A healthy IT service environment is a key enabler for delivery of
high-quality patient care at OHFT
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust (OHFT) provides physical,
mental health, and social care for people of all ages across
Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath, and North East
Somerset. Its services are delivered at community bases, hospitals,
clinics, and people’s homes, with the aim of improving the health and
wellbeing of all patients and their families.
The IM&T department at the OHFT is considered a key enabler in
the delivery of high-quality healthcare services to patients and their
families, ensuring clinicians and back-office support teams can
fulfill the demands placed on a modern-day NHS Trust.
In 2012, the IT team’s customer base doubled from 3,000 to 6,000
overnight, as part of a wider NHS reorganisation, marking the start of
a major service improvement project.
Tris Church, IT service delivery manager in the IM&T Department
at OHFT, explains: “We wanted to focus on transforming our business
processes, creating efficiencies, and being better equipped to deal
with incidents, changes, and problems. It was also the right time to
look forward and consider how we could expand the services that IT
could offer to our internal customers.”
OHFT uses ServiceNow to consolidate and automate IT and business
processes, and streamline service delivery
OHFT’s
IM&T department replaced its legacy toolset with ServiceNow,
bringing in an ITIL best practices framework and consolidating
disparate and manual internal processes to automate and streamline
service delivery.
User satisfaction virtually doubled in the first year alone, with
the average score of 4 out of 10 in 2012 rising to 7.6 out of 10. But
Tris wasn’t content and knew that his team was “literally just
scratching the surface of what ServiceNow can do.” It was time to
switch up a gear.
2016 marked major change in OHFT’s approach to service delivery with
the implementation of ServiceNow Orchestration, increasing agility by
automating IT and business processes for operations management.
“When we first launched the service catalogue we had approximately
20 items, but now we have expanded that significantly to more than
150,” says Tris. “By switching on ServiceNow Orchestration, we have
been able to automate all tasks relating to active directory,
exchange, and network sharing, and link these together.”
Tris calculated how long these tasks would have taken if they were
carried out manually, and the results are eye-opening. The IT team is
saving approximately 1,200 man hours (31 weeks) every year. The figure
includes the 5,230 requests for new shared folders, 1,967 requests for
new user accounts, and 1,165 requests for access to shared mailboxes.
OHFT IT serves twice as many people and reduces reactive incidents
by almost half with ServiceNow. The orchestration approach has had a
transformative impact. Repeat incident work has significantly reduced
and the IT team has much more time to focus on problem management work
and moving forward with new technologies and initiatives that will
better service the organisation.
Previously, the service desk saw a 60:40 split between incidents
versus service requests. In three years, this has been completely
reversed. The focus is now on dealing with root causes and fulfilling
service requests, with the number of reactive incidents almost halving.
“While our end customer numbers had doubled overnight, our IT team
was under considerable pressure to do more with less, while
maintaining a high standard of service,” says Tris.
