E-MAIL A FRIEND
PRINTER FRIENDLY
SAVE ARTICLE
FOR REPRINTS
Having won a major contract to supply the NHS with technology, BT realised it needed to radically alter its software strategy.
“Software has always been a barrier, and I guess it sort of always will be a barrier.” This, according to Clive Fenton, vice president for Service in BT’s health division, is the reality nearly all organisations face when they attempt to make significant changes to the way they run their organisation, and deliver services to their customers.
And the bigger the organisation, the bigger the barrier. “We liken it to changing the wheel while driving the car,” says Fenton: dangerous and not undertaken lightly.
However, despite the risks, Fenton says that through its work internally and on its NHS contract, BT has the mechanics that have learned how to perform such tricky manoeuvres: It requires “thinking beyond the software”, he says.
Clive Fenton
Clive Fenton is vice president for service in BT’s health division where he is responsible for serviceability across a number of large contracts. He has 20 years’ experience in technical design and delivery, and has held a number of senior positions, including the executive with responsibility for a division with more than £3 billion of total contract value within a leading European IT Services company. In addition, he served as executive director and co-founder of i3it, a niche consultancy specialising in the delivery of large-scale business-driven IT programmes.
The impetus to consider change within its software practices was partly driven by its Health division. The business had operated on a project-by-project basis, creating silos, and inefficiency. It was also difficult to provide clients with relevant information, or prove where the partnership added value.
Fenton began considering how to “drive service management excellence” across the entire organisation, looking at how to improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs and increase productivity throughout the NHS programme, and in a way that would establish a blueprint that could be used throughout BT.
The NHS project involved nearly £4 billion worth of business, encompassing applications development, service provision and infrastructure. One of the systems that it was contracted for would have more than 1 million users – up to 700,000 of which could be using it concurrently. It required several data centres to support the programme, and would require hundreds of millions of pounds of IT infrastructure.
Coming up with a new approach “was painful, but [the contract] had to be delivered,” says Fenton.
One of the first parts to undergo a serious review was the software strategy. Arguments over software fit can rage “forever and a day” and previously would, Fenton explains. What was needed was a greater understanding of future requirements: “You might have the best product today but you won’t necessarily have the best product for tomorrow,” he adds.
Instead of becoming embroiled in a software debate, BT Health set about creating an entire organisational structure, into which the software would fit. This required drawing up a number of organisational and operational models to define the new service organisation and structure. “Traditionally, service organisations get driven from technology, routers, servers, operating systems, but we turned it upside down and drove it fundamentally from the business point of view,” says Fenton.
BT then adopted processes, based on an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, that were driven throughout the organisation. It was only after creating a “sustainable, organisational structure,” that BT chose its software, based on business considerations, says Fenton.
To make that choice, Fenton and his team did some routine due diligence around market share, suppliers’ viability, but also considered some unusual criteria. “We needed to know whether we could influence the supplier’s strategy, so that if we wanted to change direction, the supplier could – and would – take that on board.” The software would also have to fit with overall architecture being built.
According to Fenton, BT’s Health business now operates a shared set of services, based on an integrated set of tools and processes, which are fully automated and optimised to deliver quality service. The same solution is used for multiple contracts allowing maximum reuse of services. “We had a vision and a passion and a belief that we could do it. If we hadn’t done it we probably wouldn’t have survived.”
