Start with how you work, then choose the tool.

Becky Travis-Booker, Leading Beyond

How many times have we implemented a system that is a product in its own right?

Different modules, and yet not built around how we actually work or what is going to serve our customers.

“Right then, before we look at anything, talk me through how it works today.”

This is all about serving customers, whether they are patients, clinicians, nurses or contractors. Be clear about how you work and what they need from you before you go anywhere near a system.

I firmly believe it should be the other way around.

A system that has already been developed for you asks you to adapt to it. When it gets shoehorned in, there are limits to what it can do; on balance, will it help more or less than what you had before?

Did you know you can almost build your own system with what you already pay for?

Power Automate, alongside a spreadsheet or a list, often within the Microsoft 365 subscription you already have. Add a name to the list and an email goes to the customer without anyone writing it; the same entry can create the document and the folder it sits in.

Manual, time consuming, fiddly and prone to human error.

Automating these jobs takes away a massive amount of work. The quality goes up as well, because the naming convention holds every time and the template is set once rather than rebuilt.

Bespoke to you, so it can adapt with you.

A policy change or a personnel change within your department, and it changes with you, rather than another fee to a developer or functionality that no longer works because something has moved on.

“Let's get it better than it is today, and we build from there.”

This is where continuous improvement comes in. A baseline position that is simply better than what you had, then step by step and continually, rather than a one-off.

“Where is this getting stuck, and who needs it next?”

A real example from today: an outpatient department could not see information held by an inpatient department, and it fell to me, as the customer, to broker the conversation. If this was my service, I would want the information to flow to the right people at the right time, with the right information when they need it.

Quite often the tool is already sitting in your subscription.

If you are weighing up a new system, start with how your team actually works and what your customers need from you, then look at what you already have. This is much of what I do at Leading Beyond, and I am always happy to talk it through.