Case Study

Amentra Builds the Business Intelligence Future for Large Healthcare Company

Service:
Enterprise Data Solutions
Industry:
Healthcare
Engagement
Full Lifecycle & Mentoring
Download PDF

Faster business analysis, shorter decision-making process, quicker reports

Before Amentra

A large healthcare company faced critical challenges in extracting information from raw data and providing information to their clients in a cost-effective and timely manner. Increasing reporting maintenance costs and data accuracy shortcomings jeopardized perception of the company in the healthcare industry as a leading disease management provider. Business analysts relied on ad hoc analysis to mine claims data from dozens of clients stored in the company's data warehouse. Internal users were giving multiple versions of the truth to data consumers while performing analysis.

After Amentra

  • Analysts efficiently determine business results using industry-standard data mining and access tools.
  • Executives track key business metrics from their desktops - shortening the decision-making process.
  • Developers quickly build new reports from components of existing reports leveraging WYSIWYG IDEs.
  • Administrators deploy reports and data cubes internally or expose them to clients in minutes.

Evolution of the business process

The healthcare company received several key benefits from this effort:

Reduced IT Costs
The healthcare company's developers were building each report from custom code without reusing internal code or leveraging a reporting framework. Amentra helped the company select and integrate with a third-party framework that reduced development efforts and provided an infrastructure for code reuse across reports.
Shorter Decision-Making Cycle
Business analysts required significant time to produce key metrics for clients and executives. Amentra provided the healthcare company's analysts with multiple tools to quickly mine information and uncover key results from data - providing executives with the information they need to succeed in a competitive marketplace.
Competitive Advantage
The healthcare company could only provide rudimentary reporting capabilities to its clients. Amentra instituted a framework that leveraged the third-party tools to allow the company clients web-based access to a variety of interactive reports and analysis methods.

Applied technologies and expertise

Amentra first evaluated the existing business intelligence technical environment and interviewed numerous stakeholders throughout the healthcare company's organization. Amentra then developed a short-list of appropriate business intelligence vendors that would meet the company's needs based on Amentra's experience in the data warehousing and business intelligence arena. After receiving and evaluating software from the various vendors Amentra recommended and developed an internal proof of concept based on the business intelligence platform listed below:

  • ProClarity's Analytical suite for analysis
  • Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services to build, store and access multi-dimensional cubes
  • Microsoft's SQL Server Reporting Services as the enterprise reporting solution

After the healthcare company ratified Amentra's recommendation to proceed with this business intelligence software suite, Amentra installed and configured the systems while training administrators on system maintenance best practices. Once the platform was fully installed Amentra mentored the healthcare company's developers on multi-dimensional cube design and object-oriented (OO) report development techniques - giving the developers the skill and experience to expand and maintain the system to address future needs.

To maximize the healthcare company's benefits from the platform, Amentra exposed the new reporting platform through a web interface, allowing reports to be exposed to the company's clients with seamless, single sign-on user experience. Amentra leveraged Microsoft's Reporting Services extensible architecture to integrate with the company's existing security platform - minimizing maintenance costs.

Technologies used

  • ProClarity Desktop/Web Professional
  • ProClarity Analytics Server
  • ProClarity Dashboard Server
  • Microsoft Reporting Services
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • Microsoft Analysis Services
  • Microsoft Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)
  • WebLogic Server