Meet The Experts – Amber Hart

• Published date: 2 November 2020

As part of our ‘Meet the Experts’ Healthcare series we will take a look at the background and experience of some of our senior staff to highlight what they think are the most important factors in bringing about improvement in the sector. Here, Amber discusses how vital sector experience allows for a deeper dive into client’s challenges to help uncover the solutions that really make a difference.

How Amber’s sector knowledge and understanding of customer objectives is helping SSG Insight deliver timely and effective solutions.

Amber Hart has been an account manager for 20 years having joined SSG Insight over six years ago. Her detailed knowledge and sector experience mean she can quickly understand customer objectives and ensure the SSG Insight team deliver timely and effective solutions.

How is your experience helping SSG Insight customers?

My account management experience means I am used to getting the information we need to meet customer objectives – this relies on having good relationships. I spend time with customers to work out their pain points and what the value of overcoming these challenges will be for the organisation, or business I am working with. I ask the right questions, uncover what the problem is, dig deeper if necessary, get to the implications and then translate into an SSG Insight and Agility solution that delivers quantitative business outcomes for the customer

Historically software companies have taken a feature selling approach, but at SSG Insight we focus on what our customers are looking to achieve and focus on the key business objectives from the start and support them to get the solution up and running.

How is your sector insight making a difference?

There are specific sector asks that require an understanding of the demand that are being placed on each organisation or business. So, in healthcare for example, we are supporting customers move from a situation where most hospital maintenance is reactive to one where the majority is planned maintenance. We are doing this by allocating jobs to mobile devices with the use of Agility Auto Deployment and facilitating the use of KPI measures which provides improved transparency and the ability to monitor progress against each KPI. This allow estates managers to ensure facilities and equipment are better maintained which inevitably has an impact on patient care.

Can you give us an example of the benefits for customers?

University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW) has been using SSG Insight’s Agility solution to manage its estates portfolio. Its previous system required it to have four full-time equivalent helpdesk staff to manage the incoming job requests, paper job tickets were still being issued as there was no mobile solution in place and most importantly the system was not able to provide the KPIs and measures that were needed.

One key benefit it has seen is an increase in the number of work orders generated. Agility has provided a self-service job feature where ward and other staff can raise their own requests, with full visibility of the status of all their requests. Agility Mobile is being used by all estates staff for the completion of work orders, including ward sign off which allows quicker response and rectification times, ultimately, helping to make savings and improvements to the overall running of the Estates department. –

We do not just sell software and then leave; I make sure we have regular review meetings and that the Agility project includes tangible, achievable project measures of success. For example, we have a number of NHS Trusts that have seen improvements in compliance, for example Golden Jubilee Hospital tracks at 93 per cent to 98 per cent of jobs completed on time, which has been an increase from around 70 per cent.

Does your project management experience help?

My experience helps me understand the customer requirements and ask the right questions, and this means I can translate the requirement to our Project Management Office. A good example is an NHS Trust that needed to act quickly with a solution that could be used to managed fire door maintenance and compliance. Complex fire door data was involved, and I had to come back an liaise with our PMO and data analysts, to put in place a delivery plan. Ultimately, I am the owner of the plan, I work with the SSG Insight team and present back to the client. One of our values is being customer centric, and as the Account Manager I am known as the conductor of the orchestra.

Have you worked on any quick implementation projects?

There are many examples where we have had to understand a requirement and turn that around quickly into a deliverable solution. A good example of this was when we had to get new London Hospital up and running within four weeks with a helpdesk solution, so staff could receive reactive job requests by phone, email and self-service. This hospital project was through a Public Service Contractor where there are financial penalties if deadlines and KPI’s are not met.

How do think technology developments will impact what you do for customers?

The world of internet of things (IoT ) means we are having a lot of conversations where customers are exploring condition-based maintenance for critical assets such as water hygiene, food temperature or air ventilation compliance by using connected sensors that trigger Agility work orders based on pre-set thresholds. Our partnership with Invisible Systems is a clear indication of our commitment to product innovation and enables us to build on the work we have been doing with our NHS customers. The powerful data allows benchmarking and our new Live Dashboards can enable predictive maintenance strategies that provide tangible business outcomes for customers.

We will be posting a series of four Meet the Experts pieces in our Healthcare series profiling James MacPherson, Matthew Wood, Amber Hart and Brian Armstrong. We hope that you find them an interesting read.