A Readiness Package for North Bristol Trust’s (NBT) Power BI Tool Migration – pt1

Background

When North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) was tasked with enhancing their business intelligence (BI) system within a specific timeframe while simultaneously futureproofing their service, optimising their data, and aligning with emerging ICS standards, they turned to their trusted and proven partner, CACI, for best-in-class support. Having worked with CACI for several years for data and analytics support, NBT was confident that CACI could help them with their discovery and engagement project.

Project hero

David Hale, Assistant Director of Informatics at NBT, leads NBT’s data and analytics strategy and is responsible for delivering analytics to the board, clinicians, operational leads and business managers, and informatics teams across the ICS.

Project mapping & planning

Planning how to navigate from where NBT was to where it aimed to go was not a simple task, especially considering the constant evolution of technology and how people adapt and respond to it. Engaging a broad group of clinical, operational, and senior stakeholders, each with their own priorities and expectations, increased the complexity of the project. Among technical teams, the most substantial challenge was achieving a balance between blending considerable in-house knowledge and partnering with service and technology organisations to implement and fulfill their strategic objectives.

“The challenge is to discern what the underlying rationale of any query, concern or requirement unearths, and document that in a way that speaks to the more strategic concerns that you hear throughout the engagement,” David elaborated. “This is uniquely where a third party like [CACI] can come in to cut through multiple and often complex sets of stakeholder feedback to truly establish what the underlying requirements might be for a successful transition and elevation in technology.”

Meets guide

According to David, the positive working relationship with CACI and proven expertise were key in significantly enhancing their readiness work.

“We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve had [the CACI team] who we’ve had a very professional and supportive relationship with for many years. We can talk openly about how existing products and services are working and what our needs and requirements are,” he explained. “It made perfect sense to also go to [CACI] for the next step in the journey because it’s about concluding the chapter that we were currently in and setting ourselves up for the next. Our relationship with CACI had been built over a number of years, so we were really able to unlock our shared knowledge and expertise.”

David went on to acknowledge that there will always be gaps in understanding the evolving tools and technologies, which is when a trusted partner can be critical to bridge any knowledge gaps.
“We look to you as experts in the field, so not just within healthcare, but as a gold partner for a number of other technical suppliers,” he continued. “We reached a point where we had to look not only at the commercials with our existing technology, but a more all-encompassing approach to how we might scale-up our technology in future. This approach was also in response to internal audits about our own data strategy, and how we respond and accelerate our use of information now that we’ve done our EPR system transition.”

Action

To execute these plans, CACI first analysed NBT’s existing reporting outputs and infrastructure to gain a comprehensive view of its architecture. CACI and NBT then engaged with NBT’s internal and external data analytics stakeholders on their needs and preferences to assess the board’s strategic data and reporting priorities. Aligning with NBT’s digital and data strategies followed this, coupled with the production of a blueprint for moving forward, which outlined new data architecture, data governance, licensing requirements and enablement.

This action within the readiness package bolstered NBT’s creation of a compelling business case, which according to David was “one of the fastest approved capital cases I’ve ever experienced”, with a turnaround time of around 10 days from submission to approval.

“By approaching our BI technology transition in this way, we’ve enabled the navigation of one of the often-held assumptions within the public sector and the NHS that it’s hard to get things done. With a clear vision and exceptionally good outputs, we’ve been able to move at a pace, which is not normally expected to be the case in an NHS setting,” David concluded.

Avoid failure

David shared that one of the most valuable outcomes for NBT was CACI successfully engaging a variety of internal and external key stakeholders and compiling their feedback and requirements.

“There is something much more compelling about engaging stakeholders through a trusted partner under the mandate of a board-approved digital strategy. This was enhanced by a combination of recommendations from our internal audits and building upon the momentum of the EPR (Electronic Patient Record) programme delivery to quickly understand peoples’ requirements, needs and concerns, and structure that into an approach that we believe would answer the majority of those concerns,” he explained. “We were confident that we would be able to do the right thing for the organisation. The key differential was the focused piece of CACI-augmented stakeholder engagement. It allowed people to see their concerns reflected back to them so they can understand that they have been heard, enabling you to create a far more compelling, effective case.”

Success

NBT succeeded in producing a detailed report of all quantitative and qualitative findings with CACI’s support. These findings helped NBT gain a newfound understanding of their existing functions and capabilities and the changes required to succeed in the future. According to David, the initial communications through to the report and presentation delivery were pivotal in ensuring NBT would be set up for success.

“[Our relationship with CACI] feels grounded in practicality… it’s grounded in addressing real problems, and this is the latest installment of addressing one of those real problems,” David concluded.