Project Description

About the Client

Anglia Support Partnerships (ASP) were an NHS organisation providing shared service solutions (business process outsourcing) to various NHS organisations in the East if England, in the areas of technology, payroll and finance, HR, risk support, occupational health, contract support, catering and facilities management.

Now part of Serco, their clients include Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust, NHS East of England, Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust and various others.

Serco operates across industry verticals, in sectors such as: health, transport, justice, immigration, defence, and citizens services.

The Project

The host NHS organisation for Anglia Support Partnerships had decided to divest the APS organisation. A number of bidders had made it to the final rounds, and the organisation was looking for assistance in ensuring that the service frameworks were correctly designed before any final divestment – to ensure all current and future customers received the levels of service they required for all IT and Informatics services.

Part of the issue was to understand and formalise the support functions at ASP, and to understand the requirements of customers for the foreseeable future. ASP had not formalised the support functions in the IT and Informatics areas, as these were part of an ongoing strategy redesign when the divestment was agreed by the host organisation Board.

The programme also required a good analysis of the potential new host organisations’ technical, information and support facilities and an understanding of the requirements at local, regional and national levels for all customers.

Our Approach

Brought in by the CIO and other senior management team members, the Strategic Discourse team worked closely with ASPs various support and technical teams, and the CIOs at all the customer organisations to independently understand the different requirements and capabilities.

A number of models and frameworks were used to ensure that all customer needs were understood, and deep and detailed analysis of the potential new host organisations capabilities were carried out.

Using the teams deep knowledge of national requirements, including expertise from team members who had worked at national levels, Strategic Discourse were able to ensure that future national requirements were carefully detailed and considered.

The Strategic Discourse team ran a number of workshops and meetings, including 1:1 interviews and group sessions with key customer leaders, and conducted independent primary research to understand the key areas of this programme.

Using their in-depth knowledge of technology, information and support services, the team were able to highlight a number of key weaknesses to the current solutions and were able to rapidly develop new solutions to provide better outcomes for all customers at minimal cost – something that was a key requirement of the client.

A full review of the technology stack employed by Anglia Support Partnerships was carried out and this information was used to further support the new models of support which the Strategic Discourse team designed.

Separately, Strategic Discourse were able to ensure that all current customers future needs were met, by carrying out several detailed reviews including full horizon scanning and ensuring the team had a comprehensive understanding of the expected requirements for each customer organisation into the near and mid-term future.

The Outcome

Strategic Discourse were able to assist the current CIO to understand the full service delivery models, to implement new and streamlined service delivery models designed by us to ensure the best outcomes for their customers.

The work carried out by Strategic Discourse became the central part of the contract with Serco for the on-going delivery of IT and informatics services and support and formed the basis of all new support contracts for the new ASP organisations with all new national clients.

Since conducting this piece of work, the IT and informatics services of ASP have grown and now cover a much wider number of NHS clients than ever before.

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Through Aligning Strategy, Operations and Supporting Functions with the Marketplace to Deliver the Best Outcomes

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