At a recent Open Minds conference, I attended a compelling Provider presentation entitled “Analytics to Support Whole Person Care & Optimize Reimbursement Rates.” The speakers detailed their Human Service Organization’s transformative journey toward becoming a data-driven organization. They walked us through their meticulous planning process, the frameworks they developed, the IT architecture they implemented, and showcased impressive examples of their interactive performance dashboards. It was remarkable to see how they transitioned from relying on countless Excel spreadsheets and manual reports to an integrated, automated system of dashboards.
As I listened, I couldn’t help but notice striking similarities between their in-house solution and what we offer at The BI Collaborative—a Business Intelligence Platform tailored specifically for Human Service Providers. After the presentation, I approached one presenter to delve deeper into their experience:
- Question 1: How large is your organization?
- Answer: We currently are $70 million in annual revenue.
- Question 2: Could you share some insights about your IT staff?
- Answer: We started with five IT staff members and have since expanded to ten.
- Question 3: How long did it take to transition from Excel spreadsheets to your current automated dashboard environment?
- Answer: It took us five years.
This conversation underscored the significant time, effort, and resources required for such a transformation. It also highlighted the necessity of a clear vision, dedicated staff, and a commitment to continuous improvement to truly become a data-driven organization.
Considerations for Providers
- Can you afford to wait five years to achieve this level of automation and performance insight?
- Do you have the capacity to allocate over $500,000 annually for IT resources with data architecture and BI skills?
- Don’t forget the ongoing costs for BI tools, data warehousing, hosting, security, and other software needs.
- Does your organization possess the internal expertise in implementation success factors beyond dashboard/report development, such as data governance, data literacy, and change management?
- Is building and maintaining such a system a core competency of your organization?
For many providers, the answer to these questions is likely NO.
The Alternative Path with The BI Collaborative
This is where The BI Collaborative comes in. We specialize exclusively in serving Human Service Providers, offering a comprehensive BI platform with hundreds of dashboards organized into modules that deliver a single source of truth (or a balanced scorecard) for organizational performance. Our clients benefit from a market-leading technology solution coupled with consulting best practices to improve successful adoption.
Benefits of Partnering with The BI Collaborative
- Expertise: We focus on this work all day, every day, bringing unparalleled expertise to your organization.
- Community: Join a community of peers sharing best practices and insights.
- Benchmarking: Start by measuring your own trends and, as our database grows, compare your performance against peers.
- Speed: You will get 200% more implemented leveraging our platform than defining & building your own reporting.
- Cost Efficiency: Save up to 80% on your annual budget compared to building and maintaining a solution internally.
Regardless of the path you choose—developing an internal system or partnering with The BI Collaborative—executive sponsorship is critical. Embracing data-driven practices is not a one-time project but a continuous journey of improvement and accountability.
Do airlines build planes? Of course not, they focus on being the best service provider they can be and leave plane building to companies that do that everyday. Focus on your core business and let The BI Collaborative equip you with “BEST IN CLASS” performance reporting.
