Using technology to improve patient care
Nottinghamshire Hospice is a leading provider of end-of-life care services in the East Midlands. The charity cares for adults with a life-limiting diagnosis and supports their loved ones. This is through Wellbeing and Bereavement support at their centre in the city of Nottingham and Hospice in your Home care. They also have nine retail shops across the county that help to raise the £4 million every year to meet the needs of their patients and families, and they frequently work out in the community with patients and fundraisers.
The organisation launched an extensive digital transformation project in the summer that will use technology to improve systems and processes within the organisation, streamlining everything they do so that they can focus on their key objective – patient care.
They needed an IT Support and consultancy team that could handle their day-to-day operational needs and work as a partner to develop a comprehensive strategy and IT roadmap, giving everyone in the organisation a clear understanding of how and why the changes were needed.
Key objectives
- A seamless transition from their existing supplier to ILUX
- A clear and transparent plan that minimised disruption to the organisation
- Audit of existing equipment to build a roadmap for the future
- Sound technical knowledge with the ability to communicate with non-technical team
The ILUX onboarding experience
As soon as Nottinghamshire Hospice decided to work with ILUX, we immediately began building a relationship with their incumbent supplier to ensure a smooth handover. We also contacted their third-party suppliers, gathering all the data we needed for the switchover day.
Nottinghamshire Hospice’s main objective was to keep service disruption to a minimum and ensure that staff weren’t interrupted too much.
We put together a dedicated onboarding task force that managed the process from start to finish. The team included their account manager, a project manager, a lead infrastructure engineer, and service desk specialists.
The ILUX team spent four days on-site, ensuring that everyone’s equipment was working correctly. It also allowed us to meet people, and the relationship was up and running from day one.
We also held drop-in sessions (complete with coffee and cakes) for the team to ask questions.
“I’m not technical; I just need IT to work. Our partnership with ILUX means I don’t need to understand the intricacies of a certain piece of hardware or my network infrastructure because they do. They explain things in plain English, demonstrate how things will work and let me get on with running the organisation.”
Ross Henderson, Director of Income Generation
Clear communication
It was essential to ensure that the whole Nottinghamshire Hospice team knew exactly when and why the changes would occur.
We worked with Nottinghamshire Hospice to produce a detailed roadmap, not only of the switchover days but also the weeks leading up to the transition. This meant that all Nottinghamshire Hospice staff knew what was happening to their IT equipment, what changes were being made, and when.
Repurposing existing equipment
One of our key objectives was to audit existing assets, as this hadn’t been updated for several years. We discovered a large amount of hardware that wasn’t being used and have been able to repurpose it across the organisation, saving a considerable amount of money for the charity.
A standout moment in the process
With any new client, there are always some issues that you can’t plan for. When we arrived on site, we realised that systems were configured in a different way than the documentation received had suggested.
Ross commented: “We had no idea this was happening until after everything had been switched over to ILUX. Their professionalism and tenacity meant that they absorbed the issues calmly. This gave us a huge sense of reassurance that we were working with a very experienced team.”
Challenge
Solution
Result
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