In the first edition of In the Spotlight, Head of Delivery Campbell Harte and Project Manager Caron Perry explain the NDL Delivery Team’s role in detail. As NDL’s project pioneers, Campbell and Caron provide valuable insight into ‘getting the job done’ below.

Meet the Delivery Team

The NDL Delivery Team effectively covers every customer interaction with our software, at every stage of their digital journey with us. We’ve structured ourselves around the 3 core service areas that we deliver: training via our Training Academy, customer support through our Service Desk, and professional assistance with our Project Services.

As a team, we have one very simple objective, which is to help our customers get the most from our software – and we help them on that journey, in any way that we can.

Our role on one level is simple - we represent the customer, and we must ensure they get the services, value and experience they require, delivered at the highest quality possible.

Achieving that goal, though, can be a little more complex. Therefore, we’re continually looking at process improvement, service design, service improvement, and delivery effectiveness. We focus heavily on team skills and competency development.

How do you navigate new projects?

When a customer embarks on a new digital project, our first questions are always, “what are you looking to achieve? Have you understood the benefits, established what success means and secured all of the stakeholders?”

Once that’s all done and agreed, we can then turn our attention to establishing the best technical solutions to meet our customers’ objectives. We use our technical demonstrations, case studies and one-to-one sessions to inspire new digital approaches.

We then start to apply our methodology, and our first step is an end-to-end assessment. We break the project down into a series of high-level tasks and activities - this allows us to make an initial estimate of the amount of work we think is required to deliver the project. Where any technical concerns emerge, we can then run a Proof-of-Concept exercise to ensure our proposed solution would work.

Depending on the nature of the engagement, we then enter a design phase. We seek to establish a detailed specification, process flows, UI, and so on. We ensure the customer knows exactly what needs to be done, the order in which to do it, who should take on each responsibility, and any risks that should be mitigated.

How do you deliver return on investment?

When it comes to ROI, we help our customers to assess and quantify the measurable benefits, as well as the best technical approach. We can provide health checks and code reviews to support and assure customer projects.

We also ensure customer technical teams are trained from foundation proficiency, until they’re expert practitioners wherever required. Where possible, we connect our customers with other members of the NDL community that have already completed similar projects, so any learnings and best practices can be easily shared.

From an ROI perspective, the quicker our customers are live, the faster they can begin to reap the benefits. Appreciating this can pose resourcing challenges, we can also provide professional services - ranging from a few accelerator days, right the way through to delivery of the whole project.

Then, of course, we also provide a comprehensive, home-based support desk service – our team is always on hand to provide expert help and advice. We’re always happy to share our project methodology, documentation, and any other helpful resources.

What's your methodology?

Our project methodology is straightforward, and thoroughly tried and tested. At its simplest, we have project phases that, in effect, walk you through the project lifecycle:

• Define - What do you want to achieve, what is it going to mean, and how are you going to measure it?
• Design - Build the plan, agree the technical approach, design, and architecture.
• Develop - Assemble the functionality, follow the specification, run the plan.
• Test - Test, test, test. Have a test plan, then walk a mile in the user’s shoes. Most importantly, expect to find issues.
• Deploy - Put it into the live environment, then make sure it’s properly documented, handed over, and supported.
• Adopt – Communicate, communicate, communicate. Train the users, gather feedback and be prepared for some change - then exploit the benefits.

What's your benchmark for success?

We feel we’ve succeeded when we have happy customer, who are empowered and enthused to complete projects again, and again, and again. As a team, we’ve achieved many successes over the years – we’re proud, extremely proud of our work. Our team really will go that extra mile, and that’s what makes us that little bit different.

Which digital projects are currently the most popular?

At the moment, we’re seeing plenty of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) SX projects, as the drive for automation continues at pace – but digital trends within the community are always evolving. The growing need to collect structured data, often at scale, is generating multiple digitisation projects using FX eForm.

We often combine our products, for example SX and FX, as this allows structured data to be easily collected, exploited, and used across multiple systems. We’re also finding that the increasing need for mobile working continues to drive MX projects, and we’re seeing a huge need for this within clinical settings - particularly in observations and assessments.

To keep up with the latest NDL and industry news, don’t forget to visit our other blogs and Media Centre. For more information about our Project Delivery team, and to discuss any potential projects of your own, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of our team.