Whitney Berbiglia is a consultant at SEI Chicago and an expert when it comes to data & analytics. Early in her career, she led the way by learning to automate her analysis responsibilities. She took on a role centered around implementing D&A solutions to drive operational efficiency across her organization.
Through this journey, Whitney discovered her passion for analytics and automation. Soon, she sought a consulting position that would give her exposure to more complex data and process problems across different industries. “I find that D&A, when done right, drives incredible value for just about everyone in an organization,” Whitney says. “This is probably my calling.”
“Traditionally, automation is an afterthought,” she explains. “It’s essential for organizations to shift toward establishing an integrated system architecture that supports introducing automation at the origin of a new business process.” As an SEI consultant, Whitney helps equip enterprises with the right tools early on, so they can tackle business challenges, drive valuable insights, and optimize operations.
Finding Success Through Data & Analytics
At SEI, Whitney has helped a variety of clients elevate their businesses. Recently, she assisted a customer support services organization in executing on a D&A roadmap that included standing up a data warehouse and making real-time analytics available to their clients. For a large automobile wholesaler, Whitney designed and helped develop a data quality monitoring solution that enables automated regression testing. This way, the business could monitor their data by creating a no-code application that translates test cases written in natural language into SQL queries. She also developed dashboards containing daily health summaries. This gave business and tech teams visibility into emerging defects and DQ trends. It also drastically reduced defect triage time.
Currently, Whitney is implementing streamlined provider data management solutions for a healthcare company. Her initiatives are aimed at improving data quality and timeliness to drive increased operational throughput and accuracy. As she sees it, prioritizing business processes is critical to any services-based organization. To anticipate future needs, Whitney is also helping them develop a data architecture modernization roadmap that seeks to leverage BPM (business process management) solutions to expand integration, reduce complexity, and further enable automation.
Customized Solutions for Unique Challenges
On her many projects, Whitney has encountered a variety of challenges that prevent organizations from reaching their desired analytics maturity. Often, companies rush to implement predictive analytics solutions that end up falling flat. Solutions involving machine learning or AI for instance, are only as reliable as the data they leverage. Predictive solutions often offer the business little visibility into how they work, making them a challenge to adopt. Data science initiatives should be a collaborative venture between strategic, operational and analytics stakeholders with a clear business objective in mind. “Failure to do so can lead to solutions that lack organizational alignment,” Whitney explains. “It leaves the business in the dark”.
Whitney recalls that many companies operating in silos struggle to “connect data elements to the business processes they’re used in.” As a consultant, she is focused on closing the gap between business and tech teams. This, in particular, is where SEI helps to drive value. Consultants like Whitney listen to clients and find solutions tailored to their objectives. This helps business and management teams without the requisite data management background fully understand what D&A solution implementations require — and what they bring to the table. “I really enjoy telling the story of how data solutions can help solve business problems,” Whitney tells us.
For many clients, one method Whitney recommends to close the gap is creating a “bus matrix.” A bus matrix is a living document that ties data elements to their dependent business processes. This enables an organization to understand how data availability, inaccuracies, and outages impact their business and operations more holistically.
Building Better Businesses, Together
SEI’s business model is based on partnering with clients on end-to-end engagements that run from ideation to strategy to execution. This differs from other consulting firms that are not engaged throughout the project lifecycle. “At SEI, the client’s goals are our goals,” Whitney explains. The strategic roadmaps and implementations Whitney builds with her fellow SEI-ers enable businesses to solve their most complex data challenges.
In order to excel across sectors, SEI relies on the collective expertise and experience of consultants — when a client engages one consultant, they gain access to everyone in the company. SEI’s model for business is what first drew Whitney to SEI, and it’s a large part of why she’s stayed at SEI for nearly six years.
The lack of hierarchy at SEI means there’s always room at the top, and the ownership model and performance program promote collective value and collaboration. “SEI allows me to operate as an owner, drive meaningful impact for our organization, and build trusted relationships with my clients and colleagues,” Whitney reflects. SEI is a place where Whitney can bring her passion for analytics and automation to problem-solving and help organizations understand and address pressing business challenges.
