APEX moves Beyond BI™ with SAS®9
SAS^® Enterprise BI Server answers complex questions throughout the organization

How will new government policies affect employee healthcare plans? How much would rates increase if an insurer covered fertility treatments? Will fluctuating costs for over-the-counter medications influence patient benefits? With SAS software, the answers are clear.

Providing fast, easy access to information for reporting and analysis, SAS®9 helps APEX Management Group, a leading healthcare consulting and insurance services organization, design rich healthcare plans that focus on patient outcomes and patient needs. Using the power of SAS business intelligence (BI), business users at APEX, a division of Gallagher Benefit Services Inc., gain a deep understanding of any potential change in the healthcare system and have access to a variety of accurate methods for forecasting the effects of plan modifications.

"The data-curious in my organization now have time to ask more complex questions," says Jody Porrazzo, Ph.D., director of econometric risk strategy at APEX. It’s an advantage she ascribes directly to the SAS Enterprise BI Server - a new, comprehensive solution that delivers the power of SAS to all levels of the organization.

"When I first saw the SAS Enterprise BI Server, it was immediately apparent to me that everyone in our organization could have access to information at their fingertips," explains Porrazzo. "With very little training, they could query the data, develop insights and get to the heart of the problems they research much more quickly than ever before."

Now, sophisticated analyses can be performed in a fraction of the time. "Something that used to take weeks to do, in terms of collecting the data, cleansing the data, generating insights and presenting the results, now takes only a day or two," says Porrazzo.

Beyond basic trending
The new business intelligence solution from SAS employs advanced forecasting capabilities, puts knowledge in the hands of business users and moves daily actuarial calculations beyond the realm of basic pivot tables and trends.

"Our actuaries can do true forecasting of time series data using auto regression models without knowing SAS," says Porrazzo. "Before using SAS, they were somewhat overwhelmed by the overabundance of [Microsoft] Access tables that had numerous joins. Now, they’re performing process flows and forecasts, modeling data, and sharing their results throughout the organization. And they’re floored at how easy it is."

Plus, the results are richer and more accurate than ever before. While other analytic packages ignore the fluctuations in data caused by seasonality, SAS allows business users to dig into those patterns and gain a true understanding of the data.

"With the SAS Enterprise BI Server, our actuaries can share the results of correlations, regressions, forecasts and the GARCH models," explains Porrazzo. "When you can deliver these types of high-level analytic results to any business user across the enterprise, in whichever format they desire, you can accomplish anything."

Influencing the future
Insurance data is retrospective in nature. At APEX, it consists primarily of administrative claims data and national healthcare costs. But SAS allows APEX to transform that historical data into accurate forecasts about the future. "Historical data provides hindsight," Porrazzo says, "but with SAS, we gain foresight and the insight to make better decisions."

That foresight might tell APEX, for example, that adding fertility services to a healthcare plan would increase the number of claims for care in neonatal intensive-care units. To address these potential claims, APEX would recommend that the plan also include richer pediatric and prenatal benefits. "With foresight, we gain insight into the nature of a problem, and we can make plans to address those problems and spread those costs equally in a way that benefits both the employer and the employee."

That move from foresight to insight is arguably the most important benefit that SAS provides, says Porrazzo, because businesses can act on insight. "SAS gives us the ability to anticipate and react to things that will happen in the future, and I think this knowledge is powerful."

Easing communications
In addition to the analytic strengths of SAS, the new SAS Enterprise BI Server offers many ways to share and present results easily - either online, via e-mail or through a favorite Microsoft Office application. As a result, says Porrazzo, more and more people are acting on critical business information.

"SAS has opened up a lot of communications at APEX," she explains. "People are talking; they’re asking different kinds of questions; and they’re accomplishing more." Porrazzo also points out that the new technology has encouraged more face-to-face communication. APEX has even reinstituted brown-bag seminars, among other things, to encourage knowledge sharing throughout the company.

"In this industry, we deal with so much data, and the issues are very complex, so we need high-powered reporting and analytics every day," Porrazzo continues. "We need to have people in touch with the data, so they can get their answers out the door very quickly and then ask more questions. With SAS, we can hit the ground running, because right away we’re getting people in touch with the data."

As another benefit, the SAS solution automatically documents the data flow every step of the way. "Documentation is easy with SAS," says Porrazzo. "In the past, nobody had the time to document the data. They were too busy. Now we have the ability to document without taking time away from the project itself. And that’s a big thing here, especially with compliance, because people don’t have the time to write things up, and now they don’t have to."

A more efficient organization
Porrazzo foresees many additional uses for SAS technology in APEX’s provider assessments, disease management analysis, and sales and marketing efforts. In addition, Porrazzo expresses strong interest in future enhancements of SAS applications such as SAS Text Miner for analyzing unstructured data, including case management notes; SAS Strategic Performance Management to benchmark internal strategic processes within the company’s infrastructure; and SAS Customer Relationship Management to help ensure the correct types of services are being delivered to APEX clients.

Regardless of how the relationship with SAS evolves, Porrazzo knows each step will be made easier by the SAS foundation that is already in place. "As a user of more than 20 years, SAS has demonstrated to me that it is the strongest analytic package out there," she says. "Now, with SAS Enterprise BI Server, we have an integrated platform with the power of SAS behind it that allows us to reach many different audiences within our organization. That’s the ideal solution for growth, and I think it’s unbeatable."

Porrazzo concludes: "True BI enables the enterprise to advance from ideation, or the creation of ideas, to solution at the speed of light. And this is the true power of SAS business intelligence."