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.
Verto Case Study: working with NHS West Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group
NHS West Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is one of 207 CCGs across England responsible for the planning and commissioning of healthcare services for their local area. Each CCG must assess its local needs, decide on its priorities and buy appropriate services. As local needs change, which they constantly do, CCGs must also adapt and respond to these changes.
CCGs have to regularly report on their plans and progress to NHS England, to their local Health and Wellbeing Board and to the public in their area. Their success is measured on how much they improve outcomes.
West Cheshire CCG serves a population of about 261,000 and has an annual budget of around £330 million. The CCG is made up of 35 GP practices from three localities each with 3-clusters. Together they work to secure high-quality, high-value healthcare that meets the needs of their local population. Their stated aim is: “Making sure you get the healthcare you need.”
What West Cheshire CCG wanted to achieve
West Cheshire CCG wanted to improve their programme management systems. They also had the challenge of needing to deliver a balanced budget in 2016-17 and again in 2017-18. This meant they had to have a rigorous financial recovery plan in place that detailed how they would find savings of around £10 million in each of the two financial years. As such it was essential that the CCG could:
- Work to consistent processes
- Easily and accurately monitor projects
- Easily and accurately report on outcomes
- Plan with confidence
- Make efficiency savings
In particular, the PMO team were under pressure. They were managing all the CCG’s projects manually on excel spreadsheets. This was time-consuming and did not allow for robust risk management or confident reporting on milestones.
How we’re helping West Cheshire CCG achieve their goals
We started working with West Cheshire CCG in July 2016. By September they were able to start introducing Verto to individual project leads. By March 2017, everyone who needed to be was working on the new system.
We configured Verto in line with how the CCG works and to make it easy for them to transfer their project data. This meant that when staff logged on for the first time they could immediately see all their project documentation.
“The team from TMI really listen. They’re keen to fix issues and do so in a really short time. They’re open to new ideas and see opportunities for development rather than problems. This makes the whole process of introducing a new system much easier.”
Reza Rahmani-Torkaman, Head of Programme Management Office, West Cheshire CCG
The benefits West Cheshire CCG is seeing
The way Verto is set up makes it easy for people to follow project management best practice. As a result, the PMO team say that since moving to Verto everyone is working in a more calm, controlled and consistent way. This means there is no longer a pressure to find funds to expand the PMO team. And may have helped the CCG deliver their planned savings in 2016-17.
Because Verto is based in the cloud, CCG staff and members can now access their data wherever they are and whenever they need. This is supporting more flexible working and is something people have commented they appreciate.
CCGs have to measure their progress against national data. Because Verto gives the PMO team reliable and current data they can now measure their progress, project future outcomes and plan with more confidence.
As well as the PMO team, Verto also gives individual commissioning managers, the finance team and the business intelligence team easy access to their project data. This means they can manage risk, monitor and report on projects in a much more robust way.
We continue to support and work with West Cheshire CCG as they introduce new programmes of work and develop new practices. For example, in the future they intend to work in partnership with other organisations and across boundaries to deliver some major projects. Verto will make this collaborative working much easier for them.
To find out more about how Verto can help your CCG please call us on 0118 334 6200 or message us here.
7 things you should be doing to keep safe if you're a mobile worker.
These tips will make your mobile working safer.
Remember Apple’s iPod ads where you could have 1,000 songs in your pocket? At the time, it was revolutionary.
Since then developments in technology mean we can now have our entire business in our pocket. And changes in the way we work mean more and more of us do.
Easy access to data and the ability to work where and when we need to have enormous benefits. But they also come with some risk.
Devices can easily be lost or stolen. Remote access increases the opportunities for data to be breached. And inexperienced staff may not keep up with safe working practices.
Verto is cloud-based project management software, which means your whole team can make the most of mobile working. To help you make the most of these opportunities, we’ve put together some tips on how to make mobile working as safe as it can be.
These are really simple things you can do that will protect your data, your organization and your staff.
- Insist all your team use a password, or better still finger print scanning, to lock their screen.
- Set up all your devices to wipe their data after the passcode has been entered incorrectly a set number of times.
- Use remote management tools to track, lock and even wipe the data on your devices.
- Smart phones can’t be tracked once their SIM card has been removed. So accept we all lose things from time to time and encourage your staff to report a lost or stolen device as soon as possible without fear of penalty.
- Make sure all your mobile devices have up-to-date malware protection, exactly as you do for your desktop devices.
- Make sure all your staff are aware of the risks linked to mobile devices. For example, they should only use apps that your IT team have confirmed as safe. And they should only ever access sensitive data via a password secured network.
- Limit the types of devices on your network. This will help them integrate seamlessly with your back-office systems and make it easier for you to keep security measures up-to-date.
It’s worth taking the time to make mobile working safe as the benefits are significant. For example, mobile working means flexible working, which is good for both employers and employees. It can help you recruit the best staff. And it can help you cut costs. For more on this see our blog about how flexible working can make you a better employer.
To find out more about how Verto can help you make the most of mobile working please call us on 0118 334 6200 or message us here.