The CDO Midwest Summit 2022, hosted by CDO Magazine and ComSpark, features leaders discussing the importance of analytics and analytical tools in driving business and customer value. The session: “Driving Impactful Insights from Raw data,” highlights the strategies followed by the following speakers in their respective fields as they leverage AI, ML, and analytical tools for data-driven decision-making.

• Vrushali Bhide, Director, Analytics and Reporting, Network Solutions, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
• Peter Geovanes, Head of Data, AI & Analytics, Winston & Strawn
• Mary Sauer-Games, Vice President, Global Product Management, OCLC
• Bill Prucka, Executive Director – Advanced Analytics and Data Sciences, Eli Lilly and Company

Arthy Krishnamurthy, Sr. Advisor, Business Transformation at Dataiku, moderates the session.

To begin with, Geovanes bases the discussion on driving business objectives with data from the law perspective. He describes it as strategically using data and analytics on the practice side of the law.

“How can we use data and analytics, and potentially AI insights to augment an attorney’s knowledge or intuition or experience that will give them that competitive advantage in the courtroom or for their clients?” expresses Geovanes.

Moving on to the insurance industry, Bhide mentions the member and provider personas. She asserts to support members by providing them with the best provider solution. Further, the organization helps providers to perform analytics behind the scenes.

Games discusses the aspect of focusing on library delight or end-user delight. She adds, “We have been following a strategy for the last couple of years, we call the library on demand, which is the idea of giving that consumer coming to the library, that same experience that they would have with their on the web using Google or Amazon.”

She further addresses the challenge of inter-library loan service through data mining, which has led to 30 percent faster delivery of interlibrary loan materials. The additional impact of using data and AI, has increased the renewal rates, Games notes

About use cases, Prucka draws attention to increasing the manufacturing capacity with AI and ML. He shares, “We have several pieces of data we are pulling off of there, looking at the root cause of downtime and trying to do continuous improvement through modeling the line through both simulation and automation.”

Besides that, the speaker also discusses working on digital health to formulate different ways of quantifying the state of disease or outcome that matter to patients.

Next, Bhide states that getting the user on board is a challenge that can mitigate through collaboration. The other challenge in healthcare is the massive amount of data and understanding which data to use.

Adding on, Geovanes refers to the challenge of knowledge silos, apart from data silos. He encourages the need for someone with a 360-degree view of enterprise data.

The panelist advocates that CDOs and CDAOs must have a seat at the table. On top of that, Prucka mentions the importance of domain expertise and understanding the decision-maker as challenges that need tackling.

Portraying the use of analytics, Geovanes affirms acquiring the real-time database of every lawsuit in the United States and using Gartner’s augmented analytics on top of that.

Games pinpoint an issue of harmful languages in the library metadata that creates a barrier between libraries and patrons. The organization aims to solve the problem by building human-centered AI models.

Furthermore, Bhide discusses working on the data-driven impact in healthcare that allows physicians to notify patients about check-ups and prescription pick-ups in advance. This helps in reducing the overall cost as well.

Lastly, the panelists discuss the necessity of a mind-shift in the business sector to accept data-driven outcomes.