Transforming end user support for more than 4,000 NHS staff
About Solent NHS Trust
Solent NHS Trust offers a growing range of community and mental health services across Southampton, Portsmouth, and parts of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
The Challenge
Having previously outsourced their end user support to the same provider for more than twelve years, Solent made the decision to revamp this entire function, considering ongoing issues around data visibility, unpredictable pricing, and lack of integration between different aspects of the service. The goal for this project would be to deliver seamless IT support services for more than 4,000 end users across Solent's full range of sites, while simultaneously reducing costs and conducting a full device refresh.
It was decided that the new support function would be divided amongst several technology partners, in order to take full advantage of their individual capabilities. Throughout the tender process, Exponential-e's deep commitment to digital transformation in healthcare and willingness to work closely with Solent's own teams to develop a tailored solution in response to the most specific requirements made them a clear stand-out. As a result, they were selected as Solent's sole technology partner for network and end user support.
Solution
The first areas of the contact went live in December 2022, after several months of close collaboration with Solent's own team to ensure a smooth transition, following the switch-off of the incumbent supplier's services in March of that year. This required a considerable amount of hands-on support, including out of hours, to ensure more than 4,000 staff were able to retain access to the Citrix VPN, avoiding any disruption to day-to-day operations.
As part of a wider hardware refresh, more than 4,000 new laptops were provisioned over the course of ten weeks, replacing much of the legacy technology that was still in use, including across several remote sites. An end user survey was conducted to help maximise adoption and ensure any opportunities for improvement could be identified and acted upon. With more than 2,000 responses, this provided Exponential-e with a rich pool of actionable data with which to design and optimise the new support operation.
Critical to the success of the new support function was the design and implementation of a robust IT Service Management platform, powered by ServiceNow®. By creating a domain separated instance within Exponential-e's managed service offering, Solent would not need to design and deploy the new ITSM platform from scratch, ensuring it would be ready to use on designated go-live date. At the same time, moving the function from CAPEX to OPEX allowed for greater cost control, while minimising the initial expenditure.
In order to meet Solent's specific requirements for their ticketing system, this solution was based on the Exponential-e's defined ITIL-aligned standards and service workflows, with an agreed scope for further customisation and hands-on support from Exponential-e's technical specialists included in the contract. The resulting platform combining the advantages of a proven, well-established solution with the highest levels of control and flexibility in terms of the final implementation and its ongoing development.
Following a successful transition to the new end user support function and the rollout of the ITSM platform, Exponential-e have continued to develop the operation in direct response to Solent's evolving requirements, ensuring business-critical issues can be resolved as quickly as possible. This has included recruiting extra service desk personnel, and implementing out-of-hours cover, while expanding the team's roaming tech hub to ensure all sites are properly supported. Time-to-resolution has been set out in robust SLAs and KPIs, with specific processes and escalations in place to manage high-impact events, and dedicated response engineers in place.
To optimise the efficiency and accessibility of service desk agents, Exponential-e designed and implemented an appointment-based system, ensuring staff who required hands-on IT support could access it as quickly as possible. This has since helped reduced walk-ins for IT-related issues from around 600 per month to less than 30.
The months of work put into establishing this foundation has since allowed Solent and Exponential-e to establish a culture of ongoing improvement, driven by direct collaboration daily, with Exponential-e now established as a trusted partner.
Every point of contact with end user support is tracked and monitored, and end users can provide real-time feedback on their experiences. This has resulted in 75% of tickets logged being resolved at the first point of contact, which, in turn, raised end user support's NPS score from 57, in the first live month of operations, to 90, with a 20% increase in users willing to offer feedback. Since then, the team has built on this success, recently hitting the milestone of more than 5,000 gold ratings.
This partnership continues to evolve, with ongoing collaboration between teams from both organisations ensuring IT can continue to play a key role in delivering world-class service quality to citizens across every region in which Solent is active.
Solution benefits
- More than 4,000 laptops setup and deployed across multiple sites
- Access to Citrix VPN delivered for more than 4,000 dispersed staff
- A highly flexible, fully integrated ITSM platform, with the industry-leading ServiceNow® solution delivered as a managed service
- Underpinned by Exponential-e's own enterprise-class network
- 75% of IT support tickets resolved at the first point of contact
- Walk-ins for IT-related issues reduced from around 600 per month to less than 30, helping reduce waiting times for support services
- 20-second pickup time regularly beaten by service desk personnel, now averaging 9 seconds wait time per call
- An increase in average monthly NPS from 57 to 90, with a 20% increase in end-user adoption
- More than 5,000 gold ratings from end users
- Network resiliency and stability to critical locations, with full integration into third-party networks, enabling cross-collaboration with partnering NHS trusts across the Integrated Care System in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight
Exponential-e's support and expertise has transformed the way IT is viewed across our organisation, with staff across all our sites making active use of the available tools and systems in every aspect of their work. The speed with which any issues have been resolved, and the team's willingness to think outside the box – particularly when it came to rolling out the new ITSM platform – have more than fulfilled our initial goals for network and end user support, with ample opportunities for further improvement.
Dawn Day, Head of Digital Delivery, Solent NHS Trust
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