Welcome to the BI Blog!
By 
Welcome to the BI blog! I am looking forward to the opportunity to include my two cents out into the blogsphere, and I hope others will as well. I can’t guarantee this, but my hope is that this blog will focus on business intelligence as a whole, but specifically how to get started, how to keep business engaged and the implications of organizational readiness to your BI program.
Since my career has been in health care my entries will have a heavy focus there, but there is much to be learned from the health care industry as it applies to other industries. I have always held the belief that if you can satisfy your toughest customer then you are well on your way to satisfying the others. So while health care is much more robust in the amount of data, regulations and implications (life or death after all) think of the lessons you can take from that if you aren’t dealing with life & death.
It’s probably appropriate to talk a bit about myself. I will try to avoid the personal tidbits, like gushing about how smart and gorgeous my son is (he really is, honest); and focus on why I think anyone would be interested in my two cents about BI.
I never thought I would have a career in numbers or technology. When I was young, I wanted to be a fashion designer. You may wonder how I got from fashion designer to BI aficionado, well it turns out I can’t draw, or sew, or match colors and I am much more inclined to analyze the trends of purchases over time and seasons. I loved math when I was in grade school. It was always so neat and clean. So after a number of years of education, a brief stint in our armed forces, I earned a masters degree in Applied Psychology, an applied research degree. (My training was very heavy in statistics and how to use whatever data is available to gain insight hence the ‘applied’ part).
I started off as a Research Coordinator for a psychiatric hospital. The hospital was a bit ahead of its time and had a very extensive outcomes protocol. When I got there all the assessments were in place, but there was nowhere to hold the data. We were also asking people who were checking in and out of a psychiatric hospital to complete a series of surveys, complete with filling in itty biddy little circles with a #2 pencil. If they didn’t need to be there before they started (13 pages worth at check in) they certainly needed to be after they were done. So after some discussion we decided to work with a software company and design proprietary software. And, without knowing it, I had started my BI career. I followed that job up with five years at United Health. I played various roles there, but for the time I was there I was always working with data in one form or another. My last job at United I was responsible for a BI software suite that we sold to our competition. I supported 7 other health plans in their BI initiatives. Then I moved to the pharmacy benefit management side of health care and spend 4 years building a BI program from the primordial ooze. Now you are up to date on me, stay tuned for more.
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