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The Importance of Business Intelligence Reporting

 

My last blog talked about the changes that I have seen in the use of Business intelligence tools.  I thought that perhaps this one could discuss the importance of Business Intelligence reporting.

Business Intelligence reporting is a subject that has created a lot of interest, many comments and many BI solutions. There are numerous groups and web sites that discuss the subject in great detail.  Even searching the Daily Mirror produces the odd result for Business Intelligence.  Sadly no such results can be found in The Sun so you will have to find another excuse to look at page three.

Business Intelligence is important because it enables users to make decisions that affect how an organisation is run.

Forbes tells us that many companies are turning to business intelligence to help them to get a better understanding of the Key Performance indicators that drive their business.

A recent report by Accenture suggests that high performing companies are more analytical than lower performing businesses. They are more likely to have business intelligence capabilities, business intelligence reporting, and data that is integrated and analysed across the business rather than in silos.

But, for most Business Intelligence tools, the cost and time involved in implementing a Business Intelligence solution is prohibitive.  In fact many consulting organisations advise you to start slowly and then build up.  This, however, can prove to be difficult because there is often a need to build a data warehouse.  As it would be inefficient and expensive to continually add to a data warehouse these tend to be built before users can take advantage of Business Intelligence reporting.

At QlikPower we have found that one of the advantages offered by Qlikview is that, as a data warehouse is not required, data from the whole business can be analysed.  As importantly it allows you to start slowly and then build up.  You will quickly be able to gain the benefits of Business Intelligence reporting without the huge cost of developing a data warehouse.  

Free QlikView World Cup Application

QlikView has developed a FREE World Cup application so that soccer fans can enjoy discovering how Business Intelligence is great for discovering hidden facts and statistics really quickly from all the available data on World Cup performances.

Known as Kick IT and Qlik IT, this application gives World Cup fans a quick and easy way to discover unique facts and access comprehensive football data. Find historical data as far back as 1930, to as recent as the past hour of world football action. Analysis can be done by Year, Country, Player, Major World Tournament, or by dozens of other dimensions - like ‘'does player age equate to more wins''. Grow your football IQ! Qlik to see the fascinating facts and figures you can find in this World Football Fan App. Get the app now by going to http://www.qlikpower.com/kick-it-qlik-it/

QlikPower is the leading Professional Services and Implementation Partner for QlikView, the fastest growing Business Intelligence product in the world.

Leading healthcare provider implements QlikView

ThedaCare, the largest healthcare provider and employer in Northeast Wisconsin, has gained actionable insights into disease management, patient flows and financial management using QlikView. The deployment to 1,200 business and clinical users strengthens ThedaCare's commitment to employer plan purchasers and 225,000 patients served annually. As a data intensive business, the organization uses QlikView to analyze more than 110 million rows of data each day. ThedaCare recovered its entire investment in QlikView's analytics software prior to completing its full rollout this spring.

"QlikView dramatically reduces the time to answer business and clinical questions," said Brian Veara, ThedaCare's Manager of Decision Resources. "It is helping ThedaCare transition from standard static reporting to a truly analytical environment where any information can be rapidly accessed, analyzed and viewed exactly as needed. This capability is critical to fulfilling our mission to cost effectively improve the health of our community."

Using QlikView, clinicians now perform disease management analysis in seconds versus the hours, days and weeks they previously had to wait with traditional business intelligence tools. Executives and analysts can rapidly gain information for tracking, analyzing, forecasting, controlling and reporting financial and operational performance.

The new QlikView capabilities enable ThedaCare to explore data in its Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system and patient management systems as never before with more robust and flexible analytics applications. Examples include:

• Disease Management applications analyze the root causes for patient outcomes and KPIs for a wide variety of preventive care programs such as immunizations, disease screenings, LDL and blood pressure control, hypertension, anticoagulation medication management and tobacco cessation.
• Patient Care Benchmarks present aggregate information on how clinical teams and doctors perform and how patients respond to treatments
• Service Performance Metrics provide details on lab turnaround times, call center activity and appointment scheduling.
• Patient Flow Analysis to better understand and plan for how patients enter, use and exit the ThedaCare system. This not only helps the availability and delivery of care, but pinpoints need/risk/reward of expanding a facility, opening a new clinic or offering a new type of service.
• Financial Analysis, in addition to general ledger, AR aging and system-wide financial reporting, improves managing payer mix and physician volumes, negotiating contracts, and controlling expenses down to the cost center level.

ThedaCare will use QlikView to support its Lean Management practices throughout its organization. Planned projects include leveraging the new accessibility to its Electronic Medical Records system for creating decision-support innovations that will further improve healthcare value.

"Healthcare organizations spend an inordinate amount of time and money trying to access and use information for decision support, revenue cycle management, evidence-based medicine, medical records management and supply chain management. The best way to improve care delivery and control costs is to streamline information processes, just like ThedaCare and hundreds of other healthcare providers worldwide are doing with QlikView," said Tim Wassman, President of QlikTech Americas.

ThedaCare chose QlikView when its data volumes outgrew existing reporting tools. To simply upgrade reporting based on traditional technology would have meant a considerable capital investment in software licenses and hardware, and would have continued burdens on IT staff. QlikView provided a more affordable path to simple and flexible access to information with little or no end user dependence on IT.

About ThedaCare

ThedaCare^TM is the largest healthcare provider and employer in Northeast Wisconsin with more than 5,400 employees at 43 sites, serving more than 225,000 unique patients in a 14-county area. The extensive ThedaCare community health system includes four hospitals, a primary care practice with 120 physicians at 23 sites, a 24-hour call service, comprehensive senior care (home health services, assisted living, skilled nursing facility, home hospice and residential hospice), customized healthcare solutions for area employers, joint ventures with other area healthcare providers and partnerships with area physicians.

Blue Tree choose QlikPower

 

Blue Tree Systems is a leading provider of Fleet Management solutions to the transportation industry. Dave Miller, Software Development Manager has chosen QlikView  to help improve their reporting and analytical capabilities

Thrifty drives success with QlikView in Ireland

‘QlikView gives us visibility of the key performance indicators that drive profitability in the business. It brings clarity, reliability and simplicity to data analysis 'said Pat O'Gorman, Financial Controller at Thrifty.

Thrifty are one of the world's largest car rental companies with over 1000 locations in over 55 countries. Thrifty in Ireland represents the Dollar & Thrifty brands in the Republic for both tourist and corporate, car & van rental from 6 locations throughout the country.

The Needs: Speed and Accuracy: Collecting the data from multiple data sources such as finance (Sage), car rental (Automate), fleet management, agent fee tracking, Excel, etc. was proving both time consuming, inaccurate and unreliable.

The Choice: QlikView: After careful evaluation, company management chose QlikView, a complete suite of tools for business analysis developed by QlikTech International, because it was the most suitable solution for the company's different needs such as - speed of implementation, ease of use, low IT dependency, clear identification of opportunities and threats to the business. Thrifty also chose QlikPower to help with the implementation.

The Benefits: The benefits were apparent within days:

1. Instant access to management information
2. Frequent updates and happy end users
3. Analysis by vehicle, model and source
4. Control of damage, tyre and service costs
5. Visibility of fleet tracking, costs and valuations
6. Issuance of electronic customer statements
7. Speeded up the payment of invoices

''By using QlikView to create electronic statements customized to our client's requirements, Thrifty eliminated the overheads associated with producing 25,000 paper invoices annually '' - Colm Menton, Chief Executive

Solution Overview Background:

Thrifty in Ireland represents the Dollar & Thrifty brands in the Republic for both tourist and corporate, car & van rental.

 

Industry: Automotive / Car Rental

Geography: Ireland 

Challenges:

1. Many disparate legacy systems
2. Time taken to collect data
3. Unreliable results
4. Difficult access to management information

Solution:

Thrifty engaged QlikPower to deploy the QlikView application to senior management within a number of days, providing instant access to data with easy analysis while helping to drive costs out of the business.

The applications cover:

1. Sales Analysis
2. Damages Analysis
3. Fleet Analysis
4. Invoice Debtor Analysis
5. Finance Analysis

After a successful take up at the head Office, it is planned to further deploy QlikView to all of the other site locations from a central server.

QlikPower, is a dedicated QlikView Partner focused on helping our customers realise the full potential of QlikView, that is why we give a free Trial together with free Professional Services to get your first application up and running 

Click here to sign up for our QlikView webinar for the Car Rental Industry.

The Positive QlikView BI Customer Experience

 According to a survey program, conducted by IDC with QlikView customers across the world, QlikView customers achieve significantly higher satisfaction with their BI systems than general BI users. When asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5, 96% of QlikView users indicated the top three levels of satisfaction. This compares very favorably with results from IDC's 2008 survey (carried out in