Overview
An organisation that delivers administrative and healthcare services on behalf of hospitals and healthcare providers in the United Kingdom is using the K2 process automation platform to significantly improve the efficiency of its administrative processes. It has reduced the time required for one key process by 73% and expects to achieve cost savings of over £200,000 when all its planned new K2 processes are rolled out.
Benefits
- £45,000 saved annually with automated travel processes
- 73% time saving in travel booking process
- £100,000 predicted saving from automated administrative processes
- £60,000 predicted saving from new Freedom of Information Request process
Company Profile
North of England Commissioning Support (NECS) worksacross the UK to support health and social care customersin meeting strategic and operational challenges, to improveoutcomes and increase efficiency.
CHALLENGE
Hospitals, clinical commissioning groups and GP practices are among the many NHS organisations that outsource services to NECS. To help deliver highly efficient, patient-centric services for these partners, NECS wanted to automate a large number of administrative processes, many of which were largely paper-based.
The organisation conducted thorough evaluations of several workflow solutions before selecting the K2 business process automation platform. “The K2 approach starts with the data and forms and then creates the workflow, which we found very logical,” saysAndrew Robson, Business Process Automation Lead at NECS. “We could see straight away how the K2 approach would help us to take unnecessary steps out of our processes.”
He adds: “The K2 platform was also far less expensive than other solutions we considered and, as it was already approved on the UK Government’s G-Cloud Framework, we could acquire it easily without a protracted procurement process.”
SOLUTION
NECS implemented the K2 platform with some initialsupport and training from one of K2’s partners. It thenset about transforming some of its most paper-intensiveprocesses, while helping its 1,100 employees to adjustto the new ways of working with automated workflows.
Right from the outset, NECS realised significantefficiency gains from its use of the K2 platform. Forexample, NECS developed two fairly straightforwardworkflows for booking rail travel and hotelaccommodation and estimates that users save, onaverage, 17 minutes each time they make a requestusing one of these workflows.
These time savings equate to substantial annual costsavings, as Robson explains. “In the past, our rail traveland accommodation request processes, used to take 23minutes, whereas they now take just 6 minutes,” he says.“We have, on average, 2,500 rail and hotel bookingrequests a year from users so, taking into accountaverage salaries, we estimate that K2 saves £45,000 ayear on these two process automations alone.”
Following on from these successes, NECS is nowdeveloping additional process automations using theK2 platform, including solutions for Serious IncidentRoot Cause Analysis, Proposal Management and othersupport functions. “We estimate that by automatingthese administrative processes with K2, we can savea further £100,000 a year, from no longer having toreview and return incomplete forms,” Robson says.
In addition, NECS is developing a K2-based process forFreedom of Information Requests, which it estimateswill generate annual savings of £60,000.