Data Blending and Personal Productivity

Leveraging Alteryx to Respond to Customer Inquiries

March 6, 2013

Greg Hall, Sr. Service Optimization Leader, Kaiser Permanente

Our Business and Function

Kaiser Permanente

• Integrated Healthcare system comprised of

• Insurance plans

• Hospitals

• Medical centers

• 9 million members across: CA, CO, GA, HI,

VA, MD, DC, OR, WA, OH

• Prepaid health plans

• Integrated care and delivery

• Focus on prevention

Process and Service Optimization

• Team of Lean Six Sigma professionals

• Focus on cost savings and customer

satisfaction

• Typical projects: Improve call handling

time, reduce processing turnaround time,

reduce processing errors

Background

Education and Work

• Business degree

• Non-technical

business roles

Data Journey

• History of data analysis

• A customer of reporting

and analytics teams

• Climbing the food chain

to get closer to the data

source

My Experience Obtaining Data

• The right data is critical

• Data can be difficult to obtain

• Analysis can be time consuming

• With persistence, some

training, and relationships,

getting the right data is

possible

Alteryx journey

• Historically, mostly manual analysis with limited toolset

• Exposure to Alteryx

• Understanding the power and potential

• Customers contact us through

multiple channels

• To get a complete view of a

customers’ open and closed

inquiries and issues, we have to

look in multiple systems and

across multiple teams

• Multiple channels for different

types of inquiries

• Multiple IT systems housing data

in different formats

Case study

Phone call to

customer service

Request for

reprocessingComplaint Escalation

Call Tracking

System

Reprocessing

Request Tracking

System

Complaints

Tracking

System

Escalation

Tracking System

• Multiple tabbed Excel spreadsheet, pivot

tables and vlookups

• Sub-optimal solution:

• Refresh was manual and time consuming

• Quality and data integrity risks with

multiple lookup tables

• Changes and additions were time

consuming and introduced further risk of

inaccuracies

Before Alteryx …

The Alteryx solution blends the data into a

unified view, analyzes the data to drive the

best business decisions, and incorporates

several master sources, including:

1. Phone calls

2. Re-processing requests

3. Complaints

4. Customer master data

Alteryx solution

File organization

• Simple and effective way to

organize

• Differentiate between module

types

Module setup

Master data sources

• Phone Calls, Open Inquiries, Closed Inquiries, Open

Escalations, Closed Escalations, Complaints

• Writing to Alteryx yxdb files

• Direct SQL queries time intensive

• Reporting team provided data extracts

• The first approach: append a

daily extract to the master input

file

• Simple and fast

• Dependent on another team,

lacks flexibility

First iteration: files on shared drive

• Alteryx customer success manager helped

• Uses directory contents to pick the most

recent file

• More robust, faster

• Still dependent on reporting team for

extracts

2nd iteration: directory tool + dynamic file selection

• Uses the file contents to

determine the most recent date

stored in the master file

• Leverages dynamic input to

replace the date field in the SQL

with the latest date stored in the

file

• More robust, faster, no

dependencies on other teams

Final approach: automated direct query

• Desired a complete picture of the

customer

• Required blending data from

multiple sources

• Transformations required were

simple within Alteryx

Alteryx blends multiple sources

• Wanted to reach out to customers

more proactively

• Series of filter and formula tools

creates a decision tree flow

• Union tool groups all output

Filter tools create a complex decision tree

• Several teams are involved in

customer issue resolution

• Not all groups work on the same IT

platform; gaps in workflow exist

• SharePoint facilitates

communication between

departments

• Alteryx SharePoint connector feeds

module output to drive issue

resolution and customer

communication

SharePoint connector provides seamless workflow

Alteryx helped us solve several business challenges

Challenge Alteryx Solution

• Multiple data sources in various formats, not

all integrated

•Ability to pull in multiple data sources, cleanse,

and join data

• Several different customer service focused

teams

•Use Alteryx SharePoint connector to provide

visibility across multiple users

• Effort required for initial analysis •Alteryx tools allow rapid building of analytical

model

• Effort required to replicate analysis •Once built, the model can be run instantly with

new data sources

•The module can be automated and scheduled to

run without manual touches

• Speed to respond to changing requirements •Flexibility in the module structure allow for

modifications with minimal additional effort

Thank You!