How the NHS overcame tech integration challenges

The F&A transformation lead at NHS Shared Business Services (SBS), a joint venture focused on improving back office services between the UK Department of Health and IT company Sopra Steria on behalf of the NHS, Mathieu Webster shares the story of his CX career so far and breaks down the benefits of in-built scalability.

CX Network: Can you tell us about the biggest CX lesson you have learned in your career so far?

Mathieu Webster: When I started at NHS SBS we provided technical solutions to people, but we did not specifically consider their journey or their individual goals. This piecemeal approach resulted in us generating systems that were indeed user friendly but often lacked interoperability with some legacy systems or workflows.  

To reduce the amount of internal silos, we mapped out the employee journey to see the processes and systems various people had to interact with to achieve their goals. The highest amount of silos we counted was 15 different systems for one particular role, so employees in that role were forced to continually jump between programs to get a single process finished.

In this case, the main learning I gained was that before starting a project it is important to properly segment the user base, understand what the users are trying to achieve and map out how their journeys pass from one system to another. That has formed our future roadmap to give our employees a single end-to-end experience by tying single interface solutions to our customer engagement platform

CXN: How do you ensure technical upgrades integrate well with existing technologies and cultures?

MW: In our mission to boost value in the NHS, we aim to avoid making life harder for end users. So we try to map technical upgrades so that the systems change slowly over time but can also be completed through common sense.

For us everything comes back to NPS, that is how we measure if we heading in the right direction, how stable our solutions are in terms of the user experience, how we implement new systems and how we ensure that tech stack changes feel natural. We experience this issue with forced tech stack changes with our suppliers as well, when changes are made and our internal users struggle to adopt these new processes.

CXN: What tips do you have for ensuring technical upgrades actually benefit customers?

MW: It is all about always focusing on the outcomes. What is it you are trying to deliver and what do you want your customers to say about you? These intentions should define your roadmap so attention is focused in the right areas.

Lots of organizations today have many disjointed systems that do not fit together properly. If you have a lot of disjointed customer pathways or processes, your customers are going to feel it. Systems will continue to be disjointed unless brands embark on transformation projects that are led by vision statements from the beginning that are aligned to the ideal outcomes. From that point a sensible roadmap can be built to show how you are going to reach that vision.

Having the right stakeholders involved in technical upgrade projects is vital. At NHS SBS, we have a few employees who assess our processes and end-to-end engagements and they are able to identify problems that even I might miss. I know what I want at the end, but these stakeholders know the exact places where technologies and workflows are not slotting together properly. These improvements and opportunity areas bring your vision to life so you can meet your objectives.

To access the full range of Webster’s insights into reaping the benefits of in-built scalability, access his session at CXN Live: Customer Self-Service on-demand now.