We have all heard of business intelligence or BI solutions, but what is a client intelligence or CI solution? A simple internet search will produce a variety of “consumer intelligence”, “customer intelligence” and “client intelligence” systems – all aimed at helping businesses understand how their customers, clients and consumers make decisions. The goal for business, of course, is to improve their ROI (Return on Investment), but can this approach apply to human services? Do we want to know how the people we serve make decisions? Will this help us become more efficient in supporting individuals and families on their journey to improve their wellbeing and transform their lives? We not only think so, we know so.
In the last decade, human services providers have begun to export their data from their electronic health records (EHR) into data warehouses, data mining and visualization tools in order to calculate Key Performance Indicators (KPI), but has this helped us understand what works for whom? Have we garnered a better understanding of how our clients make decisions or engage in our programs? Can we match the right person with the right provider or staff who would work in collaboration for the best outcome for that person or family? That is exactly what an intelligence solution should do.
Since we collaborate with our clients when providing person-centered care, a Person-Centered Intelligence Solution (P-CIS) is designed to take what we have learned from the outcomes of the people who have already participated in our programs and apply it toward predicting the best collaborative environment and supports to help similar people who might walk through our door tomorrow. Using the same principles and analytic tools as a client intelligence solution, a P-CIS builds institutional knowledge so that we can identify how to best collaborate with the people we will serve tomorrow. Over time, we will see more and more improvements on the assessment measures for how people feel and function after our program. Thus, a Person-Centered Intelligence Solution focuses not on maximizing ROI but on maximizing ROA (Return on Assessment).
