Relias enhances data-driven training and reporting for health organizations with Power BI and Azure Synapse

Helping healthcare leaders excel

Training, performance, and talent solutions are important to the success of any organization—but they’re especially critical in the healthcare field, where education and training defines the quality of care that patients receive. That’s why Relias is passionate about building tools to help more than 3.4 million caregivers receive training, support, and data-driven results across the continuum of care. 

Relias has a wide range of data sources that it leverages to help its clients reach their goals, and its customer base is wide-ranging: the organization builds solutions that serve hospitals, assisted-living facilities, emergency services, behavioral health, substance abuse clinics, schools, and more. 

The organization’s training platforms and services generate robust amounts of data, which Relias can use to improve administrative operations and enhance treatment outcomes.. But data silos, decentralized information, and manual updating processes created inefficiencies and opportunities for error. Relias set out to build a new data solution that would generate actionable insights for both internal and external stakeholders, while complying with security standards and allowing for future growth and expansion.

Accelerating advanced analytics 

Using Microsoft Power BI Premium as the foundation and Azure Data Factory to integrate data sources, Relias built a solution that supports the current and future needs of its clients. With the technical expertise of Insight, a member of the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program, Relias migrated its data infrastructure into a fully managed, serverless platform.

Because most of the Relias team was already well-versed in the Azure platform, building within the Microsoft stack was a “no-brainer,” according to Berkley Soares, Data and Analytics Architect at Relias “It’s a unified development environment for all of our data and analytics—we have data scientists, engineers, architects, BI Developers, and others who are able to work in the same space,” he says. “Azure Synapse ensures that no silos are being built and brings everything under one roof.” 

Using Power BI helps Relias save time with flexible, scalable analytics capabilities. With Power BI, Relias can harness the power of “golden data sets”—clean, validated, integrated data sets—to create standardized reports, without having to worry about data inconsistencies or incorrect calculations. But with such a wide variety of internal and external clients, Relias found that the personalization capabilities of Power BI set it apart from other options. “Our clients have different technical abilities and skill sets, and we need to bridge that with the data,” says Schoeppach. The customization options within Power BI allow for varying levels of data analytics, from straightforward templated reporting, drag-and-drop dashboards, and complex self-service options. 

Azure Synapse Analytics added even more precision, processing, and power to the Relias platform. By migrating to Azure Synapse Spark Pools, Relias decreased ETL/ELT workloads by 50 percent, saving more than 40 hours of work each month. 

“Azure Synapse gives us more processing power and more flexibility in how we can ingest data,” says Soares. “Clients don’t want to hit a button, go grab a cup of coffee, and wait for reports to render. It needs to be done efficiently—and the architecture of this solution helps make sure our clients have the tools they need to get their work done.” 

Making meaning out of metrics 

Schoeppach understands the importance of finding the “so what?” of data. By creating customized reports and thoughtfully designed self-service reporting dashboards, Relias can generate actionable insights for clients, which lead to immediate changes in behavior, adjustments to training programs, and more. 

“If you ask most people about a report, they describe a spreadsheet. But you can’t get many insights out of just a spreadsheet,” says Schoeppach. “Data has to tell a story.”

For example, healthcare organizations can drill down on statistics for their training courses, including completion rate, compliance, and the location of participants. Detailed, easy-to-understand reports help clients identify areas for improvement—and potential solutions. Simplified, visually appealing reports add transparency and clarity to the decision-making process. 

Whether healthcare providers are using these tools to improve educational resources or make operations more efficient, being able to make decisions with greater speed and accuracy can lead to potentially life-saving outcomes. “Our Relias Platform equips clients and caregivers with the training and education they need to elevate care quality and reduce risk,” says Schoeppach. “What really drives this data effort is the need to gain insights that improve overall health outcomes for patients.”

Focusing on the future

With the ability to add new data sources and the flexibility of a serverless database, Relias has built a future-ready solution. The scalability of the platform was a big priority for Jeff Burns, Senior Solutions Architect at Insight. “My job is to focus on getting Relias ready for today’s challenges, but also to think about tomorrow—and set things up so that future problems are easier to deal with,” says Burns. “We don’t know what the future holds, but we know that Power BI and Azure Synapse will give clients the tools needed to help deal with it.” 

Looking ahead, Relias plans to further build out the self-service analytics capabilities of Power BI and Synapse, as well as to implement Microsoft Purview across the Relias ecosystem. The complexity and power of these reporting solutions have helped Relias expand its business: One of the organization’s largest new clients cited the reporting capabilities as a deciding factor in choosing to adopt its technology platform. 

And while Relias, at its foundation, has been an education company, this solution aligns with the organization’s current strategy to deliver solutions to clients that advance healthcare talent in integrated ways beyond core learning. “Our platform has become the single source of truth for all reporting and analytics,” says Soares. “It provides data across the organization and insights for all business decisions.” 

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