Thanks to connected world and cheaper internet data packs, the amount of raw data generated is increasing rapidly. Today, as organizations collect more data than ever, analyzing this data has become a mammoth task. Industries like healthcare, needs access to real-time insights for smoother functioning of vital activities. Enter operational analytics as solution to these concerns.

Operational analytics is a specific term used to refer business analytics that focus on improving existing operations in real-time. It includes applications like data mining, data analysis, business intelligence and data aggregation tools to get more transparent information for business planning. Enterprises leverage this technology mainly to carry of efficient operative processes and obtain well-structured dashboards containing information that is critical to their work. Generally, operational data gets lost in massive data lake where it waits till data analyst can extract value from it. Here, operational analytics tools help bring more intelligence to the businesses. By processing operational data in real-time, operational analytics tools fuel instant decision-making for the business.

It is quite common myth that healthcare industry doesn’t run on data analytics. However, in reality, healthcare companies also need to survive in a competitive market. There is an increasing demand to capture financial, operational, and clinical data and to coordinate healthcare across time and different venues, using data generated in healthcare industry. There has also been stronger emphasis on utilizing existing resources to improve outcomes while reducing costs via data insights.

Therefore, they need a strong operational data analysis foundation to correlate, analyze, and glean insight from financial and operational data. Their main objective is to employ tools that most efficient, cost-effective ways to capture and report on data for the facility’s day-to-day operations. They need data analytics driven healthcare solution that can facilitate using data to track required compliance-based inspections, testing and reporting on facility maintenance, rounding to support environment of care, facility safety and preparedness and patient care.

Operational analytics can help healthcare companies determine how their departments are contributing effectively to overall performance and the furthering of healthcare plans. It offers healthcare providers a clear set of leading indicators with which to work. It allows them to identify areas that need streamlining, be more efficient, thus resulting in better profits. Whether it is healthcare or any other industry, operational analytics offers the ability to use data analysis to power operational workflows and inform organizational decisions during the processes, rather than analyze the results afterwards. Thus, making data actionable!

For healthcare companies and providers, operational analytics can also help to increase patient satisfaction. This can be achieved via streamlined scheduling, optimized patient data accessibility, get holistic view of data and more. Apart from that it can also boost viability, competitive positioning and sustainability in the dynamically changing healthcare industry. Healthcare companies can also rely on operational analytics to assess their productivity and reallocate investments to ensure activities are in line with company strategy. Moreover, it can help them identify if there is any existing need for additional investment to satisfy customer (patient) demands, or for lowering prices for the healthcare solutions, etc. One can also use it to identify areas that need automation like daily routine tasks, so that doctors can focus on their work.

At present, healthcare industry is slowly realizing the value and potential of using operational analytics to improve operational performance. It won’t be far when this technology of data analytics goes mainstream not only in this sector but others as well.