Are You Getting Answers from Your Safety Software?

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By Griffin Schultz

Software has been transforming people's lives since shortly after the 1950s when mathematician John Tukey first coined the term. Along the way, it has produced countless dollars of return on investment (ROI) to companies that have successfully deployed application software across their various business functions - and safety is no different.

But organizations generally obtain a higher ROI from their safety software investments by demanding not just efficiency and automation, but also answers to their most difficult questions. Usually, more advanced software that employs advanced and predictive analytics are required to provide these answers. According to an article written by Joe McKendrick from Informatica, a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that organizations that take the lead in data analytics are three times more likely to be leaders within their industry groups than companies with standard analytics environments. So, are you getting answers, or just automation and efficiency from your software investment?

Let's address this question by taking safety inspection and observation software as an example.

The Analytics Pyramid
Many companies invest in safety inspection software to automate a paper-based inspection collection and reporting process. There are countless examples of solutions available that can automate this process, especially with the recent advancements in the smartphone and tablet-computing market. Once the data is collected in the field and digitized, a robust safety inspection software system can then automate the process of reporting on that dataset through its user interface. This has been made even easier recently with cloud-based systems that allow users to access their data from anywhere with an Internet connection.

As adoption of these solutions increase, short-lived will be the days of clipboards, pens and paper in the field or on the shop floor, or toiling for hours in Excel trying to get your pivot table to present your data in a format to which your CEO and frontline workers can relate. The automation of both the data collection and reporting processes creates great efficiencies across safety functions.

However, all this automation and efficiency often just frees up a safety manager's time. With this new found time, they are still confronted with trying to find an answer to the all-important question, "Where and when will our next injury occur?" To answer this, safety software must move beyond automation. Rather than just employing simple data access and reporting functionality, it must leverage advanced and predictive analytics.

The graphic below, adapted from the book Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning by Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris, explores this idea further. It shows the different questions that can be addressed when using various levels of reporting and analytics. The more basic questions are addressed by functionality represented in the blue section of the pyramid (simple data access and reporting), while the more complicated questions are addressed in the gold section using advanced and predictive analytics.

If all your organization is trying to do is report on what has recently occurred and thus answer the questions at the bottom of the pyramid, then most safety software systems focused on automation and efficiency will serve your needs well. However, if you are trying be proactive and get to the top of the pyramid by predicting "what will happen next" and then optimizing your response to ensure the outcome you achieve is "the best that can happen," then you will need to employ more advanced and predictive analytics.

A Personal Finance Example
A simple consumer analogy might help further explain this. Let's use personal money management as an example. There are many software solutions available to consumers which allow them to automate the collection and reporting of their expenditures. Basically, these systems create efficiencies by allowing users to digitize the old paper-based process of balancing their checkbook. These solutions have even extended this process and created more efficiency by then allowing for basic access and reporting of this newly digitized data set. Again, if all you're trying to do is report on what has recently occurred in your financial world, then most of these personal finance software systems will work for you.

However, only a few of these solutions can predict your financial future. Some of the more advanced analytics solutions allow the user to plug in key financial data - like current income, expected future income growth, personal savings rate, current and future debt obligations, assumed interest rates, etc. - and the system will predict whether or not you will reach your retirement savings goals. Others allow you to enter similar data plus your retirement goals, and then will propose an optimized savings rate over time. Regardless of which method is employed, more advanced and predictive analytics must be leveraged to answer these questions at the top of the pyramid and predict and optimize your personal financial future.

Do Advanced Analytics Return More Value?
Do investments in software systems that employ advanced and predictive analytics result in a higher ROI than just those focused on efficiency and automation? Most managers from other business functions would say "absolutely!" That's because these systems have been delivering huge ROI in fields like marketing, sales, supply chain, and operations for years. A quick Web search reveals countless examples of advanced and predictive analytics being used to answer tough questions and improve business functions across various industries.

• A communications service provider was able to predict and then prevent customer churn using advanced analytics achieving a 376 percent, five-month payback on its investment.
• By employing analytics on hundreds of thousands of individual gaming sessions, a casino operator was able to increase the amount patrons spent by 246 percent and individual patron cash return by more than 35 percent.
• The Cincinnati Zoo experienced a 411 percent ROI in just three months on its investment in advanced analytics to predict customer-buying preferences for vending items such as ice cream.

Software systems employing advanced and predictive analytics capabilities have been deployed across safety functions with similarly dramatic results. Based on research done in connection with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, it has been statistically proven, using four years of real-world safety data, that workplace injuries can be predicted with accuracy rates as high as 97 percent. It has also been proven across numerous companies, that if injuries can be predicted, they can be prevented - here are some examples:

• The construction management group with a Fortune 150 energy company reduced the injury rate across its construction projects by 67 percent within 18 months.
• The construction management group at a top five public U.S. university saved over $20 million in insurance fees across four years of building projects.
• A top 10 specialty contractor reduced its workers' compensation fees by 57 percent and 66 percent two years in a row even while man-hours were increasing.

These companies went beyond just automating their data collection and reporting processes and employed advanced and predictive analytics functionality to find answers to their toughest questions.

Conclusion
If you aren't employing software to help improve your safety program, you should consider it. The value that can be gained from the automation and efficiency will allow the time to focus on the tougher safety questions. If you're already invested in safety software, you should consider if automation and efficiency is enough, or if you want more from your investment. Can your software solution help you answer the tough questions like "Where and when will our next injury occur"? Can it predict injuries, so that your team can prevent them?

If advanced and predictive analytics can be effectively used by casinos and zoos, they should certainly be considered to help ensure that every employee goes home safe every day. The humanistic and hard-dollar ROI from such an investment will no doubt be worth it.

Griffin Schultz is the general manager of Predictive Solutions Corporation (formerly DBO2) an Industrial Scientific company. Predictive Solutions predicts workplace injuries so its customers can prevent them. He can be reached at gschultz@predictivesolutions.com.