Case Study

Developing and Deploying a Benefits Accelerator Dashboard

The Challenge

NWUHG comprises three medium size acute hospitals each with their own requirements for their Benefits plans, as well as needing to have them managed under a single umbrella of work and delivery for the collaborative’s singular EPR Programme.

Several challenges also needed to be considered:

  • The need to consolidate and structure information across the different Trusts into a single, accessible system
  • A known disconnect with hosting on any one of the 3 organisation’s servers as it would limit access and collaboration between the trusts
  • The legacy approach to benefits management and associated data collection and validation; historically based upon paper forms and workflow snapshots that caused lost data, delays, and inefficiencies
  • Limited internal capacity for the EPR programme to design and manage digital system.

These were all agreed that no matter how effective the Benefits strategy, plans, and data collections were designed and implemented, the work for the programme to keep it similarly paced and directed across Trusts and Directorates would be challenging.

The Technical

Using the Microsoft Power Apps suite, the Benefits dashboard is a Power Pages solution which allows for full end-to-end realisation of benefits from the organisational project through to collaborative portfolio levels. Whilst the underpinning architecture is standardised, it offers full, role-based-access-controlled opportunity for benefit value and realisation profiles, enabler status and tracking, and value capture and tracking for proposed, active, and retired benefits for each individual organisation; which will then feed into the overarching programme level requirements for reporting.

Our Approach

max20 Project Solutions had already undertaken benefits register, plan, and pathway work (see above links here) and AT Technical’s engagement began by building upon the original tool’s foundation infrastructure from that. It developed into a trusted technical partnership with both max20 and Norfolk and Waveney that spanned understanding and discovery, proposal, prototype, staff training, and further development.

Impact

This structured and phased approach delivered both a live solution and enabled further long-term benefits:
  • Norfolk and Waveney EPR Benefits leads can scope, create, and plan in a uniform, repeatable manner for their already agreed, and any emergent benefits
  • The forms and pick-list options within the dashboard allow for standardisation of meaning and use for aspects which are commonly interpreted differently; this thereby improves efficiency and specificity with benefits plans and users
  • The EPR Benefits Analysts can develop, log, and operate with a clear set of standards and reusable templates for both the creation and the tracking and data capture of benefit metric evidence
  • The dashboard also provides the Change Leads with a means of capturing the work required to enable the benefit both in the current deployment programme, and for its long-term realisation
  • Using the max20 hosted solution is eminently scalable; it allows for each Trust in the collaborative to run their own instance whilst ensuring that it draws from the central EPR programme benefits register; ensuring fidelity with the evidence model being used to demonstrate the benefit.

These were all agreed that no matter how effective the Benefits strategy, plans, and data collections were designed and implemented, the work for the programme to keep it similarly paced and directed across Trusts and Directorates would be challenging.

Client Feedback

“We now have a methodology and dashboard that gives real oversight. That means we can influence programmes like New Hospitals – programmes interested in what meaningful benefits realisation should look like.”

– Jonathan Harrowven, EPR Transformation and Adoption Programme Manager, NWUHG

“The dashboard created a tool that was practical, and we could use even after our engagement with max20 came to a close.”

– Emily Wells, Chief Nursing Information Officer, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals

Looking Ahead

The design and functionality within the dashboard has been recognised by other organisations, and also other programmes within NWUHG as meeting their requirements for intuitive benefits planning and data management. Coupled with max20 Project Solutions’ Benefits Accelerator Framework to assure and support the use of the dashboard itself, the realisation of benefits plans as a part of a project, programme, or portfolio is now a benefit opportunity itself.