Values of Business Intelligence Applications
Today's workforce centers generate tremendous amounts of data that are essential to case managers and decision makers. When the complexity of data and process becomes a barrier to better organization, Business Intelligence is the key to achieving process efficiency, staff accountability, and top performance.
are all objectives of adopting Business Intelligence applications and tools.
But the goals of BI are to empower staff and managers with better tools and to improve case management and customer service processes, thereby leading to satisfied customers and case managers. Ultimately, it's about People, not technology.
Program Specialists and Managers deal with mountains of data and reports in both TWIST and local computer programs such as Excel, Word, and Access. There are dozens of TWIST Web Reports to run each day, submitted separately by each center managers and program staff. Excel case tracking sheets and lists of other staff-generated data are kept, edited, and distributed daily, which are often incomplete, out of date, of different version, or lost.
You have multiple tools and software to access, track, analyze and distribute these data, but getting the right information to the right people at the right time remains an imprecise exercise in technology and process management.
When you have an incomplete or wrong information, performance suffers. Program staff is relegated to data entry and paper-pushing, and customer service becomes unsatifactory. More costs are added by duplicative report queries and wasteful reproduction to distribute. Unproductive and dissatisfied staff leads to a high turn-over, further incurring your organization added time and expenses to train new hires.
The values of Business Intelligence come from its power to simplify. This simplification leads to improved service process, better case management, effective managerial oversight, and better performance.
Simplicity in Data Access & Information Sharing
Once OBIS™ data is updated, usually once in the morning, all TWIST reports are available for anyone. Drilling-down to center and staff levels is done within the OBIS tables, reducing labor and printing costs for distribution.
Easy-to-Deploy, Easy-to-Use Applications
OBIS system is easily scalable to any number of users. Its Web-based applications are accessible anywhere, anytime within the network. User interface is flexible and customized. We design it to fit the way staff uses these reports and data.
Integration & Better Decision-Making
It is often necessary to combine several reports to get a clearer picture. For example, Choices program specialists need to combine information from TANF Federal report, Active report, and Time report. Some information is in one report but not in the other. Staff has to download Excel extracts, filter relevant cases, and match them into one dataset. This is usually well beyond staff's capability and, as a result, the level of information utilization extremely low.
Business Intelligence applications can present a combined, cross-referenced table to staff and managers. All relevant information from all reports is matched, analyzed, and presented for action.
Other non-TWIST data (e.g. Child Care Report), support service management data, and case tracking sheets kept in Excel can also be connected to this integrated table. Based on integrated summaries, trends and flagged problem cases, staff and managers can make a better informed decision.
Monitoring and Control
Business Intelligence applications go beyond processing, analyzing data, and reporting tables. BI incorporates business logic into its analysis and reporting. Based on pre-determined criteria, BI applications can recognize problem cases and send control messages to appropriate personnel.
For example, a message can be sent to a program supervisor if the program's performance rate is below a certain percentage. A manager can be alerted if a staff has 2 or more overdue cases. Inactive customers who receive child care can be forwarded to managers as possible disallowed cases and for immediate action.
Reduced Costs and Wastes, Improved Productivity
Cost reduction in labor and materials is significant whenever tasks are duplicated. Different centers and programs often submit duplicate report queries, print and distribute them to individual staff. Without the benefit of integrated reports (see above), hundreds of pages of customer lists are often printed. They are often wasted for the difficulty in matching cases manually.
Substantial savings are also achieved through automation. For example, when support services are processed through checks and daily logs, the end-of-the-month reconciliation often requires several staff to gather staff's logs, verify and calculate expenses. This paper-based process usually takes a few days and is prone to inaccuracies and mistakes. An application-driven process can convert all business logic into a program, and the whole process can be automated. Daily tasks are simplified and the reconciliation process is instantaneous. By automating many paper-based processes, BI applications can improve not only your bottom line but also staff's productivity and satisfaction.
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Cost reduction