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.
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.