This week Information Age published the findings of a report from research firm Corporate Executive Board (CEB) which stated that CIOs plan to spend more on information management than on business process automation next year. In the article it states that “customer experience, data analytics and the facilitation of knowledge workers will take priority over business processes within corporate IT departments.”

CEB has attributed the change of pace to the emergence of ‘Big Data’, which was heralded as being in the Top Ten Technology Trends to look out for in 2012. CEB claims that organisations are paying a lot more attention to how they can harness information to deliver a competitive edge through better understanding customer behaviours and identifying trends.

We have found evidence of this trend through our conversations with customers as there has been increased interest in Business Intelligence and an added focus on Business Performance Management. The focus we are seeing is on combining data processing systems, enabling real-time interactive access, analysis and manipulation of information to give organisations the power to make better informed business decisions.

BI in Heathcare

These types of tools are particularly relevant to the healthcare sector and will be a really useful aid moving forward in starting to understand health trends across the country which is why the Department of Health recently reported that IT and business intelligence for Clinical Commissioning Groups are among the commissioning support functions best done “at scale”. The report says: “Evidence from South Central, West Midlands and East Midlands suggests aspects of business intelligence would be delivered most effectively by operations that cover an average population of around five million”.

With this in mind, we have joined ranks with CMA Group to offer Health Intellect – a business intelligence solution built with the NHS, for the NHS. It includes features such as customised engine for budget apportioning (from PCTs to CCGs) and automated contract challenge tools designed to reduce costs and manage budgets. Health Intellect allows clinicians and managers to get a complete view of how services are operating and at what overall cost, including management overheads. The solution connects to the key systems in an organisation, extracts the data and provides information in a single, easily accessible portal.

Reducing Patient Mortality Ratios with Scarborough NHS

We also recently completed a piece of work with Scarborough Acute NHS Trust to implement QlikView throughout their organisation and the benefits have been significant. The Trust was looking to connect and compile data from its different information systems to aid in critical clinical decision making, helping to reduce the mortality ratios. Trustmarque was chosen to help identify the right solution and it was amazing to see how quickly users were able to start delivering value from the product. We installed QlikView, provided training to staff on how to use it, and within 4 weeks users could start building bespoke dashboards for different clinical directorates within the Trust and pass their knowledge to those who hadn’t received our training.

QlikView is now pervasive across the Scarborough NHS Trust and has been used to automate waiting list management and enhance KPI reporting. QlikView has allowed service users to interact with their own data in a way they have never been able to do before with clinicians and senior managers now using QlikView daily to help in decision making.

It is important to remember however that Business intelligence can be used by any company. Information is power, whether that comes from understanding who your customers are, what kind of information is being consumed or trends in activities; the more knowledge you can gleam from your data networks the better. Using technology to reduce the burden of reporting and to give a clearer view to support a business case for investment is critical at this time and we would strongly urge all institutions to take Scarborough’s lead.

If you would like to find out more about our Business Intelligence solutions then take a look at our Scarborough NHS Trust case study, or visit our Business Performance Management solutions page.