Why You Need Business Intelligence

Depending on who you ask, the definitions of Decision Support and Business Intelligence may be as different as black and white. That’s the reason why we decided to go to the source. Gartner coined the term BI in 1982, and defines it as "the enterprise's ability to access and explore information (contained in a warehouse), analyzing that information, and developing insights and understanding, which lead to improved and informed decision-making." ¹

Naturally, with changes in technology, today’s business intelligence offerings attempt to go beyond the traditional definition to include tools that provide a more integrated view of organizational performance.  These new technologies can enable healthcare facilities to carry out predictive analytics, giving them an increased ability to use data to understand their hospital and plan for the future.

HWC believes that BI can make an important contribution to managing your Hospital. When functioning effectively, the system should allow you to:

1. Understand the impact of a proposal on the entire Enterprise or a specific Unit;

2. Factor in the Cost of Doing Nothing;

3. Evaluate the Impact of Proposed Contractual Changes;

4. Understand the True Scope of a Proposed Plan; and

5. Quickly Gain Access to Accurate, Current Information for Query and Analysis.

Business Intelligence Tool Designed by the End-User

Our business began as a typical consulting firm. But, as we worked with hospital financial professionals using their systems, we began to recognize the struggles C-level executives face in day-to-day decision making.  The reality is, most of today’s decision support systems have been designed by programmers, not the end-user.  As such, it was evident that there was room to expand the idea of a data warehouse to create a real tool that can be used to analyze and report on a hospital’s true financial position.

And we did just that. Over the last decade we’ve fined tuned the HALCYON System to drive significant improvement in reporting, server scalability, and data integration. We can build custom dashboards that will provide clear insight into how your Organization is performing. You can choose your own key performance indicators so the metrics are customized and relevant to your unique business challenges.

With robust drill-down capabilities, you can analyze the root cause of issues to determine the best course of action. And, HALCYON utilizes the latest cubes technology for remote access, fast processing, and a user-friendly interface, so you can spend less time waiting and more time getting the answers you need to run your Hospital.



Software as a Service

We figured out early on that our clients were too busy to worry about maintaining a software system. Ultimately, we wanted to provide a service solution with immense flexibility in configuration, self-customization, and general ease-of-use, and would not have to involve a large chunk of the hospital’s IT resources to configure a software application. You give us the data, and we do the rest. It’s just that simple.

We’ve built the system in such a way that offers you the assistance of our team of experienced hospital financial professionals to set it up and run it, so you can focus on what you do best. By creating HALCYON and giving our clients a standardized database, everybody benefits.

We’ve created something that goes way beyond decision support; HALCYON truly provides business intelligence, and it is designed to respond to the unique questions that come up every day in your Hospital’s business operation. This means:

• Better Management;

• Predictive Analytics to Plan for the Future;

• Develop Insights & Understanding; and

• You Get a Holistic View of Organizational Performance.

The HALCYON system combines metrics management, strategy management, dashboard management, and use management into a single interface. A knowledgeable user can leverage the HALCYON system for out-of-the-box deployment for custom integration of data typically housed in external systems.  And for those users that require special assistance, HWC offers Software as a Service (SaaS) methodology to give them the support they need. Either way, we can help.

CLICK HERE TO SCHEDULE A DEMO OF THE HALCYON SYSTEM.

Footnote 1- Data Warehousing, Data Mining, and Business Intelligence: "The Hype Stops Here," by Erick Brethenoux, Howard Dresner, Kevin Strange, and Jonathan Block, October 28, 1996.