Business Intelligence for the Business Unit

Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS) Creates New Opportunities to Manage Your Analyses

Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS)


Analytics

To find out what happened (descriptive), why it happened (diagnostic), what might happen (predictive) and prescribe next steps (prescriptive). The ability to query and drill down into an underlying dataset where all of the data have been extracted from their sources, transformed into usefulness, loaded into a data model and through the use of explicit measures, calculations, metrics, visualizations and reports — made accessible.

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Software-as-a-Service

It is a cloud-based, hosted application with security protocols (i.e., protection layers, row level security), data protection (i.e., availability zones, availability sets), data backup (i.e., region pairs, geo-redundant storage), continously updated and scalable. Availability is on-demand, accessible from any device, interactive, shareable, exportable into multiple formats and deployable using multifactor authentication.

Summary
  • Customized Business Intelligence Application Hosted in Cloud (Microsoft Fabric)

  • Shadow IT Application that Blends Subject Matter Expertise (SME) and IT Capabilities

  • IT Compliant with Security to Protect, Defend, Authenticate, Authorize, Backup, and Recover

  • Ability to Connect to 100+ Data Sources and Import Large Amounts of Data

  • Power BI has Much Faster Processing Times than Excel and Improves Calculation Accuracy

  • On-Demand Access to Interactive Data Visualizations with Exportable Reports
Shadow IT?
  • Labeled this Instance Only Because it is Not Administered by the Enterprise's IT Department

  • Corporate Governance and Security Protocols Require IT Sign-Off Prior to Adoption

  • Microsoft's Security Protocols are Best Practices (i.e., Protection Layers, Defense in Depth, etc.)

  • GDPR Compliance Considerations — Data Located in North Zurich, Switzerland Data Center

  • HIPAA & HITECH Compliance — Business Associate Agreement (BAA) Microsoft
On-Demand
  • Authorized (AuthN) and Authenticated (AuthZ) User Accessibility 24/7 in Cloud

  • Connectivity from Laptops, Desktops, Native Mobile BI Apps for Windows, iOS, and Android
Visualizations
  • Interactive — Apply Time Intelligence and Dimensional Slicers to Sort and Filter

  • Types — Charts, Graphs, Maps, Tables, Matrices Used to Tell a Story (e.g., Pattern, Trend, etc.)

  • Online Reports — Exportable into Mutliple Formats (i.e., PowerPoint, PDF, Excel, etc.)
Excel
or
Power BI?
  • Excel Remains the Greatest Tool for Smaller Ad-Hoc Analysis

  • Power BI Connects to a Large Number of Data Sources, Excel's Connectivity is Limited

  • Power BI has No Row Limitations and Excel Maxes Out at 1M Rows of Data

  • Power BI has 1,000 Times More Capacity than Excel (10GB versus 10MB)

  • Excel — Manual Data Entry, Formula Errors, Copy & Paste, Manual Overrides

  • Power BI — Coded Measures and Calculated Columns from Imported & Transformed Data
Why
Consider?
  • Core Requirement for Business May Mean De-Linking from IT Budget/Projects

  • Access to Data, but No or Low Priority, Appetite or Capacity within IT

  • Better, Quicker, Faster Access to Real Time Data Without Sacrificing Accuracy

  • Cloud Approach Assists in Knowledge Transfer and in Mitigating Employee Turnover

  • Improved Way of Sharing Key Performance Indicators to Stakeholders

  • Enhanced Transformation & Loading Capabilities Improves Operational Efficiencies
Sample Applications

Executive Compensation

A Peer Group of Companies Ranking System
Uses Historical Close Prices, Currency Exchange and Normalization
Long-Term Incentive Awards Modeler
Uses Actual Eligibility, Shares and Interactive Performance Factors

Employee Benefits

An Incurred But Not Reported Reserving (IBNR) Application
Designed for ASO / Self-Funded Medical Plans
Uses Client Specific Historical Incurred and Paid Claims Data
Calculates Six Results Applying Six Distinct Actuarial Techniques

Risk Management

A Stop Loss Optimization Modeling Application
Allows Integration of Benchmark or Historical Paid Claims Data
Imposes No Limit on the Number of Carriers and/or Options
Isolates to the Optimal Specific Stop Loss Attachment Point

Focus

Business Unit Targets

Peter Drucker once said that "culture eats strategy for breakfast". People make strategy work or not work. If an enterprise lags in their adoption of a data-driven adoption this is now your issue.

It's simple and straighforward — our focus is to provide a tailored analytics solution to the business unit. We are not positioned for any large scale enterprise wide IT project – we remain with the business unit. If your interest is in learning DAX – you should hire a DAX training firm, not our niche.

We create with you upfront a proprietary analytics sandbox as a way to execute on your business strategy. This is the positive form of the shadow IT application that shifts lower level tasks out of IT, speeds up innovation, aligns requirements and improves business operations.

Subject Matter Expertise

Layered on top of technology are areas of concentration in finance, risk management, employee benefits, strategic hr and executive compensation.

Module 1: Analytics-as-a-Service – Self-service business intelligence alternative to the "spreadmart" where spreadsheets are used to store, manage and analyze data.

Module 2: Customization – Whether there is an internal or an external SME, we will jointly define build requirements.

Module 3: Advisory Services – Our consulting services are specifically targeted at decision makers with a more quantitative mindset.

Analytics-as-a-Service is integrated into each.

Microsoft Technologies

As a Microsoft Certified Data Analyst and Partner our business intelligence applications are developed on the Microsoft platform of software and cloud services (i.e., Power BI, Power Query, Fabric, etc.)

We have set our geographical region for our datasets in the Switzerland North (Zurich region) Fabric datacenter with its geo-redundant storage (automatic replication of data) paired with the Switzerland West (Geneva region) datacenter for GDPR purposes.

Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) licenses are required to provide premium capacity. Each designated user will be added as a Guest User into the Microsoft Entra ID tenancy and assigned a license with the appropriate security levels to access the application.

Founder

As an independent boutique for ½ of my professional life of over 25 years in consulting, analytics has always been a focus. In the last 15 years, it has become the key driver in my practice. As an early adopter of Power BI, I adopted an analytics-as-a-service model approach and formed Health Quant LLC (a Delaware corporation). The path of M and DAX coding languages, becoming a Microsoft partner — which has provided access to excellent resources within its partner network — has resulted in the development of key strategic global partnerships / arrangements.



TOM SCHMIDT

Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
Concentrations – Strategy, Finance & Private Equity
Post-Graduate – Structured Finance and Insurance
Master of International Management (MIM)
Thunderbird, School of Global Management
Concentrations – Business Environment Europe
Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)
University of Iowa
Concentrations – Finance and Insurance

Professional Certifications
Microsoft Certified Data Analyst & Azure Fundamentals
Microsoft Certificate No: H536-5619 & No: H557-3575
Certified Employee Benefit Specialist (CEBS)
International Foundation and Wharton School
Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU)
American Institute of P&L Underwriters
Certified Risk Manager (CRM)
International Institute Professional Education Research (IIPER)
Alternative Risk Transfer Certificate
University of Chicago, GSB Extension