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:
- Preventing illness and injury
- Providing care closer to home
- 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.