Enabling new ways of working

BT has launched a new portfolio of services to support collaboration, organisational agility and flexible working.

Public sector organisations are continually challenged to make business efficiencies to respond to the gap between the demand for public services and the budget available to pay for them. But, to be successful, efficiencies are now being based on changes to culture and business processes as relatively easy-to-realise cost savings have already been implemented.

Nowadays, a programme of profound business change can only be achieved if it exploits information and communications technology to the full. One such change, which is gaining momentum locally and further afield, is the introduction of ‘new ways of working’.

The traditional style of fixed office working with co-located teams is being replaced by a more agile approach to working and delivering services. This is enabled by innovative technology, less reliance on property, measuring performance by outputs, and virtual team work. The change is as much about processes and people as it is about new technology and property use.

Network Enabled Services

BT Northern Ireland has established a new Network Enabled Services team to help public sector and private sector organisations evaluate, design and adopt new ways of working. These new ways of working consist of empowering the workforce to work from anywhere at any time, providing them with the tools to work collaboratively with their colleagues, improving productivity, work-life balance and reducing their carbon footprint.

BT has invested over £300 million in its network in Northern Ireland over the last five years through its 21st Century network and ‘Fibre to the Cabinet’ programme. “We are now delivering affordable high bandwidth connectivity to homes, businesses and public sector bodies right across the province, making Northern Ireland now one of the best connected regions in Europe,” says Peter Russell, Head of Public Sector and Major Accounts at BT Northern Ireland.

This availability of affordable high bandwidth services – along with developments in Wi-Fi, mobile technology and tablet computing devices – is enabling organisations to radically change the way they work. “At the same time as rolling out our new network we have been investing in a portfolio of services that takes full advantage of the availability of higher bandwidth services,” Russell remarks. “These Network Enabled Services have the ability to support organisations’ drive to improve services, realise efficiencies and improve staff morale.”

BT’s Network Enabled Services portfolio includes:

• remote and mobile access technologies allowing secure ‘anywhere, anytime’ access to corporate information and services;

• wireless networking allowing staff to work from their preferred location within the office;

• unified communications allowing all voice, video and messaging services to be directed to the chosen work location of a member of staff;

• presence services allowing staff to know the location of a colleague and their preferred method of communication;

• single-number reach optimising the reachability of staff and reducing the cost of communicating with them;

• collaboration technologies allowing employees to work collaboratively on documents in real time within and across organisational boundaries; and

• business-grade video allowing colleagues and external partners to meet virtually and work collaboratively in a more efficient and timely manner.

Trusted advisors

BT has recruited a number of industry experts to work with public and private sector clients to help them understand the opportunity that an increasingly connected workforce can bring. Colin Hamill, BT’s new Head of Network Enabled Services, comments: “We are encouraging organisations to evaluate the benefits of introducing flexible working options, re-modelling offices to introduce virtual desking and providing technology to support collaboration across the organisation, and indeed extending this to partner organisations, suppliers and customers where appropriate.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to build a team of business and technical advisors who can help organisations leverage new technology to change the fundamentals of how they work and deliver services. Our advisors will specialise in a particular area of public sector or private sector and will be our lead contact for the customer from concept and evaluation through to in-life support. In effect they will design, deliver and support the services.”

Hamill continues: “BT has an unrivalled portfolio of services that take advantage of the availability of higher bandwidth services and has for example, developed cloud-based unified communications services with both of the global market leaders, Cisco and Microsoft, the only company in the UK to do so. We look forward to working with our customers, understanding their current investments and business plans, and developing a connected workforce solution that delivers real benefit.”

Working in partnership

One organisation that is working extensively with BT is Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. In partnership with BT, the trust has been delivering a number of projects aimed at improving communication and collaboration across the trust.

“We have been working closely with BT as our chosen partner and prime contractor for the delivery of all voice and data communications services,” says Paul Duffy, Co-Director of IT and Telecommunications at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.

“We look forward to showing how this partnership can deliver better and more effective communications driving improvements in the delivery of health and social care.

The benefits include using voice, video and instant messaging in accelerating patient-focused decisions across multi-disciplinary clinical groups and reducing costs in centralising and consolidating communication infrastructures.”

“As a business, Network Enabled Services is a real focus for us going forward,” concludes Peter Russell. “We are well placed to deliver an end to end service for our customers leveraging our significant research and development, relationships with other world-leading technology companies and local SMEs to deliver a tailored service that meets our customers’ individual n