A leader in financial strategies embraces Cloud transformation

Solent NHS Trust – a leading provider of community, mental health, and learning disability services – has approximately 6,000 staff that operate across 120 sites and has an annual income of over £255 million. The Trust's services are provided across a wide geographical area, covering Portsmouth, Southampton, the Isle of Wight, and parts of Hampshire. Services cover sites such as community hospitals and outpatient environments, as well as other community settings, such as health centres, children's centres, and within people's homes.

In 2021, noting the expiry of its current outsourced contract, the Trust made the decision to go out to tender in order to select a new group of technology partners to support a full revamp of their legacy IT infrastructure. Beyond the replacement of outdated hardware, this represented an opportunity for the Trust to develop a new operating model that would not only be fully optimised for the current healthcare landscape, but also offer ample room to scale and evolve in the future.

Following a rigorous tender process – focusing on candidates' technical capabilities and geographical reach, experience with the healthcare sector's singular compliance, governance, data protection challenges, responsiveness, and proactivity when it came to patient needs – Exponential-e were selected to support the delivery of:

Agile IT support, providing service desk and full life cycle end-user device management, freeing end users to focus on patient care

Modern, reliable end user devices (laptops etc.) that support remote working and increase productivity for the Trust's entire workforce

A seamless IT experience, allowing a mobile workforce, operating across all its locations, to move effortlessly between sites and devices, with associated IT service management tool sets

Effective technology change programmes, to ensure staff, end users, and patients enjoy the full range of available benefits

Critical to this new partnership is the close cultural fit between both organisations – something that became readily apparent throughout the tender process. In particular, the Trust's HEART values resonated especially strongly with the team at Exponential-e, who saw a close parallel with their own company culture – something that helped both teams quickly form a strong rapport.

As Afshin Attari, Director of Public Sector & Unified Platforms at Exponential-e, commented:

"It's an exciting period for the healthcare sector as a whole, with the higher adaption of new digital technology and ways of working. There is clear opportunity to make more effective use of data and digital technology by providing staff with better access to digital tools and patient records, and by bringing improvements to the planning and delivery of services, based on the analysis of patient and population data. It's partnerships like the one between Solent and Exponential-e that are keeping this momentum going, ensuring technological innovation is always in the service of patient care."

Andrew Strevens, Chief Executive Officer at Solent NHS Trust, elaborated:

"Exponential-e's experience in healthcare technology made them a strong potential partner, but it was their willingness to understand where we were, where we wanted to be, and – most importantly – their willingness to tackle any associated ICT challenges head-on. It has been exciting to see the level of engagement across every area of this project from teams at both companies, and I look forward to continuing our work together."

Over the course of the next six months, Exponential-e will manage the migration process, ensuring this does not create any disruption to the Trust's day-to-day operations, with dedicated account, service delivery, and operations teams working closely with internal teams and those from across the partner ecosystem to deliver an effective deployment. The teams from Exponential-e will be on-hand throughout this process and beyond, ensuring staff across all sites are properly supported and able to make use of these new tools straight away.

‐‐ ENDS ‐‐

After several years of serious global upheaval, it is clear that resilience, agility, and the ability to adapt to the unexpected are critical priorities for all organisations – regardless of size or sector. However, this accelerated pace of change has, in many cases, revealed the limitations of existing IT services. With an increasing emphasis on on-demand services and a highly fluid workforce, legacy services and their systems often struggle to support new propositions and customers' evolving needs, which will – in turn – make maintaining a competitive advantage difficult, if not near impossible.

As a long-standing technology partner for multiple financial organisations across the UK, the team at Exponential-e have been observing the sector's evolving relationship with technology for some time - both the growing demand for a higher standard of operational resilience, and an increasing awareness of the challenges and opportunities that Cloud transformation presents.

The turbulence of the current geopolitical situation has affected numerous sectors, who must not only consider how to protect their infrastructure from anticipated cyber-attacks, but also ensure that they are able to maintain business-as-usual as possible against a backdrop of global disruption to supply chains. As a sector that depends on the ready availability of materials, the UK's AEC sector has been particularly affected.

In light of numerous dramatic shifts in the geopolitical landscape in recent months, this blog has reiterated the need for organisations across all sectors to strengthen and - if necessary - reconsider their cyber security postures, in order to prepare for the anticipated attacks by global bad actors. The legal sector is no exception, particularly as these attacks are anticipated to specifically target the most high-value data.

Teamwork and technology drive innovation with the UK's favourite coffee retailer

Powering HMPPS' and NHSE/I's pioneering Telemedicine Expansion Programme

The digital landscape is evolving at a rate that's never been seen before and is set to continue accelerating in the years ahead. In such a fast-paced environment, the ability to work flexibly, responding to unexpected challenges and optimising the time-to-market for new innovations, is critically important for all organisations - whether they're ambitious start-ups or established global leaders. While IT infrastructure must certainly support this - hence the widespread phasing out of legacy infrastructure in favour of increasingly sophisticated Cloud transformation strategies - any new technology will be of limited effectiveness if processes and methodologies do not evolve in parallel.

For some years now, Cloud adoption has been steadily on the rise across the UK's Finance sector, with organisations including banks, insurers, and investment firms phasing out increasingly cumbersome legacy systems in favour of more scalable, agile, and cost-effective infrastructure. Indeed, more than 48% of UK banking services are now built on Cloud infrastructure.

In a heightened cyber threat landscape - where ransomware attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication - and having weathered the challenges of COVID-19 and the resulting move to hybrid working, the Finance sector is still continually challenged to demonstrate to its customers that critical services will remain available no matter what, and that sensitive financial data will remain fully secure at all times.

When it comes to building brand loyalty, customers increasingly expect the retailers they shop from - whether that's online, in person, or via click-and-collect - to demonstrate tangible efforts to operate in an ethical, sustainable, and environmentally friendly manner in everything they do.

Enabling the delivery of world-class building materials across the entire UK

The UK's Legal sector must contend with some of the most stringent compliance and data protection obligations in the current digital landscape. For many years, this has hindered the progress of digital transformation initiatives within firms, but in recent years, in order to meet the challenges of COVID-19, many firms have seized the opportunity to modernise cumbersome legacy systems and develop cutting-edge IT infrastructure that enables their staff to work more flexibly.

With lockdown restrictions finally easing, and the public looking forward to enjoying the different activities they have been deprived of for the past two years, it's certainly an exciting time for the UK's Hospitality & Leisure sector. But as hotels get ready to open their doors again, it is essential that hospitality professionals do not lose sight of the challenges that will be involved.

In spite of the ongoing evolution of cyber security processes and technology, human error is still responsible for 95% of data breaches¹. Phishing attacks alone represent a particularly insidious risk, with 91% of organisations experiencing a successful attack in 2021 alone_².

In light of recent geopolitical events, and the increased threat to corporate infrastructure, organisations across the UK must assume that they will be forced to contend with a cyber-attack in the near future and prepare accordingly. Indeed, the NCSC has already set out its own guidance to help organisations bolster their defences, which we strongly advise you to read and implement.