As a supplier on the Data and Application Solutions Framework (DAS – RM3821), Bramble Hub has received notification from Crown Commercial Service (CCS) of their intention to extend the Framework.
While DAS was due to close this month, on 22nd February, CCS has now decided to extend the end date to 22nd May 2023.
Bramble Hub can supply solutions on 11 of the 14 lots in DAS. For more information, please see our DAS Framework page.
Seagry Consultancy, a Bramble Hub partner specialising in NHS finance and management, has been appointed to provide consultancy support for the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group.
The Group was formed in 2021 by Kettering General Hospital NHS FT and Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust with the intention of integrating the clinical services of the two organisations, for the benefit of patients and staff. Seagry Consultancy are supporting the Group to assess what has gone well, and what opportunities remain for progressing clinical collaboration.
For more information about Seagry, please see our recent article.
The project was awarded via the Management Consultancy Three Framework from Crown Commercial Service.
The story of Partners in Change Consulting (PiC) begins with a tale of two Daves, as well as one of synchronicity. Dave Jepson and Dave Chatham, founders of PiC, were first introduced when they joined the same management consulting business on the same day in the early 2000s.
Since forming in 2018, PiC has grown rapidly, employing a number of Delivery Directors and Consultants. Bramble Hub recently met with one of the founders – Dave Jepson – and Delivery Director Jonny Man to find out more about the company.
Jonny and both Daves boast impressive CVs, with extensive consulting backgrounds, including working for large Public Sector organisations.
Dave outlined his experience: “I worked for 10 years at BT, specialising in Network Operations and Network Economics. Then, sponsored by BT, I studied for a Masters in Human Resources – I wanted to work in organization and performance optimization. I went back into an internal consultancy unit, and then employee relations. I did a lot of work on cultural and behavioural change”.
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“After BT, I went to Coopers & Lybrand, in their Utilities Change practice, working in field force optimization, which is about trying to get your field operations as efficient as possible. We did a lot of work in queue management systems. Coopers were taken over by PWC, then IBM. I left there, joined Deloitte, and then later, met Dave Chatham when I joined another consulting firm.”
By 2018, each Dave had independently reached the point where they had decided it was time to move on. One day, attending a meeting in London, both missed their respective trains back up north, so they sat down together for a coffee. While talking, they discovered that both of them were considering leaving their employer, and began speculating about setting up a new consultancy. “If you’re going to set up a company, it’s better with two than one”, says Dave; and so Partners in Change was born.
“Our first client joined us before we even set up the business,” Dave says. “They took a leap of faith based on our individual track records. Today, Partners in Change has around 20 employees, and a pool of around 350 associates that we actively curate. We use our partner ecosystem to add value. We’re never in a rush to get a new client committed to work – we grow because the client asks us to do more. We’ve displaced larger consultancies on several occasions.”
Setting up their own venture allowed the PiC founders to craft a new culture from scratch. “The How is as important as the What, and our philosophy is based on partnering,” explains Dave C. “We’re as good as anyone at the What, but we’re great at the How. We don’t do change to our clients; we prefer to work with clients that have some in-house capability.”
Along with partnering, pragmatism is core to the PiC approach. “We start with small pieces of work, and we’re avowedly 80 / 20. We get the important things right first, rather than try to fix everything at once. We do have a methodology, but we’ll always tune it for the client.”
“We offer clients three levels of quality. At the top level, the project gets a full embedded delivery director (Jon, Dave and I are all delivery directors). Below that, we offer oversight from a delivery director who isn’t fully embedded. At the third level, we provide skills, but without formal oversight. And there’s a fourth level, at which we help clients to recruit their own team.”
How does PiC compete with the market leaders for highly-skilled people? “We never deploy junior consultants – we always provide very experienced people, but at competitive prices. Our pricing is well below the Big Four, but we can match the big companies in capability. In the Big Four, the best consultants reach a certain level and then are forced down a sales track. We have people that wanted to continue doing what they were best at, rather than go down the sales route.”
Dave makes the point that the price of consulting has come down over the span of his career. “Services have become more commoditised. There’s a bigger pool of available freelancers, so clients can find standalone people if they want. We’re a little more expensive than using a standalone contractor, but we add significant value.”
Jonny comments: “Our ability to offer outstanding value for money is one of the reasons we want to work more with the Public Sector. Supplying to that sector is about more than business: it’s also about civic responsibility, giving something back. We feel the Public Sector tends to get poor value for money.”
Dave agrees: “I’ve done a lot of work in the Public Sector in the past. The big consultancies often charge fees in this sector that are excessive – sometimes even rapacious. Big organisations tend to move from one Big Four Supplier to the next. It’s a merry-go-round, and it doesn’t always provide good value for money.”
“Our clients love the flexibility we can provide that large consultancies simply don’t offer. For example, if we can do the job and fit in with client preferences by working three or four days a week, we’ll happily do that.”
For more information, and to make contact, please visit the Partners in Change partner page.
Bramble Hub has been successfully connecting IT private sector companies and the public sector since 2006….. Find out more ..
Our regular newsletter keeps you up to date with developments at Bramble Hub and our partners and customers…
If you are a best of type business looking to work with the public sector via frameworks do get in touch with our team.
Bramble Hub partner Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions is to provide its suite of traffic management services to North Northamptonshire Council. The services to be provided will cover the management of Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) issued either manually or automatically by cameras monitoring bus lanes.
Services provided by Imperial will include:
North Northampton Council was formed in 2021 by a merger of four authorities, and includes a number of metropolitan areas including Kettering, Corby and Wellingborough.
The contract was awarded under the Data and Application Solutions Framework from Crown Commercial Service.
Crown Commercial Service has announced, in a letter to suppliers, that framework RM6193 – Software Design and Implementation Services – will be extended by 18 months.
While the framework was originally scheduled to close in September 2023, CCS included a provision from the outset to extend the end date by a further 18 months. That extension has now been enacted, and the framework will remain open until 22nd March 2025.
The framework only includes one lot, and covers a broad variety of software-related activities, from strategy and architecture to implementation and data migration. For further details, please see the framework page.
After decades of promising plenty, but failing to deliver very much of interest, AI burst onto the public scene in 2022. One of the products that received plenty of attention was ChatGPT, an online chat service that can provide remarkably human-like (and often accurate) answers to a wide range of questions. Additionally, ChatGPT can write in a huge variety of styles: want to write a tweet in the style of Batman or Barack Obama? No problem. Rather than write more about how ChatGPT might change the world of public sector procurement. I decided to just ask it. The text below in italics was taken, unmodified, from ChatGPT.
AI has a wide range of potential applications in the UK public sector, including in areas such as healthcare, education, transportation, and criminal justice. For example, AI-powered tools and algorithms can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, to better analyze and understand large amounts of data, and to make more informed decisions. Additionally, AI can be used to improve the accessibility and personalization of public services for citizens, and to help identify and address social and economic inequalities. However, it also raise ethical and legal issues, as well as concerns about privacy, security, and accountability.
AI can be used to improve government procurement in several ways, including:
AI has the potential to improve the National Health Service (NHS) in a number of ways, including:
It is possible that AI could automate some tasks currently performed by local government workers, but it is unlikely that AI would completely replace all of the work done by local government employees. Many tasks performed by local government workers, such as community engagement and problem-solving, require human empathy and decision-making skills that AI currently lacks. Additionally, many local governments have regulations and laws that require human oversight and accountability. However, AI can help to improve efficiency and accuracy in some tasks such as data analysis, record-keeping, and customer service.
And now the question that keeps me awake at night…
I am an AI language model and I am not capable of taking over marketing work for a specific company such as Bramble Hub. However, I can provide you with information and assist you in generating marketing materials such as advertisements, email campaigns and social media posts, if that is what you are looking for.
This answer isn’t very accurate – Bramble Hub isn’t a software company – but it’s not a bad first guess.
Bramble Hub is a software company that provides a range of services including software development, consulting, and support. They specialize in building and maintaining custom software solutions for businesses, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, among other solutions. They also provide services such as cloud hosting, data integration, and mobile application development.
Bramble Hub has been successfully connecting IT private sector companies and the public sector since 2006….. Find out more ..
Our regular newsletter keeps you up to date with developments at Bramble Hub and our partners and customers…
If you are a best of type business looking to work with the public sector via frameworks do get in touch with our team.
This paper is published by Bramble Hub, and was written by:
Any enquiries about this document should be directed to Jerry Barnett via email or LinkedIn.
It will come as no surprise to most UK citizens that the NHS is struggling to maintain a safe and effective service with its limited resources. Faced with a sustained increase in demand for services, rising inflation and the costs of tackling the Covid-19 pandemic the NHS is likely to see the recently formed Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) struggling to balance their budgets in the coming years. So concluded a recent report by the Kings Fund, a view which is reinforced by evidence that some ICBs were already forecasting a deficit after only seven months into the financial year 2022/23 (1).
Fortunately, the NHS is a resilient body staffed by committed individuals for whom work is more than just a job; but goodwill can only fill the gaps in resources for so long, and in the absence of unlimited funding, the NHS must innovate if it is to flourish. Therefore, this paper focuses on the role that technology can have in helping the NHS to balance its books and to continue to deliver the best in patient-centred care.
Technology has been a part of the workplace fabric for decades, assisting employees in executing their roles and supporting an organisation’s strategic goals. But of late, technology’s role has begun to change from delivering functional effectiveness to delivering strategic change. No longer simply a tool deployed to support a business’s operational strategy and deliver bottom line efficiencies, IT is used to deliver additional business competencies that enable new strategies which are increasingly vital to the success of any enterprise (2).
However, despite the overwhelming evidence that technology can be used to realise operational efficiencies and achieve strategic effectiveness – something that could alleviate the financial stress placed on the NHS – a review by the Nuffield trust found that the organisation was nevertheless slow to adopt well-evidenced technology innovations (3).
In response to the financial pressures faced by the NHS and flying contrary to the cautious approach to technology adoption by other NHS organisations, this paper will explore the decision by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust to pursue a technology-led approach to strategic change by deploying an Open-Source solution and what that decision could mean for the NHS as a whole.
Unlike traditional proprietary software development that takes place behind closed doors – where the only way to access this IP (Intellectual Property) is to pay a license fee – Open-Source software is developed collaboratively ‘in the open.’ The Open approach allows developers world-wide to have at their disposal a tool kit of software that can be used and re-used to resolve problems in any environment or industry, with the added benefit that it can be acquired and consumed in perpetuity without any financial investment.
More significantly, the Open-Source approach also allows organisations to download and customise the underlying source-code to meet bespoke requirements and achieve outcomes that might not be possible via traditional means. This ‘freedom to modify, share and re-share’ philosophy has significant implications for the NHS. By allowing digital solutions to be shared without additional cost, Open-Source allows NHS investment to be maximised because a financial investment made by one can benefit all: shared problems can be solved by shared solutions.
A further consequence is that free-to-share solutions lower the financial barrier preventing organisations from accessing technology at scale. As trusts seek to achieve HIMMS maturity and ICBs attempt to increase interoperability across their patches while government seeks increased accountability and value-for-money from public investment, pursuing a technology strategy that champions free to share solutions should resonate across an NHS with limited resources.
As Patrick describes: “At its heart the NHS is an altruistic entity that democratises healthcare for all, and one can see these core principles mirrored in the Open-Source approach to delivering technology solutions. We invested in a functional system that can be freely downloaded by other organisations in the domain, to use and develop as they see fit.”
In 2020, the Royal Marsden’s existing third-party pharmacy delivery arrangement ended. This operational change led the Trust executives to establish a wholly owned subsidiary to run pharmacy services going forward. The decision to bring the service back under the Trust’s control brought with it a significant obstacle, namely the requirement to speedily implement within a three-month window a back-office solution capable of running the operation’s financial activities.
Analysis of the costs for adding the pharmacy solution to the Trust’s incumbent financial software supplier was deemed to be prohibitively expensive. Therefore, under the guidance and leadership of Patrick Highland, Royal Marsden’s Programme Manager for Technology and Innovation, the Trust took a step away from traditional proprietary software towards using Open-Source technology because of its potential to deliver a solution without recurrent annual licensing costs.
Royal Marsden required an efficacious finance system that delivered an intuitive user experience to reduce the challenge of user adoption and one that provided scope to develop new functionality to deliver continuous improvement. It was also critical that any solution was robust, secure and capable of adapting to emerging cyber-threats which continue to pose an ever-increasing threat to the NHS. From a functional perspective the system was required to integrate with existing systems and improve user’s working lives through task automation and provision of real-time financial reporting and transactional drill-down capabilities to facilitate forensic analysis of accounts.
The project had two primary objectives: the first was the successful delivery of a system for the Royal Marsden’s pharmacy subsidiary that met the requirements laid out by the Trust. Secondly, but perhaps more fundamentally, was the creation of a new digital product that was immediately shareable with other organisations that could exponentially increase savings across the NHS.
Based on the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, Odoo, the Royal Marsden worked with OpusVL, in partnership with Bramble Hub, to develop Odoo Open Source ERP: NHS Finance Edition.
Configured to meet Royal Marsden’s functional needs, the solution integrates with existing pharmacy dispensing and banking systems and is fully compliant with HMRC’s Making Tax Digital requirements. The system also delivers operational efficiencies with automated back-end data integration while delivering real-time financial analysis and reporting capabilities via its built-in Business Intelligence tool. The platform also has access to Odoo’s application marketplace, which contains thousands of pre-developed applications that can be acquired at either zero or minimal cost. With active threat horizon scanning, the system provides a cyber-resilient environment through daily security updates.
By opting to implement an Open-Source solution, the Trust saved itself £200,000 in software license fees over 5 years. There are other, less tangible benefits, such as flexibility, self-determination and a sense of control. As Patrick Highland points out, “Without vendor lock-in, I can own and run the system myself or approach any third-party of my choosing to support the system and develop additional functionality.”
Already in use at Royal Marsden for over two years, the solution’s source code is freely available for use by other NHS organisations.
Earlier this year, the Odoo Open-Source ERP: NHS Finance Edition was recognised by NHS England’s One NHS Finance Innovation Forum as part of its first cohort of NHS finance innovations, with the corresponding case study entitled ‘Embracing open source technologies.’
Odoo is a comprehensive Open-Source ERP solution from Belgian Company Odoo SA. Delivering functionality beyond core finance with modules covering CRM, Inventory, HR and Marketing to name but a few, Odoo has over 7 million customers across the globe
Odoo’s ERP has been created using an Open-Source development model and is backed by private investment which recently valued the company at over $3 Billion(4). Although the full version of the Odoo ERP is only available on a commercial basis, their Open-Source philosophy means that they are committed to releasing a ‘Community’ Open-Source version containing the core solution that can be freely downloaded, developed and modified as desired. It is this core platform that underpins the Odoo Open-Source ERP: NHS Finance Edition deployed by the Royal Marsden.
Open-Source software specialist OpusVL is a Bramble Hub partner and passionate advocate of the Open Approach. The company has successfully delivered several mission-critical Open-Source solutions to NHS organisations in recent years; these include NHS Digital, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and of course, Royal Marsden.
Whilst Odoo provided the core code upon which Royal Marsden’s ERP solution was based, OpusVL’s development capabilities enabled them to develop additional functionality such as Role Based Access and Making Tax Digital modules to meet all the Trust’s requirements.
OpusVL’s products and services are available through procurement frameworks via Bramble Hub.
The Odoo Open-Source ERP: NHS Finance Edition can be acquired free-of-charge from the online software repository, GitHub.
The source code for Odoo’s Community Edition can be freely downloaded directly from Odoo’s website.
In choosing to implement an Open-Source software solution, as opposed to using traditional proprietary software, Royal Marsden’s journey to meeting their functional and fiscal needs has created an IT value proposition that focuses not just on delivering an improved bottom line but on delivering top-line business value for the entire NHS.
Making clear cost savings, meeting unique requirements and delivering an innovative solution recognised by national NHS bodies that can be freely shared with other organisations is a notable achievement for Royal Marsden and is an exemplar of what can be achieved if the NHS is to flourish in a challenging economic environment.
Hopefully, this success story will help other organisations to recognise the potential of taking an Open approach to healthcare systems, focused on using Open-Source technology and promoting open standards for interoperability and data sharing.
(1) Kings Fund, 2022, NHS trusts in deficit. Available at: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/trusts-deficit, (Accessed 12 December 2022).
(2) James D. McKeen and Heather A. Smith (2015) IT Strategy: Issues and Practices, 3rd Global Edition, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
(3) Nuffield Trust, 2017, Falling short: Why the NHS is still struggling to make the most of new innovations. Available at: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/research/falling-short-why-the-nhs-is-still-struggling-to-make-the-most-of-new-innovations (Accessed, 12 December 2022).
(4) Tech.eu, 2022, Belgian open source business software scale-up Odoo hits €3.2 billion valuation. Available at: https://tech.eu/2022/06/08/odoo-a-leader-in-open-source-business-software/ (Accessed 20 December 2022).
Bramble Hub has been successfully connecting IT private sector companies and the public sector since 2006….. Find out more ..
Our regular newsletter keeps you up to date with developments at Bramble Hub and our partners and customers…
If you are a best of type business looking to work with the public sector via frameworks do get in touch with our team.
Bramble Hub partner Integrated Skills Limited (ISL) has been appointed to carry out a consultancy exercise for South Cambridgeshire District Council.
The project will use RouteSmart software (which is distributed in the UK by ISL) to model various routing options for the Council’s waste collection teams.
The project is due to complete by the end of March 2023, and will produce statistics that will enable the Council to make further waste collection route optimisation decisions.
The contract was awarded under Lot 9 of Management Consultancy Framework 3 from Crown Commercial Service.
Bramble Hub and our partner Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions have been awarded a contract by City of York Council to help the council enforce passenger charge notices (PCNs) for bus lane usage.
Under the contract, which will initially run for two years, Imperial will supply a back-office solution that provides the following services:
The contract was awarded under Lot 2a of the Data and Application Services framework from Crown Commercial Service.
We are pleased to announce that VisitBritain, the national tourism agency, has awarded us, alongside our partner Redkite, a wide-ranging project to transform the Agency’s data architecture.
The contract, which will run over an estimated three-year period, was awarded after an in-depth competitive tendering process, which evaluated suppliers against their ability to meet VisitBritain’s overall goal:
“Our ambition is to move to a place of high performance by creating an end to end data flow architecture, supported by a thorough change management programme that culminates in a new data and technology estate that enables our business to harness the power of data…”
Redkite, a Bramble Hub partner specialising in end-to-end data-centric services – will be working to deliver the following key requirements as part of overall delivery:
The contract was award under Lot 1c of the Data and Application Solutions framework from Crown Commercial Service.
