Stuart Smith
Stuart Smith
Assistant Finance Director, NHS Foundation Trust
Why NEP Cloud?
Our Organisation had previously invested in an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that was bespoke to the Trust. It was built, maintained and developed in line with the Trusts requirements.
We felt restricted when trying to develop our bespoke solutions and held back by the costs we would incur from both our then provider and the cost of people to develop the solution.
We found ourselves having to choose between investing in developing our bespoke solutions or investing in equipment that directly impacted on patient care, and patient care was always, quite rightly, our main priority.
This meant that we were unable to develop our system the way we would have liked, meaning our internal processes were disjointed, out dated and, in some areas, still heavily reliant upon paper.
How did NEP Cloud help?
When we moved to NEP Cloud we had the latest technology available to us from the very start. We were able to implement key functionality for example, electronic requisitioning, from point of implementation which we had spent a long time trying to implement on our old solution.
Within the NEP Cloud solution there are a whole host of standard reports that are available to us without having to invest further in development or software. As and when the Trust has required a bespoke report created the NEP Cloud team have been so supportive, providing training, support and guidance on report writing, which has enabled us to develop our own in-house reports unique to the requirements of our organisation.
NEP Cloud is so much more flexible, all of the standard solutions are already in place and ready to use, and there is a plethora of additional services that are already built, tried and tested, and you can just choose which ones you want.
What are the benefits and your future aspirations?
We were able to redeploy staff and focus on higher added value activities to support the way we work and capture the features of NEP Cloud. We have only 1.5 WTE managing the integration with supporting systems and maintaining those areas the Trust is responsible for. This is supported by one part-time person who works closely with NEP Cloud and the rest of the NEP Consortium, within Boards and Networking groups, and actively participates in the development of the system and processes.
The NEP Cloud platform supports the development of collaborative working within the NHS, and although this way of working may be new to some organisations, NEP Cloud has been doing this for a very long time, so the benefits and underpinning knowledge that can be reaped from joining the NEP Cloud Consortium are considerable.
Individual Statements
- A massive benefit of the NEP Cloud Solution, is being able to work remotely, and also having staff able to use own devices to do this. We had to close the office suddenly due to an issue with the office building and had no time to make provisions, but with the NEP Cloud System we could all work remotely with minimal disruption.
- NEP Cloud is so flexible, all of the standard solutions are already in place and ready to use, and there is a plethora of additional services that are already built, tried and tested.