Building a Centre of Excellence #4 - Measuring Success

Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall oaks from little acorns grow. - Caleb Bingham 1795

Over the last 15 months, Team ESNEFT have given back 22,371 hours to our hardworking NHS staff. This is the time we can spend with our patients or doing activities that support our patients.

The key message here is to be ambitious yet remain realistic. Delivering value back to the organisation takes time and patience. Implement solutions in bite-sized chunks. Deliver automation of exceptional quality and within a short time frame.

This was the approach taken by East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) which allowed us to learn the techniques of intelligent automation whilst gaining confidence and building upon our successes.

We didn't create an industry around measuring our success. The only automation measure is one that everyone can relate to and this is time.

If intelligent automation delivers value then there will be a positive shift for existing key performance indicators (KPIs).

In fact, we have seen a reduction in our unbudgeted agency spend, an improvement in clinic utilisation, a reduction in our do not attend (DNA) rate for Outpatients in Colchester. These were measures that were already in place and reported to the various sub-committees and the Trust Board.

So think about how you will measure and track your bot successes. Keep it simple, easy to understand and allow the business divisions to be accountable for how they will utilise this newfound capacity.