NHS NSS operates at the heart of NHS Scotland providing a wide range of shared services on a national scale using best-in-class systems and standards. Fifty-five core services are provided under twelve broad categories including Information and Intelligence; Health Protection; Specialist Healthcare; Logistics; Procurement; Programme Management; Facilities; Legal; Information Technology; Blood, Tissues and Cells; Practitioner; and Counter Fraud.

To ensure the efficient and effective delivery of these services, NHS NSS has developed a digital workplace strategy aimed at enhancing the employee experience, improving work effectiveness, reducing the time spent on functional tasks, providing an official platform for improved organisational communications and encouraging employees to make connections beyond standard work boundaries.

The first project in the digital workplace strategy was to replace the current Intranet which had become ‘a place for many employees to avoid, difficult to maintain and support’. 

Working closely with the internal team, Bridgeall successfully redeveloped the NHS NSS Intranet delivering a platform customised to meet specific user and business needs within the organisation.

The Project proceeded in three main stages:

  • User research and business needs analysis.
  • Development of an Alpha Intranet prioritising objectives from the user research.
  • On-going support and improvement.

The redeveloped Intranet will deliver tangible business benefits to all departments and functions across NSS. It will make a significant contribution to the strategic objective of reducing the amount of staff time spent on administrative tasks, estimated at 40 per cent of working hours. Problems with the old Intranet were a prime cause of this. The new intranet will provide a platform for delivering a more integrated approach to the delivery of standard functions, ‘Once for NSS’, rather than functions being replicated in various places across the organisation.

Debbie Murphy, NHS NSS Product Owner, Digital Workplace for the Digital Transformation Programme says:

“Bridgeall have built an alpha version of our Intranet for NHS National Service Scotland. The build was managed extremely well, with the outcome being really useful for us. It has given us a firm foundation for further development. The team at Bridgeall have supported us with our learning and are still providing further technical support. The project was delivered under budget, meaning we can work on further developments that emerge from our user testing. I would not hesitate to work with Bridgeall again, it’s been so easy”.

You can read the full case study here – NHS National Services Scotland Intranet Development.