Data Warehouse
By working with valantic, AOK Nordost has modernized its data warehouse and achieved enormous efficiency gains. Automated data processes and precise analyses enable more successful, data-based decisions. Find out how innovative solutions make everyday work easier and improve service for policyholders.
The Company
With a total of 1.7 million people insured, AOK Nordost is the largest statutory health insurance company in the region. It offers excellent service, innovative services, and the highest level of expertise in all health issues – from A to Z. AOK Nordost‘s goal is to provide its insured with outstanding service, to organize the best possible care, and to work together with all partners and service providers to create a more efficient health system.
As of January 1, 2011, the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse Nordost was created from the merger of AOK Berlin-Brandenburg and AOK Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is a self-governing public body and one of eleven independent AOKs.
Challenge
Integration of data from different source systems to create a uniform and versatile database for controlling and analysis.
Consulting approach
Implementation of an enterprise-wide data warehouse that serves as a central database (single point of truth) and enables automated data acquisition and cross-topic evaluations.
Customer benefits and solution
With the new data warehouse, AOK Nordost has dramatically increased data processing efficiency, reduced manual effort, reduced costs, and laid the groundwork for more accurate, faster business decisions.
Martin Bach
Director Business Intelligence at AOK Nordost
”valantic helped us achieve all of our goals. We can now use the data warehouse to implement projects that we couldn’t even imagine before.“
The challenge
Development of a uniform, versatile database for controlling and analysis
After the merger of the formerly independent local health insurers AOK Berlin, AOK Brandenburg and AOK Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, AOK Nordost faced the challenge of taking into account the three insurers’ various source systems (e.g., SAP Oscare, Recipe 300, Ariadne, various Access applications, and many more) in the evaluations.
The acquisition of data for cross-topic analyses alone required a great deal of manual work. The many specialized Access applications required a lot of maintenance and were not suitable for cross-department and cross-company evaluations. Ad hoc analyses were not possible.
There was no uniform reporting system for all companies and specialist departments. It was therefore decided to create a comprehensive and unified data warehouse (single point of truth) into which all source systems flow and are prepared for reporting requirements.
Solution & results in detail
The company-wide data warehouse, designed in 2011, is still in use today, and its structure is unchanged. However, it has been expanded continuously in order to integrate and serve new specialist and subject areas.
The data warehouse continued to exist when the front-end tool IBM Cognos Analytics was replaced with SAP BO (WebI and Lumira) and the IBM Data Manager ETL tool was replaced with SAP Data Services during ongoing operations.
Here is an excerpt of applications and reports that have been developed jointly by valantic and AOK Nordost based on the data warehouse:
Thomas Wulle
Head of Controlling at AOK Nordost
”Valid and better structured data models give us controllers the opportunity to advise our partners in the specialist areas and on the management floors in a goal-oriented manner. Many thanks in particular to our colleagues at valantic. It’s true: Better data equals better decisions.“
Uniform database
A consolidated and pseudonymous database enables precise, uniform, and data protection-compliant analyses.
Cost savings due to significantly reduced manual effort
Cost reduction thanks to less time spent on data acquisition and processing.
Cross-departmental evaluations
Comparability of all key performance indicators through common dimensions such as time, service provider, and insured.
Great transparency
Complete description and evaluation of all data thanks to metadata management.
Current reports
Make more successful business decisions with always reports that are up-to-date and accurate.
Innovative technologies due to data warehouse
Use of machine learning and AI to support fraud detection and automated processing.
Anke Mader
Head of Finance at AOK Nordost
”The days when we invested valuable human resources in creating presentations of figures, data, and facts are over thanks to our corporate reporting. For this purpose, there are now uniformly visualized reports for all employees with unrestrictedaccess. Perfect.“
The project history
The teams of valantic and AOK Nordost created an architecture and the necessary tools to be able to conduct high-performance analyses with the desired granularity and depth of detail, even on topics and cross-departmental issues.
This will enable AOK Nordost to provide the people it insures with even better and more efficient care together with the service providers in the region. The basis for the new business analytics is a data warehouse, the structure of which has been unchanged since its design; it is secure, data protection-compliant, and stable.
This data warehouse, modeled according to Kimball in Star schemas, has been the reliable database for various evaluation tools since 2011, both for standard reporting and for in-depth analyses by the specialist departments. For this purpose, operational data from the various source systems and data storage forms is loaded or updated daily, weekly, or monthly in the central Oracle-based data warehouse, depending on the data type.
The standard reporting system was implemented with the AOK‘s BI development with support from valantic. Then, in a longer series of in-house trainings, valantic taught the controllers and analysts in the specialist departments and the BI department to create their own reports and analyses.
Great time savings in data acquisition and processing
„Compared to other local health insurance companies, our data scientists only have to spend about 10% of their time on data acquisition and data processing,“ lauds Martin Bach, Head of Business Intelligence at AOK Nordost. At other companies, up to 80% of the data experts’ time is spent on this. Depending on business requirements, data stored in the data warehouse is automatically updated and kept up to date in regular cycles.
Particularly noteworthy are innovative machine learning technologies and solutions using artificial intelligence, which can be realized through the data warehouse infrastructure. This makes it possible, for example, to identify incorrectly issued invoices and to detect potential fraud offenses more quickly.
Martin Bach
Director Business Intelligence at AOK Nordost
”The new solution ensures greater efficiency, reduces the workload, and thus significantly reduces the burden on employees.“
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