Verto Case Study: working with the City of Wolverhampton Council

The city of Wolverhampton lies at the heart of the Black Country and is one of three cities in the West Midlands region. The city and council are experiencing a period of unprecedented growth and transformation, highlighted recently when the City of Wolverhampton Council was awarded ‘Local Authority of the Year’ at the MJ Awards, 2017.

The council serves a population of around 250,000 across 20 wards. It has a mission to ‘work as one to serve our city,’ and a vision that by 2030 ‘Wolverhampton will be a prosperous and inclusive city that celebrates its diversity and heritage and plays its part on the regional, national and international stage.’

Like all local authorities, the City of Wolverhampton Council has a complex structure made up of the full council and its various committees, directorates and services.

The council works with a wide range of other organisations through several key partnerships, including the local strategic partnership for the area and the West Midlands Combined Authority.

It has to report regularly on its progress in delivering its plans, both within the council itself and to its various partners.

What the City of Wolverhampton Council wanted to achieve 

The City of Wolverhampton Council’s Projects and Programmes Team currently produces highlight reports on 59 projects and 32 workstreams. These are developed into an overall dashboard and shared monthly with the council’s wider leadership team.

Prior to using Verto the Projects and Programmes Team were preparing these reports manually. Now, with Verto, the process is automated, which makes best use of officer time and ensures information is prepared for senior managers in an efficient and cost-effective way.

How we’re helping the City of Wolverhampton Council achieve its goal 

When we started working with the council in 2015, we worked alongside the Projects and Programmes Team to configure Verto in line with their project management process, from a project’s initial proposal right through to its close.

We also worked with them to set up standard reports which can be produced at the press of a button.

“The team from TMI provided excellent customer service. They prioritised our change requests and are good at turning things round when we need them to – straight away if they can. And they use our feedback to help them develop Verto so we, and others, can get more from it.” 

Laura Palmer, Portfolio Delivery Manager, the City of Wolverhampton Council

How the City of Wolverhampton Council is benefiting from using Verto

Since using Verto the City of Wolverhampton Council has seen a number of benefits. Perhaps the most significant is that they now have a controlled management and workflow process across the council.

With Verto all the council’s programme and project data is in one place. This means the Projects and Programmes Team can support project managers and projects officers from start to finish. As Harpreet Riyat, the council’s Project and Resources Manager says, “Verto is very clear and easy to use. Everything is in front of you on one screen and it guides you through the whole process so it’s very easy to learn.”

The Projects and Programmes Team have established a bi-weekly Project Assurance Group (PAG). This has helped programmes and projects become more visible and made it easier for the group to establish links, find commonalities and break down barriers. As a result they have also been able to identify both financial and time savings.

The increased visibility of programmes and projects also makes it easier for the PAG to agree which proposals should proceed. And once projects are up and running, the Projects and Programmes Team can quickly and easily produce monitoring reports which show progress, outcomes and risks.

Because Verto is based in the cloud it allows for mobile working so staff can easily work on it where and when they need to. This also makes it easy for people to collaborate across partnership projects and programmes. They can then use Verto’s instant messaging tool to communicate with each other.

Harpreet Riyat also commented that using Verto has substantially reduced the Projects and Programmes Team’s need to use paper.

We continue to work with the City of Wolverhampton Council. Recently we supported their move to VertoPro and resolved small technical issues very quickly.

We are also due to set up and roll out a single sign-on which means users no longer need to log in to Verto with a user name and password. Instead Verto will automatically be available to them when they log on to the council’s system. This has removed a potential barrier to using Verto and encouraged more consistent use of the tool.

The Projects and Programmes Team would like to develop more intuitive reporting so are currently reviewing our latest reporting options. We will then configure the reports they’d like to use to suit their needs.

To find out more about how Verto can help your local authority please call us on 0118 334 6200 or message us here.


Working with Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire STP

Verto Case Study: working with Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Sustainability and Transformation Plan

 

Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) is one of 44 STPs across England working to improve health and care in their local area.

The BNSSG Sustainability and Transformation Plan is focused on three priorities:

  1. Preventing illness and injury
  2. Providing care closer to home
  3. Personalized care

Under each of these priorities is a programme of work and under each programme of work there are a number of specific projects - a total of 90 across the whole plan. Each priority, programme and project involves several partners.

 

The difficulties BNSSG STP was facing

As with many other health communities, the context for the STP is challenging. They are dealing with significant financial, performance and delivery issues. So, to deliver the scale of change and improvement required, they needed to take a transformational approach.

Due to the nationally set timescale, BNSSG had limited time to bring together its 15 partner organizations and start to design and deliver their plan.

Because they’re working on such a wide range of projects, the STP wanted to make it as easy as possible for all the partners to work together.

They also wanted their processes to help create openness, trust and ownership.

But, as with any partnership, they faced key difficulties, including:

  • Transparency
  • Engagement
  • Ease of communication
  • Consistency of approach
  • Effective monitoring and reporting
  • Achieving demonstrable improvement quickly

 

How we’re helping BNSSG STP overcome these difficulties

Because they were up against a tight timescale, the STP originally thought there wasn’t enough time to develop an online, shared, programme management service. As a result they considered, for example, paper-based reporting, even though with 90 projects this would be a Herculean task.

However, one of the partners already uses Verto so we were able to “piggyback” off this and create a specific platform for the STP. We worked closely with the PMO team and had a cloud-based service up and running for them in just three weeks.

“TMI were amazing with a can do attitude. They were really responsive and sent people when we needed them, including spending all day in a freezing cold room and a half day on the phone. They went from nothing to complete build in three weeks. The portal is amazing too and we’ve had loads of positive feedback.”   Ruth Hallett, Programme Manager, BNSSG STP

Now, Verto allows everyone working on the STP’s projects to access a common toolkit. This helps make sure they are all using the same language, processes and templates (to date the STP has more than 30 templates on the system). This helps the PMO do their job and makes it easier for people to adopt new ways of working.

For example, one project manager needed a stakeholder map for her project but had never created one before. With Verto she was able to download a template, guidance document and a completed example.

This made what could have been a daunting task quick and easy. In addition, she was able to upload her completed map to Verto where other team members have instant access to it.

This shared way of working also means reporting is standardized. This makes it easier for the PMO team to monitor progress and make comparisons across projects.

For example, they can see and understand where projects impact and depend on each other and so manage these relationships more effectively.

Verto has also highlighted where more than one project is trying to achieve the same results. This makes it possible to cut duplicate working and increase efficiency.

Verto’s document store is supporting collaboration across the partnership. All the STP documents are held in one place where all the partners have access to them. This means everyone can easily share information, be confident they’re looking at the most up-to-date version of every document and can clearly see what’s going on across the whole plan.

Verto has also made the STP contact list accessible to all the partners. This means people can easily see who is involved in each project and who they need to be communicating with. This helps the STP implement their feedback loop, where partners are encouraged to talk to each other, share information and comment where necessary.

 

The benefits the STP is seeing

After using Verto for only a few months, BNSSG STP is already seeing significant benefits.

For example, the online portal has created a shared place where partners work together to overcome difficulties and share good practice.

Consistent ways of working are helping the PMO monitor progress, identify risks and create accurate and useful reports.

And at executive level, the visibility Verto affords is helping people know where and when they need to intervene and where they can confidently leave things alone.

As Ruth Hallett said, “The right people are having the right conversations.”

We’re still working with BNSSG STP and are currently helping them use Verto to develop more detailed reporting and more proactively manage risk.

To find out more about how Verto can help your STP please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.


How we can help you help your clients

Verto is widely used across both the private and public sectors.

For example, our clients include Capita PLC, Northgate Vehicle Leasing, NHS and councils across the country.

Many of our private sector clients also work with public sector organisations, helping them build shared services, deliver change and realize challenging efficiency savings.

Even when several organisations from different sectors are involved, Verto’s tools make it easy for them to work together. Because with Verto, everyone can work on the same platform and communicate with each other quickly and easily.

Here are some examples of how we’re helping our clients and what they have to say about us.

 

Capita

Capita uses technology to create and deliver smarter process management and professional support services across the public and private sectors.

They say:

“I have been working with the Verto team for the last 18 months and in that time we have built an excellent working relationship. The reason for this is that not only is VERTO an excellent PPM tool, but what makes the product stand out is the team behind it for their responsiveness, help, support and ability to go the extra mile in both promoting and delivering the tool to clients. The VERTO team understand real problems and issues and how to resolve them in a fit for purpose way and do so in a friendly and open manner that is very refreshing.”

 

Onesource

Onesource provides shared back office support services for local government and other public services. They use Verto to support their project and programme management.

They say:

We have found Verto to be very flexible, especially when embedding our corporate methodology and workflow into a cloud-based application. [It] has enabled better collaborative ways of working and greater transparency in all aspects of project management and expenditure. Furthermore, TMI [Verto] has consistently provided an excellent customer service and [been] willing to support us at all times. We’ve enjoyed working with TMI to achieve our corporate PMO application requirements.”

 

Denbighshire Council

The support from TMI Systems from day one has been outstanding, they are always willing to listen to new ideas and respond to all system enquiries almost by return.

 

Wolverhampton City Council

The support provided by TMI Systems has been brilliant to get the system up and running. The system enables us to have a cross directorate view of the projects and programmes currently being managed within the Council.

 

To find out more about how Verto can help you and your clients please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.

 

 


Why Verto’s Cloud-based Software Will Make You a Better Employer

We designed Verto’s software to make it easier for you to manage projects and work in partnership with others.

And that’s exactly what Verto does. Its tools and cloud-based platform mean you can do all this, in an instant, whenever you need to and wherever you are:

  • Manage risk
  • Create reports
  • Share information
  • Communicate with one or more people
  • See the status of all your projects at a glance
  • Manage your team’s workload and performance
  • Track your project’s progress and monitor its costs

There’s more to Verto 

 

So Verto does what it promises. But it has other, less immediately obvious benefits. One is that Verto makes flexible working easy to put into practice and manage.

Increasingly, flexible working is becoming the norm. This is because it is good for both employees and employers. According to the 2009 Flexible Working Taskforce report:

65% of employers said flexible working practices had a positive effect on recruitment and retention

 

70% of employers noted some or significant improvement in employee relations

How to make flexible working work

 

Flexible working requires trust and confidence on both sides if it is to be a success. Staff need to be confident their managers are committed to flexible working and trust them not to abuse it. Likewise, managers need to allow their team members to have more control over their working week and trust them to maintain their performance.

Verto’s tools make it easy to manage a team, manage projects and maintain contact even when people are working in different places at different times. Exactly the support flexible working needs to be a success.

Key benefits of flexible working

One of the key strengths of flexible working is that it’s attractive to employees. So, as noted in the Flexible Working Taskforce report, it will appeal to candidates when you’re recruiting, it will help you retain skilled and experienced staff and it will help improve your employee relations.

There is a wealth of evidence to show (for example, Scandura and Lankau 1997) that flexible working leads to higher levels of commitment and job satisfaction.

This is because flexible working motivates and empowers your staff by giving them more control. For example, they’ll be able to more easily meet their family and other commitments. As an added benefit, they’re also more likely to take a flexible approach to work. So when you need people to put in some extra hours they’re more likely to do so willingly.

Less direct benefits can include cuts to travel time and costs, which can also contribute to your organization’s carbon management and reporting. Staff who are able to avoid the rush hour will probably arrive at work in a more positive frame of mind too!

At its simplest, trusting your staff to work flexibly shows that you’re committed to them not just the organization.

To find out more about how Verto can help your project management - and as a result, flexible working - please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.


Why Verto’s Cloud-based Software Will Make You a Better Employer

We designed Verto’s software to make it easier for you to manage projects and work in partnership with others.

 

And that’s exactly what Verto does. Its tools and cloud-based platform mean you can do all this, in an instant, whenever you need to and wherever you are:

  • Manage risk
  • Create reports
  • Share information
  • Communicate with one or more people
  • See the status of all your projects at a glance
  • Manage your team’s workload and performance
  • Track your project’s progress and monitor its costs

 

 

There’s more to Verto

 

So Verto does what it promises. But it has other, less immediately obvious benefits. One is that Verto makes flexible working easy to put into practice and manage.

 

Increasingly, flexible working is becoming the norm. This is because it is good for both employees and employers. According to the 2009 Flexible Working Taskforce report:

 

65% of employers said flexible working practices had a positive effect on recruitment and retention

 

70% of employers noted some or significant improvement in employee relations

 

How to make flexible working work

 

Flexible working requires trust and confidence on both sides if it is to be a success. Staff need to be confident their managers are committed to flexible working and trust them not to abuse it. Likewise, managers need to allow their team members to have more control over their working week and trust them to maintain their performance.

 

Verto’s tools make it easy to manage a team, manage projects and maintain contact even when people are working in different places at different times. Exactly the support flexible working needs to be a success.

 

Key benefits of flexible working

 

One of the key strengths of flexible working is that it’s attractive to employees. So, as noted in the Flexible Working Taskforce report, it will appeal to candidates when you’re recruiting, it will help you retain skilled and experienced staff and it will help improve your employee relations.

 

There is a wealth of evidence to show (for example, Scandura and Lankau 1997) that flexible working leads to higher levels of commitment and job satisfaction.

 

This is because flexible working motivates and empowers your staff by giving them more control. For example, they’ll be able to more easily meet their family and other commitments. As an added benefit, they’re also more likely to take a flexible approach to work. So when you need people to put in some extra hours they’re more likely to do so willingly.

 

Less direct benefits can include cuts to travel time and costs, which can also contribute to your organization’s carbon management and reporting. Staff who are able to avoid the rush hour will probably arrive at work in a more positive frame of mind too!

 

At its simplest, trusting your staff to work flexibly shows that you’re committed to them not just the organization.

 

To find out more about how Verto can help your project management - and as a result, flexible working - please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.


From 1 to £13.2 billion: The Benefits of Verto in Numbers

Verto’s cloud-based software can help you in a number of ways. For example, it can help you cut costs and improve efficiency across all aspects of your project and programme management.

 

It can also help your shared practice become more effective, for example when you’re working with providers or local enterprise partnerships.

 

Our years of experience and understanding of the demands of modern working drive these benefits.

 

The numbers below tell you more.

 

1          Verto’s project management software has 1 clear landing page you can customise for the way you work.

 

2          You can choose which of our 2 systems will suit your organisation best.

 

7          Verto starts from only £7.50 per user per month.

 

10        NHS Blood and Transplant rate us 10/10 for training, configuration, hosting and system development and updates.

 

15        The team at Verto has been providing cloud-based applications for more than 15 years.

 

24        Verto’s instant messaging means you can easily stay in touch 24 hours a day.

 

25        We’ve helped PMOs cut their costs by 25%.

 

30        And helped projects secure savings of 30%.

 

50        We’ve helped more than 50 organisations set up and run their PMO.

 

60        You can trial all Verto’s benefits FREE for 60 days.

 

120      We’ve provided cloud-based services to more than 120 public sector departments and organisations including fire and rescue services, NHS CCGs and local enterprise partnerships.

 

26,000             We support 26,000 registered users.

 

38,000             And track 38,000 tasks and milestones every day.

 

13.2 billion      We’re helping our clients deliver £13.2 billion of planned savings.

 

For more information on how Verto can help you please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.


How Cloud-based Software Makes Project Management Easier

Here at Verto we understand the demands project managers face every day. No matter what sector you work in and the projects you’re responsible for, you’re in a constant cycle of planning, delivery and reporting.

You’re managing risk, people, performance, time, change and budgets.

You’re expected to know what’s happening with a project at any given time.

And you’re expected to make sure everyone else does too.

Cloud-based project management software, like Verto Go and Verto Pro, help you do all this. Quickly and easily.

 

Instant Access

We provide and maintain Verto on our secure servers and you access it from the internet. This means you and everyone else involved in the project can have instant access to your project’s data. Whenever you need it and from wherever you are.

So even if you’re working round the clock and only have your mobile with you, you’ll always be in touch

Instant Messaging

Verto has an instant messaging tool so you can easily keep in touch with everyone involved in the project.

You can update the whole team at the same time so they always have the latest information.

And you can message people individually to let them know exactly what you need them to do.

Automatic Document Control

Because all your data is stored securely in one place, everyone will always get to see the latest version of any file. Verto even has an automated document control feature that takes care of this for you.

Supporting Flexible Working

Flexible working may eventually become the norm as more and more organisations recognise the benefits it brings in terms of recruiting and retaining the best staff.

Cloud-based project management software has a key role to play here as it means you and your team can access your project’s data whenever you need to from wherever you are. Exactly what you need to work flexibly.

 

And there’s more…

Alongside the benefits that being based in the cloud brings, Verto has a whole host of other project management tools to help your PMO run smoothly.

Things like free automatic updates that mean you’re always working on the latest version of the software, tools to help you manage risk and best practice templates, all save you time and make your job as a project manager easier.

To find out more get in touch.


21 Reasons Why You Should Use Verto for Your Project Management (as told to us by our clients)

We’re lucky enough to have received some great testimonials from our clients over the years.

And, like you, we listen to all the feedback we get and use it to help us continuously improve what we do.

Here are 21 reasons you should use Verto as your project management software, taken from what our clients have told us.

We’ve summarised their comments but you can see them in full here.

  1. Verto is a flexible management tool that will support your PMO.
  2. It means you can easily keep all your project documents up-to-date and secure in one place.
  3. It’s easy to navigate.
  4. Verto gives senior leadership improved visibility of projects across the whole organisation.
  5. You can easily see exactly what is going on in a particular business or service area.
  6. Everyone involved in the project can access the system to view and update it as appropriate.
  7. It removes the risks of silo working and makes it easier to work collaboratively.
  8. It will help you improve communication.
  9. It will help you improve accountability.
  10. It will help you improve stakeholder involvement.
  11. Verto will give you a clear view of all project budgets.
  12. Verto will give you a clear view of all project risks and help you manage them effectively.
  13. Verto will help your PMO allocate their time more efficiently and effectively.
  14. Verto is preset with best practice templates and controls to help ensure the integrity of your data.
  15. Its reports are quick and easy to customise, update and run.
  16. It will help you produce your corporate and strategic plans.
  17. We can tailor Verto to your exact needs, for example by creating bespoke reports.
  18. Verto gives you automatic document control.
  19. It’s good value for money.
  20. We’re continuously improving Verto’s scope, tools and functionality.
  21. Verto is backed-up by fantastic support from a first-class team.

 

For more information on how Verto can help you please call us on 0844 870 8785 or send us a message.

With thanks to Brent Council, Camden Council, Cheshire West Council, Denbighshire County Council, Gloucestershire County Council, Harrow Council, Horsham Council, Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, Basildon Council, Newham Council, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council, Wolverhampton Council, York Council, Central Eastern CSU, Thurrock CCG and Basildon CCG.