Meet the Analytics Team at a Leading Healthcare Provider

Meet Dave, the Director of Healthcare Analytics at a leading healthcare provider was in a tough spot. His team was the first line of support for analytics at the hospital responsible for compliance reporting, patient data, and payment data. But as the demand for data in the organization grew, he observed a disturbing trend: a demotivated analytics team and a noticeable dip in their performance.

Despite their role as analytics specialists, a significant portion of the team’s time was consumed by repetitive, mundane administrative tasks, such as user creation, report formatting, and production migrations. The repetitive nature of these tasks was leading to increased stress levels and disengagement among team members.

A Missed Opportunity

Feedback: The frustrations were heightened when many team members came forward with proposals for automation tools that could potentially ease their workloads. However, upper management was hesitant to invest, viewing it as an unnecessary expenditure.

Exit Interviews: The ultimate blow came when the Director started losing some of his most skilled employees. Exit interviews confirmed the suspicion: dissatisfaction due to repetitive tasks and the organization’s reluctance to adopt modern solutions.

Did You Know?

The intricacies of talent retention and issue resolution play a pivotal role in shaping the efficiency and productivity of organizations. According to Deloitte, the performance of high-repetition tasks correlates significantly with a staggering 28% increase in turnover rates, underscoring the critical impact of job design and variety on employee retention.

On another front, insights from the HDI Support Center shed light on issue resolution within the IT domain, highlighting that specialists exhibit a 52% faster resolution time compared to their non-specialist counterparts.

These statistics reinforce the importance of specialized expertise in swiftly addressing and resolving intricate IT concerns, ultimately contributing to enhanced operational speed and efficiency within organizations.

The Solution

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the Director sought an alternate path to bring relief to his team. Instead of pushing further for in-house automation, he turned to external expertise. He contracted with Data Meaning, a firm specializing in managed services for Alteryx. Data Meaning took over the monotonous tasks, leveraging their in-house admin tools and expertise. They offloaded the repetitive and mundane tasks, allowing the team to focus on engaging analysis, predictive modeling, and high-value business cases.

Outcomes: Engagement & Scalability

• Improved productivity and engagement: By outsourcing repetitive tasks, the team was able to focus on more meaningful work. This led to higher engagement levels and less burnout.
• Increased retention: Burnout and dissatisfaction were reduced, and the director saw increased retention on his analytics team.
• Expanded analytics capabilities: Data Meaning brought new skills and expertise that complemented the in-house analytics team. With their help, the in-house team took on more advanced analytics projects.
• Cost savings: While there was an upfront cost to contracting Data Meaning, it was more cost effective due to their ability to offer fractional services.  Also, it was more cost effective than high turnover expenses or investing in in-house admin automation solutions. The director put together a ROI analysis to demonstrate this to upper management.
• Upper management buy-in: By demonstrating a cost-effective solution to an urgent business need, the director established trust with upper management. They became more open to his ideas moving forward.
• Better talent recruitment: By improving the work experience for current employees, the director could more easily attract top analytics talent to his team. His employer brand and reputation improved.

A New World: Analytics Managed Services

The Value

Analytics managed services offer transformative advantages enabling organizations to extract maximum value from their data, drive proactive insights, better decision-making, and streamlined operational efficiency without the hassle of handling the complexities of managing analytics infrastructure in-house. Specifically, some of the added values of managed services provided by Data Meaning include:

• Longer Support Windows: We have options to support longer support windows and even off-hours.
• Fractional Services: We offer fractional staffing for roles like infrastructure engineering and server architecture, resulting in cost savings compared to building an in-house team.
• Scalable: We provide flexible resourcing, rapidly scaling expertise up or down to meet changing project needs. This on-demand model is faster and more cost-effective than traditional FTE hiring.
• Best Practices: Education and Training for certifications in the latest versions of the supported technologies.
• No Turnover or Training: Turn over can result in variable recruiting fees and additional onboarding and training costs when in-sourcing.
• Point of Escalation: Internal escalation for more complex issues, such as infrastructure configuration; single sign-on or automated Python scripts.

Analytics Governance

With the inclusion of analytics governance, Data Meaning established the framework, policies, and processes to ensure that data analytics within the organization are managed, controlled, and utilized effectively, and in compliance with regulations.

• Develop Analytics Governance RACI
• Align Analytics Governance RACI to DG RACI
• Create Inventory of Existing Analytical Assets
• Discovery of Current State DevOps Practices (optional)
• Define Future State DevOps Processes
• Create Deployment Checklist
• Implement & Test Future State DevOps Processes

Contract Flexibility Agreement

In terms of resource allocation, the Data Meaning consultants involved in this project are versatile and can be deployed for other tasks or projects as long as the workload remains within the limits specified in the contract. This flexibility allows for their utilization elsewhere while ensuring that the total hours outlined in the agreement are not surpassed.

Furthermore, regarding scope expansion, there’s an opportunity for consultants to take on extra tasks beyond the defined project scope as outlined in the Statement of Work (SOW). However, this extension is contingent upon mutual agreement between involved parties and the consultants’ availability within the designated hours stipulated in the contract. This flexibility allows for potential adjustments or additions to the project’s scope, provided it aligns with the agreed-upon terms and the consultants’ available time.

Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

At Data Meaning, we are committed to delivering top-tier managed services that cater to our clients’ diverse needs. To ensure we’re consistently meeting and exceeding expectations, we regularly conduct comprehensive customer surveys that provide a wealth of insights into how our managed services are perceived, utilized, and where opportunities for improvement lie. Here are some results from our customers:

“Our support engineer works thoughtfully and diligently on every task and project: He communicates well. He knows exactly when to work thru an issue on his own, and then loops in the right people at the right time with the right information needed to make a decision.

He works well with everyone: he’s kind with a good sense of humor and makes work easy and pleasant. He is knowledgeable: I trust his opinion and any information/recommendations he provides. He is open-minded: we can have a thoughtful debate together to come with a good solution. He’s a great teacher!  I’m much newer to many systems, and he knows when I need help and education.”

– Director, Analytics Technology at Global Brand of Hotels & Resorts

“Shokat!  Game changer today.  I know it may have been small codes for you – but being able to rename and move files for the information that I can’t easily get from the warehouse, really allows to save hours every Monday pulling, naming, manually running workflows, renaming, moving.  What you did today allows me to automate SAP jobs, automate Alteryx workflow, and automate refresh from PowerBi.  You and Muhammad are saving me about 2-3 hours a week!  Thank you!”

– Manager, LP Total Loss & Shrink at American Retail Chain

“We have been consistently happy with the services Data Meaning provides. Our support engineer is always super responsive via email or chat, and quick to help and resolve issues. Most recently he received high praise from one of our Sales directors and an external customer for helping us build out a MSTR API solution and then presenting it in a high-visibility customer meeting for us. We look forward to continuing the partnership and the high level of support we’ve come to expect from the team.”

– Sales Operations at Leading Federal Procurement & Contract Management Services

“I wanted to let you know that our support engineer from Data Meaning has really helped us out yesterday and today. Some background: A user from the SQL Ops team wanted us to migrate a bunch of old databases to a supported version of Microsoft SQL server, which necessitated a server change.  The production migration was scheduled for yesterday May 1st. We requested that our support engineer update the Azure Gallery connections to point to the new database server.  Unfortunately, we got tripped up on a firewall issue because new server did not have a firewall created.  Our support engineer stayed with us through the night and even now as the firewall is implemented and we are validating Alteryx connections for both CDR and DDP systems.  I just wanted to recognize his exemplary work. Feel free to pass this feedback on to the Data Meaning management team.”

– Head of Data Strategy & VMRD at Global Animal Health Company

Ready to Get Started?

Data Meaning provide specialists with deep domain experience to implement Data Governance frameworks that align with industry standards and accelerate time-to-compliance.   

We help teams accelerate time-to-compliance by leveraging our specialists with deep domain experience in the following areas: Governance framework and policy; Data Asset Management; Data Quality & Compliance; Governance Metrics & KPI´s; Risk Management; Tools and Technology Recommendations; Training and Communications; and Planning and Roadmap.