Crunching costs and driving efficiency in the NHS
Microsoft knows that driving cost-efficiency in the NHS has always been high on the agenda, but in the current climate, it has never been more important. Microsoft is working very closely with NHS organisations and we have condensed some of this experience into five primary areas where we can offer immediate, practical help.
Save costs on travel, training and telephony
By unifying your communications strategy, you could make significant savings. Microsoft's video web conferencing technology enables every desktop user in your organisation to make video and voice conferences with just one click, helping to reduce the need to travel and thereby your organisation's travel costs.
Empowering users at the front end of technology can help you get the most out of your team, by enabling them to better work together and more easily connect with each other.
Find out more
• Ambulance trust gets greener, saves hours and improves staff collaboration
• Ship shape and Bristol fashion: UBHT makes further investments in Microsoft technologies
• Bringing NHS staff together, through unified communications
Reducing costs associated with power and space
NHS organisations are investigating the benefits of virtualisation in order to cut their costs - and promote a greener environment.
Virtualisation can help you reduce the number of servers you run and, in turn, help to lower your energy bills and the cost of server hardware, while improving your IT department's efficiency and responsiveness.
Find out more
• The green technology paradox
• Green IT: managing to do more with less
• Virtual Reality: virtualisation and the NHS
• Improve your NHS IT delivery service through virtualisation
• Application Virtualisation and other benefits of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack
Saving costs through having a structured IT strategy
The NHS Infrastructure Maturity Model (NIMM) serves as a gauge for IT organisations and provides a logical roadmap to progress from reactive to proactive IT services.
In order to plan an IT strategy, you first need to be able to understand what you are already capable of with the tools you have in place. The NIMM empowers organisations to maximise and build on their existing technology by providing strategic guidance and advice.
• Find out about the NIMM profiling tool and how you can easily benefit
• Less money, more reform, more IT - the Operating Framework for 2009-10
Empowered with the right information to make informed decisions
Basing a critical decision on out-of-date data can yield disastrous results. Enabling data to be collated in one location and then displayed on relevant management dashboards is a strategy that offers improved accuracy and better-informed decision making.
Find out more
• Wandsworth uses business intelligence to improve vaccination rates
• The vision thing: Lincolnshire looks to the future with business intelligence
Leveraging strategic partnerships with suppliers
Get closer to your strategic suppliers. We believe it is important to work closely with our customers; we appreciate that not every organisation is fully aware of what technologies they have, or what they are already entitled to through their strategic agreements so we have put together key information to guide you in the right direction.
Find out more
• NHS Licensing - what you need to know
• Manage your software assets: here we tell you why and how
• Free training for non-technical employees
• NHS events near you
Beat the crunch: get the full value from your NHS Enterprise Agreement
In the current economic climate, making the right investments in IT will help your organisation improve productivity, become more agile and reduce costs.
Intended for IT leaders and procurement professionals, we have produced a whitepaper that talks you through how Microsoft can help your organisation accomplish these goals. Specifically, this paper will help NHS organisations build an optimised IT infrastructure plan, understand which technology solutions will have the most impact on savings and how to get the best value from their existing NHS Enterprise Agreement.
Find out more
Download the whitepaper: IT Strategies for Uncertain Economic Times