Best Doctors Insurance, CDO: Our Goal Is To Enable Data-Led Business Decisions

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(US and Canada) Luis Velandia, Chief Data Officer at Best Doctors Insurance, speaks with Sanjay Acharya, VP, Strategy and Growth at Hilabs, about data analytics strategies, the importance of organizational data literacy, and the different approaches to using data to create business value.

Velandia states that a well-defined data strategy that is aligned with the corporate strategy is pivotal to building the framework of an organization. He believes good data strategy includes people and culture — the essence of data culture and data literacy processes. The data management capability is necessary to execute strategies, deliver actionable results successfully, and create business value.

Regarding the data analytics journey of an organization, he points out that while combining the different data domains, mutual understanding of the business questions and problems is a must. The other hurdle lies with quantification of the impact in terms of cost savings in productivity or revenue growth. Velandia affirms the need for analytical solutions like deep-dive analysis, machine learning, or dashboards to create tangible insights and get past these difficulties.

The creation of actionable insights for stakeholders by aligning the different data elements will help them with decision making, states Velandia. He asserts that requiring robust analytics and data architecture in an organization can translate business needs into data system requirements. He adds that the common goal is to enable organizations to create smart data and business-led decisions to achieve the larger corporate goals.

Velandia then points out that even with the abundance of data strategies including quantitative and advanced analytic approaches, some organizations have yet to learn the usage of data analytics. He addresses the need to educate them, starting with the team members and then the stakeholders.

Speaking on the analytic approaches that have expedited the business, he stresses the need to know the questions that are most critical for an organization’s business leaders to answer. He mentions creating business solutions with agile methodology and a sprint approach, keeping in mind individual customer profitability, master data, customer transactional data, and cost driver data.

Velandia concludes by saying that it all boils down to delivering actions and providing benefits. As an organizational leader, one can pivot, persevere or perish, to find an enriched data analytics space in an organization.