Data Management Bedtime Stories

1. Data Management Bedtime Stories Paul Boal Director - Solution Delivery Sisters of Mercy Health System May 5, 2010

2. Fables & Morals • Stories • Once Upon a Consolidation • And Never the Data Shall Meet • Work Smarter not Harder • Lessons • Resources

3. Once Upon a Consolidation • Once upon a time there was a group of women that went around starting health care facilities. They traveled from place to place, seeing needs and providing the services needed in the communities they met. The facilities, having grown up in different places, barely knew that they were related. • One day, a big, bad wolf moved into the forest where all of the facilities lived. He wanted to blow down their houses and eat them up. • The women realized that they needed to do something to protect the facilities from the big, bad wolf…

4. Once Upon a Consolidation • At first, they thought they could keep the facilities safe if they gave them all the same name. But the big bad wolf wasn't fooled. He could see that they still didn't communicate with each other or do anything the same way. • Then, the women thought they could protect the facilities by using a single system to monitor them and account for their behavior and whereabouts. But the wolf saw that this was easy to work around; they were still working in separate ways and not cooperating with each other. The wolf was close to being able to pick off the weaker ones.

5. Once Upon a Consolidation • Next, the women realized that in order to protect the facilities, they would need to use the same systems for their everyday business, not just accounting. So, they spent a long time and lots of money teaching the facilities how to use new tools to do their work. • The wolf was discouraged… but when he looked closer, he realized that each of the facilities was still making decisions and setting policies very much on their own. The facilities didn't use the same language and still had to rely only on themselves for many things. The wolf realized that it would be hard for one of the facilities to help the other, even if it wanted to!

6. Once Upon a Consolidation • Finally, the women realized that in order to protect their facilities, they must be able to communicate effectively with each not only with the women. So, they began to work together, learning each other's language, taking the to listen and share their own ideas. • When the big, bad wolf finally arrived, he was surprised to see a group of facilities that strengthened each other through their understanding and cooperation. They were able to leverage eachother's strengths effectively for the better of everyone and of their customers…. • And we all lived happily ever after.

7. Once Upon a Consolidation • Current State • Holding company with 12 operational business units • Goals • Unified, agile, cost effective business model • Work Effort • Centralize IT support and funding. • Standardize and Consolidate ERP systems (HR, Payroll, Finance, Supply Chain) and operations. • Standardize and Consolidate front office systems. • Investment • $$$,$$$,$$$

8. And Never the Twain Shall Meet • Goals • Understand customer-level profit and loss • Challenges • Front office, back office • Systems implementation / roll-out • Solution Options • Re-configure • Cross-reference

9. Work Smarter Not Harder • Current State • Department managers manage productivity target retrospectively • Goals • Provide up to date forecasts on productivity and a tool to allow managers to model the impact of potential planning changes. • Result • The "Daily Productivity Tool" • Challenges • What to measure • How to measure it • To calculate it or let it be reported

10. Lessons • Guiding principles for data management • Data is an enterprise asset • Data must be managed • Most data issues are not local in nature: • Reuse of data • Connections and relationships • Managing data is not like managing a business process; data is in the in-between places of business processes. • Strive for spending 20% collecting, 80% analyzing (not the other way around)

11. Some valuable resources • Data Modeling for the Business - Hoberman • TDWI - http://www.tdwi.org • TDAN - http://www.tdan.com • B-Eye-Network -http://www.b-eye-network.com • Twitter -http://twibes.com (BusinessIntelligence, datamgmt, dataquality, BI-DW) • MIKE 2.0 - http://mike2.openmethodology.org (also on Facebook)

12. One system or subject area alone does have value. When you integrate subject areas together in the same system, you gain not only the value of the other data but also the value of the relationships between the subject area. The value of integrated data grows exponentially relative to the increase in number of subject areas. Value of Integrated Information

13. All of the business processes that are necessary to: Collect data on business transactions. Transform the data into knowledge [1]. Distribute the information to decision makers. Take action. [1] Ackoff's Hierarchy: Data Information Knowledge Wisdom The Information Supply Chain

14. One variable in the value equation for a particular business decision is latency, the amount of time between a business event and the reaction to that event. Decreasing that delay from monthly to weekly to daily to immediately increases the value of that decision. The Information Value Curve

15. Mercy DW Guiding Principles CAVEAT: We haven't always and don't always follow these, but they steer solutions and discussion. • The value of data is more than the sum of the parts. • The cost of data is the effort and loss of quality in moving it between systems. • Value doesn't count unless users can get to the data. • Users don't know what they want. • Users don't know how the data in their systems works. • Touch It, Take It, and Don't Throw It Away! • Copying data is expensive. Recopying data even more so. • Data Warehouses are generalized toward information; Data Marts are specific to business questions. • Always test and validate assumptions about data and get at the data as close to the originating transaction as possible. • Keep asking: "and then what?"