Synergy Archives

Uncovering the power of Power BI: embedding new practices, empowering users & the handover process

Posted on: 24 April 2025

In our previous blog in this three-part series, we explored the ‘meal delivery model’ for the Power BI platform and the tools and teams required to bring this model and its methodology to life. In the final blog of this series, we’ll assess how new practices can be embedded and users empowered as the solution build is underway, as well as how to effectively carry out the handover process for a seamless go-live.

To read our full whitepaper that outlines additional methodology and best practices to unlock all that Power BI has to offer, click here.

Embedding new practices and empowering your users

To effectively embed new practices and empower users, evaluating training and resources will be fundamental for a successful Power BI migration. Conducting a training and resource assessment to evaluate users’ training needs and ensure they’re equipped with the necessary skills and confidence to use Power BI will be key to maximising its value. Planning a range of training for various users will be particularly impactful in this case, as will offering the right training to the right users. Communicating expectations, project and migration updates and overarching benefits will also be critical, especially when users are asked to contribute and to change established practices.

The handover process

Prior to going live, ensuring the necessary solution documentation is in place for both user and developer reference will be vital. Holding handover sessions for your BI team, your IT team and management, unifying support and resources and making sure the helpdesk is both responsive and reactive to any technical issues that arise will bolster this.

To help determine response times for any technical issues arising, users’ needs that would have arisen during the discovery phase of the project must be understood. Departmental or team champions for non-technical Power BI users can therefore bolster outcomes in these circumstances, and managed support can alleviate the burden of updates and adaptations in fast-changing NHS environments.

Time must be allocated for handover sessions for the BI team, IT team and management. This will serve as an additional opportunity to reiterate the benefits of the new PowerBI solution along with a practical introduction. Consistent monitoring and feedback should be sought out to refine helpdesk processes and continue deriving the full benefits that the solution can provide as the handover stage continues.

While PowerBI is an exceptionally flexible platform and will expand and adapt to accommodate new data and reporting requirements, having the necessary development resources available to make changes and upkeep the solution will be paramount.

How CACI can help

Migrating to PowerBI enables NHS stakeholders to achieve new strategic goals and transform their analytical capabilities. CACI understands the value that migrating to PowerBI can bring, which is why we have developed our own set of best practices and key principles for PowerBI migrations within the NHS. We strive to deliver a seamless migration built on our extensive experience in NHS data and technology, prioritising stakeholder engagement, providing reliable reporting, secure data sharing and self-sufficient BI capabilities for data-driven decision-making.

For more information or help with Power BI project planning, delivery or ongoing managed services, contact us today. To learn more about how you can tap into the power of Power BI, our whitepaper outlines the best practices and methodology that will boost your understanding and usage.

Read the rest of the series here:

Uncovering the power of Power BI: ‘meal delivery’ model & critical resources

Posted on: 17 April 2025

In our previous blog in this three-part series, we uncovered the value of thorough discovery and how to build a successful project delivery framework. Today, we’ll explore the ‘meal delivery model’ for the Power BI platform and the tools and teams required to bring this model and its methodology to life.

To read our full whitepaper that outlines additional methodology and best practices to unlock all that Power BI has to offer, click here.

What is the ‘meal delivery’ model for Power BI?

The ‘meal delivery’ model is an analogy for Power BI data insight in NHS systems, stemming from a challenge of making data insight (food) available to a range of different NHS users (eaters). In this context, there are a range of preferences and capabilities among Power BI users and audiences to consider. Therefore, data architecture must enable the experiences and nuances within them, catering to the specific needs of various users:

Analysts: These users will need direct portal access to usable data building blocks and analytics tools. With the ‘meal delivery’ model in mind, these users will need to select quality ingredients to make a meal for themselves.

Executive users: These users need dashboard access to pull reports from selected datasets. They will want the ingredients packaged and provided along with a basic recipe to make the meal in a way that best suits their individual needs.

Report consumers: Finally, these users will need Power BI reports sent direct to their inbox or accessible from Teams. They will want the meal delivered to them, ready to eat.

The people and tools that make it happen

Using all the insights that have been discovered, a plan can be created to maximise Power BI benefits and meet all identified requirements, goals and constraints. The development process and method will determine the pace of the Power BI implementation and the level of disruption to business as usual. It will also define a team’s size, roles, skills required and cost of resources. An Agile Scrum Project method can be utilised here to maximise developer and user collaboration and allow for continuous improvement across each sprint to incorporate change in a controlled way without derailing the project’s progress.

With Power BI project delivery being split into two workstreams— one being data and infrastructure, the other reporting— this method offers the flexibility to continuously embed best practices and ensure data and infrastructure workstreams do not diverge.

How CACI can help

In the upcoming and final blog in this series, we’ll investigate new practices to be embedded and how to empower your users to ensure a successful handover.

Read our previous blog in the series ‘Uncovering the power of Power BI: discovery & delivery framework’ here

Uncovering the power of Power BI: discovery & delivery framework

Posted on: 11 April 2025

NHS organisations that pursue data transformation will achieve substantial changes in their data-driven decision-making that ultimately improves efficiency, quality and patient experience. Power BI is an optimal contender for NHS organisations seeking a complete data transformation. However, achieving this and reaping its many benefits requires a carefully planned migration process, necessitating a partnership with a reliable data partner that possesses innate experience.

Having worked with many NHS organisations over the years to plan and implement data migrations, this three-part blog series is developed from the principles of our Power BI migration methodology and real-world experience of NHS data projects, sharing key questions you should consider asking and areas to address to ensure a successful migration to Power BI.

As such, the series begins with understanding the value of thorough discovery and how to build a successful project delivery framework. To read our full whitepaper that outlines additional methodology and best practices to unlock all that Power BI has to offer, click here.

The value of thorough discovery

Unearthing all the information that will influence and affect your migration is a vital—albeit lengthy— first step. Skimping on discovery can compromise the solution’s effectiveness.

Stakeholder mapping and collaboration

Stakeholder mapping and collaboration can make a significant impact to help define migration goals, as it will unearth possible issues and harvest key requirements to define migrations goals. Workshops with key stakeholders can aid this process, helping establish users’ needs and gauging their use of the Power BI platform.

Conduct a current state analysis

Reviewing current data architecture, data processing locations and transformation methods will help you intrinsically understand stored data and information flows. During this review, inefficiencies within the operating landscape where your new solution will be situated can be identified and a solid foundation for new data architecture objectives can be built and defined.

Building the project delivery framework

Building a successful project delivery framework will begin with defining features and functionalities required, including visualisations, connectivity, AI functions, data modelling and relationships between datasets. Ensuring you have a single version of the truth that is built on high quality data will also be critical. Reporting and analysis must also be transparent, enabling users and auditors to visualise how figures are produced. To facilitate this, solutions and configurations by audience type should be proposed to ensure users’ needs and Power BI access requirements will be met.

Furthermore, developing a full target data architecture and identifying software/licensing requirements based on an assessment of your current analytics development process and available resources will be an integral part of the development of this framework. Availability will also need to be considered, as will security across all apps, including different access levels and permissions.

How CACI can help

Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, where we’ll explain the ‘meal delivery model’ and the teams and tools that activate it.

How Northern Ireland Trusts successfully adopted Synergy, CACI’s patient level costing solution

Posted on: 15 August 2024

Background

Migrating to and developing a patient level costing solution (PLICS) programme has been a prominent topic of conversation for the costing community in Health and Social for years now, especially following its successful adoption within other jurisdictions. Trusts and the Strategic Planning and Performance Group (SPPG) alike have recognised the value of integrating a PLICS programme to enhance analytical capabilities and the quality and granularity of Health and Social Care (HSC) financial information. By integrating a PLICS programme, providers and commissioners would be able to better understand how resources are used to identify opportunities for cost reduction, improved efficiencies and achieving clinical level ownership.

As an increasing number of Northern Ireland Trusts began reaching the end of their original costing systems’ lifetimes and a drive to deliver PLICS data as quickly as possible, a decision to initiate a tender process was made.

Although the tender process– managed by colleagues in the Business Services Organisation Procurement and Logistics Service (BSO PaLS)– was lengthy, CACI’s patient level costing solution, Synergy, came out on top thanks to its costs and exceptional quality, along with CACI’s project team’s demonstrated understanding of the Northern Ireland landscape through their previous experiences.

Customer lead

Eilis Calvert is a head accountant in financial performance within the Strategic Planning and Performance Group of the Department of Health, responsible for producing guidance, returns submissions, data quality assurance and usage in the most effective capacities possible.

Project mapping & planning

According to Eilis, Synergy’s ability to deliver high-quality PLICS product and data insight with ease and flexibility would address each of the Northern Ireland Trusts’ needs, especially gaining a better understanding of their population. Previous systems costed in aggregate, resulting in a lack of visibility or granularity that Synergy could rectify. In addition, some Trusts previously needed to take additional steps to populate the necessary NI costing template following the completion of the costing process, which Synergy 4 would output directly and significantly reduce time for Trusts.

“Prior to [Synergy], we used higher-level costing data, but the devil is in the details, so getting that level of granularity [was critical] to help us to really understand the whole patient journey, especially as our healthcare system covers social care,” Eilis explained.

Action

The scope of Northern Ireland Trusts differs from NHS in other UK jurisdictions. While the Northern Ireland Trusts lean heavily on the work of NHS England and NHS Wales in developing patient level methodology, Eilis recalls the significant work that had to go into developing methodology and guidance for other elements specific to Northern Ireland, such as social care and adapting datasets to fit the electronic patient data collected in Northern Ireland. Reporting requirements also differed for these Trusts, such as the inclusion of Programmes of Care.

CACI helped the Trusts overcome these differentiation challenges by developing additional guidance aspects and modifying software to process data and report in the necessary capacity that would meet HSCNI’s unique needs. CACI’s project lead provided continuous support and advice through to the final cost submission being made. A constant flow of communication was maintained between CACI and the Trusts, ranging from ad-hoc calls to the creation and delivery of formal reports. CACI’s communicative approach ensured that a collective understanding was met across the Trusts, with Eilis sharing that CACI was “very supportive of everyone’s individual needs while ensuring that the department received the consistency that they required”.

Overcoming challenges

Working with such large data volumes and patient level data was unfamiliar territory for the costing teams, leading to teams having to upskill in these areas. Patient level cost allocation only began (and through a new system) in 2023, changing the pre-existing costing methodology from what the teams had been using for several years prior. With a plethora of data to review and a new system to work with, the cost review challenge was substantially heightened.

The implementation of Synergy began in January 2023, with Trusts trained up on the new system within the year, including working on a pilot model and completing a cost submission. Despite Eilis recalling this time as one of intensity, she is proud of what the HSC costing community have achieved.

“The project team at CACI was great at bringing people along this very challenging journey on a very tight deadline and keeping us all right, so that we were able to achieve what we needed to in that first year,” Eilis shared.

Success

Working with CACI on the PLICS data was helpful, although not without its challenges. The Northern Ireland Trusts are continuing to work with CACI this year to further develop and implement individualised validation and cost review dashboards to ensure Trusts will be equipped to meet their needs and deadlines as they arise.

Why changing your costing solution is essential for improvement

Posted on: 12 February 2024

Every NHS organisation has a costing system. However, not all costing systems can keep up with the changing demands and increased digitalisation required from organisations to continue delivering exceptional patient level costing outcomes.

In our previous blog on the future of costing, we explored how ICBs can effectively prepare for upcoming costing changes and how they can cut costs no matter their level of digital maturity or data comprehension. Today, we’ll uncover why now is the time to change your costing solution with the help of CACI and the benefits of doing so.

So, is it time to share your PLICS data? Does your costing system give you the opportunity to share patient level costing information and data analytics that will help you make the best decisions both now and in the future?

Why our costing solution, Synergy, is different

Synergy, CACI’s patient level information costing solution (PLICS), is uniquely designed for the NHS and transforms costing teams’ capabilities by:

Freeing up valuable time to analyse crucial results. Synergy ensures the NHS costing process is streamlined by enabling cost allocation, review and visualisation at patient level easily.
Keeping you in control of improving patient outcomes. With Synergy, your organisation will gain more control over your data and costing model and augment your understanding of the patient pathway and costs in your organisation.
Increasing self-sufficiency. Synergy comes with a user-friendly system that is easy for all levels within your costing team to use, promoting self-sufficiency.
Empowering stakeholder & ICS member collaboration through enhanced data sharing and revolutionised decision-making. Your organisation will gain access to class leading analytics that are produced by our in-house experts to promote benchmarking and streamline data sharing to ensure your costing team meets deadlines on time and on budget.
Redefining data reporting and sharing capabilities through distinct architecture. Synergy is a one-of-a-kind costing solution with its composition including a Data Mart layer, setting itself apart from traditional costing solutions by supplying users with total access to all of the data within their costing system and boundless data sharing both within the organisation and to external partners.

Why it’s time to change your costing solution to Synergy

Transitioning from your costing solution to Synergy is simple. No IT skills are needed for set-up, and it can be easily and securely deployed in an HSCN connected data centre within a matter of weeks. You will be part of a highly engaged user community that meet regularly to share best practices and insights on product development.

How CACI can help you migrate costing solutions

CACI works with costing teams across the UK to help them gain a deeper understanding of their patient pathways and costs and make decisions that improve patient outcomes. If you’d like to find out more about changing your costing solution to Synergy, please contact one of our experts, Susan Brooks.

Read the first blog in our future of costing series here.