HealthNow New York Selects Inergex To Conduct A Business Intelligence Assessment

Client: HealthNow New York
Client Location: United States
Client Industry: Healthcare

Client Profile
HealthNow New York Inc. does business as BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, BlueShield of Northeastern New York, and HealthNow in the Central New York region. It also operates a Medicare claims processing division. HealthNow traces its roots to 1936, when it pioneered affordable healthcare coverage for the working men and women of Western New York. HealthNow has annual revenues exceeding $2 billion.

Business Situation & Challenge
Several departments within HealthNow use Business Intelligence (BI) tools to more clearly understand critical information so that they can identify areas of improvement, enhance current strengths, understand costs, and find new opportunities. Unfortunately, the nature of the BI environment was starting to make it difficult to extract the right information and metrics. For example, departments such as Medical Economics and Actuarial wanted to more effectively use information to run their core business, control costs, and strategize future game plans. However, the current BI reporting process failed to adequately deliver standardized reporting along with accurate information. In time, these problems developed into data silos and uncontrolled information flow. HealthNow needed to ensure that BI resources were utilized appropriately and that the overall BI system’s Return on Investment (ROI) could be tracked, measured, and justified based on the derived benefits. Something needed to change.

HealthNow set forth the following objectives, which would allow the company to overcome the BI environment’s challenges and departmental perceptions on data requests and delivery:

• Reduce data silos and increase report turnaround time.
• Engage regularly with business users to help with process development and continuous improvement efforts.
• Increase user adoption within various departments.
• Standardize data collection and reporting.
• Track and measure ROI according to the initial roadmap.
• Change the value perception of the BI investment.
• Improve data loading and data integrity Service Level Agreements.
• Update the BI roadmap including staff model and a System Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

In addition, HealthNow needed to step back and look at the different facets of the organization as a whole, especially areas such as technology and processes, so that the company could identify potential improvements and develop a tangible BI path for the future.

Solution
For the past several years, HealthNow has been utilizing Inergex’s IT Managed Services and Competency Center expertise. HealthNow’s first-hand experience with Inergex, coupled with Inergex’s years of BI knowledge working for several enterprise-sized organizations, made it easy for HealthNow to choose to engage with Inergex’s BI competency.

Inergex built a BI Assessment that outlined a short- and long-term plan to move the BI and reporting environment forward based on several core objectives and requirements, including:

• A scorecard that measured the HealthNow BI and Data Warehouse environment against industry best practices.
• Organizational structure recommendations, including detailed role descriptions for the HealthNow BI team.
• Details regarding all project initiatives and a blended team approach to deliver short-term wins while staying focused on the long-term vision and desired results. The recommended project team included members from other areas of HealthNow’s IT staff and the business user community to enable cross-functional communication.
• Development of processes with gates and standard reviews to improve the quality of information delivery while streamlining and removing process bottlenecks.
• A detailed outline of the tools available in-house (Informatica and Cognos) and recommended areas to improve data quality, performance, and value.
• Specific key measurements and success factors for ensuring positive results that met expectations.
• Prioritized BI project portfolio and schedule considerations.

Project Results & Benefits
The BI Assessment provided HealthNow with a clear roadmap for improving the BI team structure, project priorities, and business user communication and interaction. The BI delivery process was streamlined, allowing for better use of resources and tools. HealthNow achieved positive ROI because it acted upon several recommendations from day one. After HealthNow received and implemented the BI Assessment recommendations, the company achieved many successes, including these:

• Specific team resources are predominantly outsourced, allowing for flexible staffing as projects dictate.
• A Data Warehouse administrator has been hired, allowing that specialized skill set to differentiate from the standard pool of DBAs.
• Meetings are held regularly to support clear and constructive communications between teams.
• The involvement of a BI Specialist early on in the project allows for faster project delivery.

"The BI Assessment was very well written and thorough. It provided actionable objectives for our team to implement right away, helping to build a positive ROI from the start."
Paul Stoddard, Former CIO
HealthNow New York

For more information about this project and/or how Inergex can help you with your specific business/IT objectives, please contact us at cs@inergex.com.

For more information about HealthNow New York Inc., please visit www.healthnowny.com.

CS_Inergex_HealthNow_BI Assessment_F.pdf