Social services provider uses artificial intelligence to provide genuine help

With climate change and other factors impacting vulnerable populations globally, concerns over welfare and health have risen.

For Colsubsidio, a non-profit provider of a wide array of social services in Colombia, the recent pandemic underscored the need to respond quickly to a major crisis to diminish the harm felt by communities with limited resources.

However, IT users depended on difficult-to-support legacy systems, with member data spread over different technologies and each specialty unit often partial to a separate solution.

As a result, data teams exhausted valuable time resolving problems and fixing glitches, and the approximately 1.5 million affiliates providing services for Colsubsidio were each responsible for managing their own data.

In addition, the incapacity to properly utilize advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) shut out users hoping for statistical analysis, visualization, and general data-science features. 

When Colsubsidio evaluated the situation, managers realized that recent technological innovations could quickly solve the dilemma. These innovations enabled the organization to develop an intelligent data application that would merge the disparate solutions while taking advantage of AI and other tools in an advanced analytics cloud to successfully achieve its goals, provide vital services, and adapt to changing circumstances and technology.

Leaving the old legacy behind

For more than 60 years, Colsubsidio has delivered services in Colombia in specialty areas such as housing, health, financial services, retail, food and beverage, sports and recreation, hotels, and tourism.

By creating a new platform, those sectors could operate more streamlined, capitalizing on modern AI and other tools to exchange critical data, providing benefits, jobs, and shelter to those in need.

Still, there were obstacles.

“The main challenge was creating a data, analytics, and AI governance for ensuring that data and information were used to create value for our customers and our strategy,” noted Gustavo Adolfo Diaz Tabares head of Data, analytics, and AI.

That governance would allow technology to deliver its best value. Because so much of the organization’s strategic information was already on SAP legacy systems, Colsubsidio began working with the world’s leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor to construct the application.

In particular, SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP), provides an integrated suite with a comprehensive range of solutions for various tasks, would allow connectivity with open-source programming, empowering any user to inspect, modify or enhance a specific tool.

At the same time, SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP HANA Cloud, a single database as a service (DBaaS) foundation for modern applications, would provide the warehousing for the analytics required to deliver services as efficiently as possible, changing the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people being assisted by Colsubsidio. 

A better future

Once the platform was deployed in January 2023, Colsubsidio’s entire ecosystem was transformed, with 100 percent of the data science teams adopting the application.

Instantly, the organization was endowed with business intelligence and advanced analytic solutions across all units to support rapid decision-making.

As evidence, data analysis that once took 35 days can now be completed immediately. 

“One of the big advantages…is how easy it is to integrate this respective platform and database with our existing customer journeys and digital channels,” said Diaz Tabares.

Users can generate their own evaluations without the assistance of a data scientist. Each unit has the extensive power to use the app to create reports, dashboards, and advanced analytics models.

Not surprisingly, the organization reports that internal team satisfaction has risen from 83 to 95 percent.

Most importantly, Colsubsidio’s clients are experiencing the difference, with the increase in housing availability being one of the more notable achievements.

The organization’s use of advanced technology to foster a better future has brought international attention to Colsubsidio. It was honored as a finalist at the 2024 SAP Innovation Awards, a yearly celebration highlighting groups taking advantage of SAP technologies to make important changes. (You can learn what Colsubsidio did to earn this prestigious recognition by accessing their Innovation Awards pitch deck here.)

And because the number of Colsubsidio’s data teams continue to grow, over time, the organization will be able to develop even more intelligent data applications using AI and other revolutionary technologies easily accessible on the platform.