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Data has unmatched power in enabling an amazing employee and customer experience — but many organizations are constrained by outdated architectures and processes that stop them from using their data to its fullest potential. And this is a pain CHG Healthcare knew all too well.
CHG Healthcare was founded in 1979 to bring healthcare to rural areas. It created the locum tenens (or traveling physician) industry and is a pioneer in shaping the healthcare industry as we know it today.
Like many organizations with tech investments dating back decades, its team experienced significant hurdles in keeping up with modern buyer expectations:
- Dirty data with duplicate records caused breakdowns in both the employee and customer experience
- These issues amplified as CHG grew and acquired other companies, piling more data into an unsustainable infrastructure
- Newer organizations with modern data architectures were quickly capturing market share
CHG’s leadership recognized the need to address these challenges head-on to provide clients with the experience they deserve and continue to connect Americans with the healthcare services they need.
To understand this data-driven culture transformation, CHG’s Luke Stenis discussed the organization’s journey and shared the lessons learned during GrowthLoop Live. Let’s explore how they reinvented their data strategy from the inside out — including practical advice to help any organization navigate a similar switch.
Disconnected data hampers agility and confidence
CHG Healthcare extends across several specialized brands, including CompHealth, Weatherby Healthcare, and Locumsmart, each providing workforce support and vendor management services. Because of its broad coverage in the healthcare staffing industry, the brands have overlapping contacts and different data based on each team’s entry practices.
As the organization grew, CHG’s teams relied on data siloed across multiple systems and business units, which gradually amplified a few clear pain points:
- Lack of data integrity - The teams couldn’t trust the data they accessed because it was unclear which data was most timely and accurate.
- No single source of truth - Customer data was scattered across systems, and duplicate entries contained fragments of data. No team had a complete look at individual prospects or customers.
- Internal competition - Business divisions were not aligned, so they often competed with each other and reached out to the same contacts multiple times a day to offer complementary services or solutions.
CHG’s provider clients expressed that their experience could be improved, considering healthcare teams were being approached by multiple CHG brand representatives with redundant and conflicting offers. CHG’s team also saw competitors — especially younger startups with less data baggage holding them back — quickly capturing market share because they could approach organizations with the right offers in highly personalized and targeted ways.
The organization needed to align its departments and use data insights to understand how to best approach individual clients with offerings tailored to their needs. Optimizing its data would require both a technology shift and revamped processes to ensure internal team alignment.
As Luke reflected on the situation: “We kept trying to throw more people at it, and it just wasn't working… you can't scale bad processes. When we realized we had bad data; bad data just doesn't happen overnight. It's really an output of these bad processes and this bad data entry happening in our systems at the desk level.”
Designing a data-driven culture
CHG had an incredible wealth of data spanning decades of interactions and insights from multiple company divisions. Still, it needed to overhaul its strategy to continually activate its data for personalized and effective customer experiences.
The new data infrastructure needed to deliver a few key elements:
- A single source of truth so teams could be confident their data is accurate and inclusive of all interactions
- An integration layer to gather all the necessary data
- A customer 360 view, detailing a client’s history, experience, and individual preferences, so customers receive personalized experiences
- Data governance and an enterprise model to feed into reporting and analytics to fuel intelligent business decision-making
Luke’s team selected Snowflake as its enterprise data warehouse to house all customer data, laying the foundation for its single source of truth. An integration layer connects data from across the organization to ensure all systems constantly feed back into the warehouse.
“Snowflake has been absolutely critical to our success as a data platform team,” Luke said. “Having an integration layer where we're really gathering data from our sources of systems and feeding that into our model has really helped our organization move not only with the velocity that we need, but also with the confidence that we deserve.”
It selected GrowthLoop as its composable customer data platform (CDP) built on Snowflake to create its customer 360 and activate data across any marketing and sales channel.
“GrowthLoop is really key in us being able to surface the right message at the right time on the right medium to these doctors and providers in order to get them the jobs that they want and they need,” he said.
With all data flowing through Snowflake and teams activating that data across channels with GrowthLoop, CHG has newfound confidence in its data. GrowthLoop also helps fuel machine learning for predictive decisions by ingesting audience and campaign data back into Snowflake, which helps CHG iterate messages and channel strategies based on real-time customer activities.
Data infrastructure change management tips
Of course, this change did not happen overnight. The team dedicated 12-18 months to implement its new solution — but it was a necessary investment that has positioned its team for ongoing agility and vastly improved success.
Luke shared a few tips to help organizations as they embark on a similar change management journey:
- Get executive buy-in at every level - Demo tools to every level of leadership to directly show them how the new solution will fulfill their department’s goals and uplift the entire organization.
- Keep the end in mind - Build an aspirational roadmap that motivates the team by showing them what the end result will be.
- Break the plan into sections - As with any large project, detail key steps and a timeline for milestones so the team stays on track and can recognize its progress.
- Invest in training - Empower the team to use the new solution to its fullest potential by training them and providing enablement materials.
And don’t forget to celebrate your team and their accomplishments at each step. “Make sure that when you have those phases that you're completing, that you're celebrating your team wins,” Luke reflected. “Recognize the people that are working hard to make this come to light, that are really delivering these big initiatives for the company.”
Ongoing data-driven innovation
Organizations have greater potential than ever to capture customer data and use those insights to deliver personalized and highly effective experiences.
A data warehouse is essential for storing all customer data, and composable solutions like GrowthLoop empower teams to use their preferred channel tools while preserving the vital single source of truth.
Luke’s team at CHG successfully shifted its data strategy and enriched the employee and customer experience. The organization now has a “one team” mentality, knowing they’re all working toward the same vision and the same future, preserving its position as a leader in healthcare staffing solutions.
