causes of this high rate and subsequently attempt to lower it. Now, a report shows that the project, the first undertaken by the Management and Performance Hub (MPH), is already producing tangible results.

To carry out the investigation, data was collated from a number of health care organizations and state agencies, then mapped out in great detail. The researchers found that a disproportionate number of infant deaths occur among the children of young mothers who are on Medicaid. This group makes up just 1.6 percent of all births in Indiana but almost half of all deaths. The main cause is insufficient prenatal care, whereas lifestyle factors such as smoking during pregnancy have a much smaller influence.

The ability to gather detailed information on various sectors of the population can be key for the future of analytics. The MPH hopes to use similar techniques for future undertakings, cracking down on crime, recidivism and child abuse by identifying at-risk groups and allocating resources accordingly.

“Once you do the hard work of getting everything set up, then you have the ability to make different decisions and do different things,” said KSM Consulting practice director Cris Johnston. “We believe the success in doing these initial use cases will lead to more collaborative efforts to solve complex problems facing Indiana citizens.”

Public administrations are increasingly realizing the value of data management solutions, which they can use to improve a wide array of public services, from health care and law enforcement to energy efficiency and public transportation.

Data Analytics Could Save Health Care Industry Hundreds of Billions

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Health CareThe health care industry has benefited from the use of data analytics to refine everything from patient services to staff management. When it comes to industry-specific solutions, health care is one of the areas that offers the most options, however, a new report suggests that organizations could be saving hundreds of billions of dollars every year by focusing their analytics efforts on the financial side of their operations.

The study was published in the public health journal BMC Health Service Research and states that more efficient management of billing and other financial data could save as much as $375 billion annually, or a staggering 15 percent of all U.S. health care costs. Achieving the full potential savings would take a major overhaul of billing systems, but there is little question that it would be worth the effort.

While an industry and nationwide adoption of a unified payer system is not realistic, there is some reason for optimism. The latest revision of the ICD-10 Procedure Coding System went into effect in October, putting more of a focus on revenue management. The percentage of industry costs that go to billing and insurance alone more than doubled between 1980 and 2010, ballooning to over $470 billion, so health care providers should embrace the opportunity to reduce that figure.

Even minor adjustments to data solutions could save $40 billion per year, according to the researchers. As the American health care industry undergoes major legislative and operational changes, the organizations at the forefront of analytics adoption will emerge as the most efficient and financially sound.

Holiday Season Provides Valuable Retail Analytics

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Holiday Retail AnalyticsThe holidays are always the busiest time of the year for retailers. A strong season can salvage a lackluster sales year, but the period is not without its challenges. Temporary staff must be hired, the shelves stocked and everybody has to be on top of their game to make sure that stores are ready for the increased demand, otherwise a retailer’s reputation could suffer due to subpar service. In recent times, a new factor has entered the scene: analytics.

This year more than ever, social media played a major role in this trend. Enterprise software company SAP SE says it recorded more than 28 million mentions of shopping practices on social networks, an 8 percent increase over last year. More importantly, the data obtained can provide valuable insights into consumer practices, which in turn retailers can use to adjust their services in the future.

For instance, SAP found that the shopping season itself is getting longer. In a survey it conducted together with Ipsos, 21 percent of respondents reported buying Christmas presents for their significant others before Thanksgiving, and Black Friday sales fell by 5 percent from 2013. It appears that convenience and time are now rivaling price as buyers’ top priorities, and this is just one of the factors that is driving the growth of online retail, which also showed on social media.

Retail data solutions help companies build customer loyalty by allowing them to adapt their own practices to those of the public. Going forward, sellers that truly understand what motivates consumers will be able to separate themselves from their competitors and earn their customers’ loyalty.

Use of “Thick Data” on the Rise

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Thick DataBig data entered the mainstream a long time ago, but its development is still very much ongoing. One of the latest wrinkles in the analytics world is the emergence of so-called “thick data.” The notion behind this development is that, while big data provides large volumes of information, analytics tools often cast too wide a net and are not focused enough.

Thick data, therefore, is meant to complement big data by allowing users to delve deeper into specific areas that can provide them with the most valuable insights. Sometimes, having access to general sweeping consumer behavior trends is not enough to allow businesses to adequately tailor their services in order to maximize revenue and customer satisfaction.

Two prominent companies that have had success with thick data are Lego and Samsung, which conducted hours of interviews and studies in order to understand their target audience better than they could with mere facts and figures. This is, in essence, the procedure that researchers use in health sciences, and when applied to consumer-oriented industries it can produce very useful results.

“We invite a number of our clients to our facility here on the east coast, and we ask them to work with the software on their own,” explained a software company’s CEO to TechRepublic. “While they are doing this, we videotape them. Afterwards, we analyze the videos to determine which portions of the report design process were easy and intuitive for them, and which they had trouble with. We then break down all of the trouble areas to determine what the issues were, and we find ways to ergonomically solve these.”

The benefits of business intelligence analytics are well-established by now, and successful developments like this one should further cement their place as a top priority for companies.

Survey: Two Thirds of Americans are Willing to Share Their Health Data

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Data PrivacyPrivacy is one of the main concerns of any data analytics process that involves gathering information from consumers. This is even more true in the case of health care because of the sensitive nature of the data. But health care is also one of the industries that stands to benefit, and indeed is already benefiting, the most from analytics. Now, a survey conducted by NPR and Truven Health Analytics shows that Americans are probably more willing to share their medical information than is generally thought.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents to the survey said they would allow their health data to be used anonymously for research purposes. Conversely, when asked if they feel uncomfortable sharing their records, only 16 percent agreed they don’t like sharing with their insurers, 14 percent with hospitals and 11 percent with physicians.

The survey also shows a significant adoption of electronic health records (EHRs): 74 percent said their physicians use them. That percentage is higher among patients that are older and those with a higher level of education.

“An overwhelming number of patients have had experiences with EHRs, which seems to point toward a concerted effort among health care providers to share information as a means to faster, more accurate care,” said Truven CMO Michael Taylor. “While privacy concerns have been an issue in the past, as EHRs continue to become more prevalent, it appears that Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable sharing this type of information with employers, providers and health plans.”

Health organizations are increasing their EHR adoption and improving their access to updated patient data. With comprehensive ETL architecture, they can make those records available across various providers, further improving the efficiency of their operations.

Centralized Analytics Groups Improve Decision-Making

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Data AnalyticsMany organizations rely on data analytics to govern their business operations, but not all have refined their data gathering and implementation processes. With the new year, companies have a chance to take a big step forward and fully integrate data into their plans for 2015. A recent Marketing Land column suggests creating a centralized data analytics group to make sure that every department is on the same page.

With an analytics group, business decision-makers can more effectively focus the information they draw from various sources. Organizations gather data in every department, from financial to marketing and customer service. While some of that information is exclusive to each operational area, much of it can provide business leaders with vital insights that they can use to improve operations across the company.

Ideally, each department could have a data group that would report to the larger centralized one where the organization’s strategies are decided. Business leaders can define performance indicators on a general and specific level, allowing all departments to benefit from useful data gathered in one area. With regular meetings, the data group can adapt those strategies and adjust them to any market changes.

For organizations that are embarking on a major project, such as an expansion or relocation plan, there can never be too much available information. It is essential that decision-makers understand their target market with as much accuracy as possible in order to guide such an endeavor to a successful finish.

ETL Transforms Warehouse Management

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Warehouse ManagementSupply and inventory management requires a high degree of planning and analytics to forecast information that affects the totality of an enterprise. Distribution, production and purchasing are facets of operations that benefit from having readily available data in real-time. ETL software provides ERP solutions to these components of a business by improving accessibility to information across disparate systems. Having access to the entirety of data pertaining to operations enables the implementation of effective business management strategies.

World Wide Technology provides an example of the impact ETL architecture can have on data warehouse optimizations (DWO).

“Our Big Data experts and infrastructure engineers have designed and integrated hardware, software and services into a single DWO solution that alleviates performance bottlenecks, allows organizations to take full advantage of their data sets and demonstrates a real return on investment within two months.” said Bob Olwig, Vice President of Business Strategy and Innovation with World Wide Technology.

Systems integration is the foundation of improving DWO. Providing warehouses with information regarding sales enables them control inventory and distribution tasks in order to assure a high standard of customer satisfaction is achieved. By synthesizing their information with other components within their enterprise, warehouses can also provide information that enables sales departments to improve their performance.

Sales, accounting, warehousing and other departments represent the individual components of a business that must work in cooperation with one another to enable their collective success. Communication is the foundation of being cooperative. Systems integration enables these divisions to effectively communication with one another in order to work in unison. ETL software achieves the degree of connectivity that is necessary to arrive at that unity.

Management Information Analysis provides ETL architecture to businesses that seek to benefit from business intelligence software. By integrating systems, ERP is invariably improved.

IDC: Retail Analytics to Triple by 2017

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Retail AnalyticsBusinesses have more data available to them than ever before, and the retail industry is among the leaders in adopting analytics solutions to help them improve every aspect of their operations, from customer service to project planning. According to the latest FutureScape report by International Data Corporation (IDC), the market is going to grow exponentially over the next three years.

Researchers predict that by 2017, three times as many retail organizations will depend on third-platform technology to assist in their business operations. Companies are trending toward adoption of Omni-channel Retailing solutions, which help them provide more seamless service across their brick-and-mortar locations and online platforms. These systems have the additional benefit of providing additional data points to gather more information about customer bases.

“The most successful retailers will find opportunities by putting mobility, analytics, cloud, and social to work in their customer and operations strategies, adopting Omni-channel integration technologies and IT governance, unifying customer engagement for hyper-personalized loyalty, adopting product intelligence for marketing and competitive insight, employing location-based services via analytics-driven agile engagement and operations, utilize socially-networked on-demand delivery services, and gain share with private label merchandise,” said IDC vice president Leslie Hand.

The use of analytics will soon become an inextricable part of any retailer’s expansion or relocation plans. While companies’ own business intelligence dashboards are aimed more toward customer service, a growing number are turning to third-party providers for broader demographic and consumer insights. This information guides major projects, allowing retailers to make more informed overarching business decisions that have major impacts on the entire organization’s finances.

Survey: Big Data Analytics Evolving Toward Improved ROI

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Return On InvestmentFew can dispute that big data analytics are fast becoming an important part of any company’s business strategies. But it is equally true that this is still a young trend, and one that many enterprises haven’t mastered yet. A survey conducted by technology community Wikibon shows that currently companies are getting a return of just 55 cents on every dollar they invest in big data.

On the plus side, respondents are still very optimistic about what the future holds and expect to make up to $3.50 on the dollar within the next three to five years. The results show a significant divide between business and IT managers, with the latter reporting much higher success rates. The authors of the report say that this is due to a difference in criteria: IT managers consider a project successful when the technological tools work well, but business decision-makers want to see financial results.

The authors write that it is essential to know the different roles that employees play, understanding the complexities of the process in order to simplify it. On the IT side, there is a separation between the employees whose job it is to operate the tools and those who develop specific applications. On the business side, the challenge is designing a plan that will allow companies to focus their analytics efforts on areas that they know will produce useful data.

Business intelligence reporting systems are already evolving and becoming more accurate as companies fine tune their data mining processes. Over time, a greater understanding of how analytics work will certainly improve their effect on the bottom line.

Data Analytics Dominate List of Most Innovative Companies

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InnovationThe Boston Consulting Group (BCG) provided more evidence of the importance of data analytics last month with the release of its list of the world’s 50 most innovative companies. According to the study, innovative companies are three times more likely to rely on analytics than those not considered innovative. Fifty-seven percent of innovative companies have data management solutions in place, and 67 percent report positive returns from those projects.

The top of the list is dominated by tech companies, with Apple Inc., Google, Samsung, Microsoft and IBM making up the top five. But the rest of the list shows a variety of industries, including financial enterprises, manufacturers, retailers and even food and beverage companies.

In a survey of executives, 81 percent of those whose companies use data analytics extensively credit that focus with making them more innovative. BCG calculated that those companies’ revenues are on average 12 percent higher than for businesses without analytics investment. Despite these tangible results, the survey suggests that many decision-makers still don’t fully realize the value of data management.

Software companies were highest in both active use of big data and expectation that big data will impact their business significantly within the next three to five years, but less than half of companies have already implemented data analytics.

Studies like this one prove beyond a doubt that data analytics can have a very noticeable effect on the way companies do business. With greater insight into their industries and target audiences, businesses can find creative and innovative ways to get ahead of their competitors.

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