HeadChannel

 “I feel that A Life in a Day will really improve my practice. In a busy hospital, it can be quite easy to distance yourself from the reality of what patients go through. This experience will make me think more about the experience of patients between their treatments and how they cope with it. I will be able to empathise even more with them in the future.” James Lochrie, Specialist Oncology Pharmacist, Royal Free Hospital, London

Studies show that if people working in healthcare are able to understand and empathise more closely with patients, the level of care and quality of treatments offered can significantly improve.

But how can you truly understand the burden of disease unless you know what it is like to live as a patient yourself?

A Life in a Day is a unique, immersive patient experience that offers participants the opportunity to walk in a patient’s shoes for up to 24 hours and experience what it would be like if they suffered from a specific disease or condition.

The goal of the programme is to increase empathy and understanding of patients, The 2018 research study undertaken by the University of Westminster showed that A Life in a Day programme delivers statistically significant impact to (p<0.00025) in the following areas: 

• Increases patient empathy
• Increases understanding of living with the condition and impact on friends, family and work
• Increases confidence talking to stakeholders about the condition and its impact on patients’ lives

What sets this programme apart is that unlike other disease simulation programmes, you don’t stop what you are doing to take part. Using a unique combination of an app, live role play and wearables, the experience integrates into your normal daily life.

It starts when you wake up, continues as you go to work and stays with into the evening – mirroring the patient experience and offering an unparalleled glimpse into what life would really be like if you had to live with a particular illness or condition.

Initially developed as an in-house patient awareness programme for a global pharmaceutical company, A Life in a Day has now been delivered in over 30 countries and translated into 10 languages. We have experiences in Gastroenterology, Oncology and Cardio-vascular disease, with a host of new therapy areas in production.

Participants to date include:

• Healthcare professionals
• Policymakers and politicians
• Patient support groups
• Research specialists
• A range of pharmaceutical company employees

The results have been incredible, with even highly experienced professionals acknowledging that it opened their eyes to the true patient experience and made them think differently about what patients deal with:

The Method’s vision is to make “A Life in a Day” an essential experience for anyone working in healthcare in order to improve the lives of patients through increased empathy and understanding.

There are numerous unique features that make this programme innovative, powerful and effective.

1. A unique live experience combining the App / Live Role Play / Kit.

The App

Participants download the app in advance of the live experience. On the morning your experience starts, the app sends interactive challenges to your smartphone, reflecting the choices, challenges and dilemma’s that patient’s experience every day.

Over the next 12-24 hours, challenges disrupt your day in the same way an illness or chronic condition might, asking you respond and provide evidence you have undertaken activities by sending photos and answering questions. Your actions (and inactions) have consequences and dictate the journey you experience on the day.

“You feel sick, get to the nearest bathroom before the timer runs out. Send a photo of the sink when you arrive”

“It’s time for your medication. Do you remember which pill should you be taking next? Choose from the options below”

“A senior colleague is asking you to stay late, but you feel terrible. Will you prioritise work or your health? Message them your response.”

Live role play 

Professional role play actors contact you by phone, taking on multiple roles throughout the experience. Based on real conversations, you are confronted with the difficult realities and painful dilemma’s that patients face every day.

A doctor calls “There are some challenging choices to be made.”

Patient support calls “Let’s talk about how you may need to adapt your life if things progress.”

Work calls “We need to discuss what happens if your condition means you can no longer function in the role you are in.”

The kit

Prior to the live event, you receive a sealed “kit” of items that you are instructed to carry with you and open when instructed during the experience. These physically enhance the journey and help bring it viscerally to life.

• Wearables to simulate discomfort/sensations
• Medical items the patient might interact with
• Smell/blood/ liquids for a visceral impact

2. Integrates with your life

Unlike other patient simulations, you experience how an illness would impact you at home and at work. You don’t just learn about the disease, you feel its impact.

3. Innovative technology

The platform behind the app was designed to enable our team to build, adapt and create the patient journeys without the need for specialist developers to get involved every time we wanted to change something.

The built-in Journey Creator allows us to tailor templates effortlessly, clicking on timelines and adding specific challenges from a drop-down list, as well as adding links and changing the responses users receive for each challenge at the click of a button.

In addition, the app can be manipulated in all sorts of complex ways in real-time by our delivery team. We can add and amend challenges instantly during live events, enabling us to be responsive to participants as they navigate the challenges.

We can upload new languages quickly and easily and the app adapts both to the time-zone our participants are in, as well as to their local language.

This flexibility means our small team is delivering programmes globally to thousands of participants from laptops in our HQ in London.

The success of this programme has led to many of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies engaging us to deliver this innovative experience for their employees, customers and stakeholders, transforming the empathy and understanding of disease around the world.

Project facts:

• Team - Developers 7 (Team Leader 1, iOS dev 1, Android dev 1, Backend dev 2, Frontend dev 2), UX Designer 1, QA 1, BA 1, PM 1.
• Project management - Scrum for production and Kanban for maintenance.
• Technology - .NET Framework, jQuery, Android SDK Java, iOS, AngularJS, HTML/CSS, SASS.

https://headchannel.co.uk/a-life-in-a-day-immersive-patient-experience-322

The application won two awards at the Learning Technologies 2020 awards:

·        Best use of mobile learning – GOLD

A truly inspirational project which has demonstrated a fundamental understanding of the psychological relationship between a user and their mobile device. This is proof that successful mobile learning can be achieved with little technological innovation but instead focusing on the users and the expected outcomes of the project. The thoughtfulness around not only immersing the user into the perspective of their patient audience but also doing related tasks were inspired. 

Best use of simulation or virtual environment for learning – SILVER

This submission scores top marks for innovation. As a soft skills training programme, it is one of the best the judges have seen. Attention to detail and thorough research underpin an impactful and truly original simulation of the patient experience

You can see the list of winners here: https://www.learningtechnologies.co.uk/learning-tech-awards

Every day, Universities receive a colossal number of phone calls from individuals ranging from students and staff members to marketing agencies and donors. It is crucial, therefore, that the telephone systems of Universities are specially adapted to manage and deal with such a high number of calls in the most efficient and effective way possible; satisfying the caller, the call-centre staff, and the University.

The University of Winchester recognised the importance of developing and maintaining this type of service. They invited HeadChannel to develop a more personalised service that would allow staff to access more information about the caller. This, they hoped, would enable them to deal with telephone requests more successfully.

How did they do this? The solution   HeadChannel was brought in to resolve the technological issues faced by their client, the University of Winchester, and boost the efficiency and productivity of their telephone service and business needs. This was achieved by integrating the University’s Mitel-based phone system with their Radius CRM system, as well as developing a combination of desktop and web applications.

In order to appreciate the benefits of this integration, it is important to first understand the nature of the systems involved. The Mitel-based phone system is a cloud-based service, allowing multiple users to connect and collaborate remotely using the same telephone system. In a University setting, this allows callers to connect with a range of University representatives that might be physically separated, across the University site. In addition, the Radius CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system allows users to store and manage contact information. Using the Radius CRM with the telephone system, therefore, allows staff members to access information about incoming callers.

By integrating the Mitel-based phone system and the Radius CRM system, the University of Winchester was able to automate many tasks previously completed manually that took up valuable time. This transformed the use of their phone system; improving the productivity, personalisation, efficiency, ease and collaborative potential of staff at the University.

How did HeadChannel benefit the University of Winchester?

 Greater productivity

By removing a large bulk of administrative duties, the CRM frees up time for staff to engage in more important and challenging work. Further, the staff at the University of Winchester can now assign short notes to each phone conversation; demonstrated by the image below. This allows them to respond quickly to the needs of the caller.

Greater efficiency

Instead of manually recording new contacts, the call-centre staff at the University of Winchester can now more efficiently add a caller’s details to a blank contact form that pops up when a caller is not associated with an existing contact.

Greater collaboration

Different teams, physically separated, are able to work together using a shared online platform. This improves the opportunity for better communication and collaboration. For the new system, if a caller’s name is not recognised then staff are able to search the Radius contact database for the caller’s name. Where the number is associated with more than one contact, staff have the opportunity to select the caller’s name from the list. The image below demonstrates how easily this can be done.

A more personalised service

If a caller’s details are recognised by the system, their personal details will be displayed as soon as the call comes through. Further, whenever a call comes in, staff can now access information about any previous history of communication with the caller. The type of information available for staff is demonstrated below. This allows the staff to better understand the context of the call, even at the start of the conversation. This, in turn, makes the caller feel valued. Better understanding increases the likelihood of the caller’s needs being met more effectively and efficiently, and this increases the chance of higher caller satisfaction.

Greater ease

The use of a cloud-based CRM system removes the need for software to be installed on each computer simply to access contact information. Data becomes easier to share, update and move between teams as and when required by the service.

By integrating the University’s Mitel-based phone service with a Radius-CRM system, as well as developing a number of applications, HeadChannel was able to effectively meet the needs of the University, and help them to build an improved and effective telephone service.

Project facts:

• Team - Developers 5 (Team leader 1, Mid backend dev 3, Frontend developer 1), QA 1, BA 1, PM 1.
• Project management - Waterfall.
• Technology - central point of system is HRPI server. ASP.NET MVC application, VS, SQL Server, JDK, NetBeans, Softphone (Xlite/Ekiga), PacketSender.

https://headchannel.co.uk/greater-productivity-greater-efficiency-and-gr...

Property Magnate is an up and coming mobile real estate game, available on both iOS and Android, that has been designed to emulate as closely as possible the real world of property development in the UK. Read the full case study. We created Property Magnate which offers for sale over 30 million cyber versions of real properties available in the UK. Using data from Zoopla, which gathers information such as house prices and area trends, as well as property pictures, we were able to build a powerful app which enables players to buy properties at a pre-set price and provides them with a lifelike experience.

We created a server application which works in the background, requiring no action on the part of the Smiley World staff. Read the full case study Smiley World (the owner of the Smiley brand) use a number of different systems to track the worldwide use of their brand and to manage the royalties generated. Two of those systems are the Salesforce CRM and an online project management and spreadsheet system called Smartsheet and these systems contain a large amount of common information. The staff of Smiley World were updating different parts of these systems on a daily basis and so needed a way to avoid both duplication of effort and errors caused by data being entered slightly differently in each system.

https://headchannel.co.uk/salesforce-and-smartsheet-systems-integration-322

To improve communication between property managers, tenants and contractors, the William Pears Group found themselves in need of a system which would simplify the process of managing property repairs. Our team developed software to help the company to remain competitive in the property industry.

Oprias is a web-based property maintenance management software enabling its users to both communicate with tenants and contractors with just one click and store all the necessary information online. The solution provides time-saving and problem-solving maintenance management tools for property managers and tenants.

Benefits

• Automation - every day, property managers receive an automated message concerning new repair requests and updates on existing jobs which allows them to save time and be sure they handle all of the requests,
• Communication 
• Notifications – all stakeholders can set up and receive pop-up notifications concerning request updates and repair status changes,
• Full visibility
• Data synchronisation
• Qube integration
• Document storage
• Category orde
• Tenant satisfaction
• Attachments
• Reporting

The College and its challenge

On a daily basis, Bedford College manages the records of over 40,000 students, which they have gathered by manually entering information such as personal details and enrolled courses into the Tribal EBS student record system. Having recently taken the decision to use the Radius CRM to help with their marketing and enrolment processes they needed to be able to synchronise the records between the two systems in order, not only to avoid having to enter everything twice but also to ensure that both systems are kept fully up-to-date with minimal human intervention.

As there was no off-the-shelf solution to this problem they asked HeadChannel to help with the integration of the two systems, enabling them to maintain and support regularly automated synchronisation.

Success story

The college is now able to track with far greater accuracy the levels of interest and subsequent enrolment, fees paid and unpaid and the popularity of the various courses without having to worry about keeping the student records system updated as this is now handled automatically in the background. Following the implementation of this system, Bedford College is now considering growing the application and automating other processes such as SMS messaging.

Talistar is a leading provider of talent management software and strategic advice throughout the UK and European mainland and the Astrix platform, built especially for them, is a state-of-the-art recruitment software package that revolutionises the talent management industry. It offers a wide range of recruitment tools which enable businesses such as temporary employment agencies, hotels, restaurants and event management companies to streamline temporary staffing processes.

The platform provides a full circle recruitment offering, from growing and managing the talent pool through to compliance and finance. It handles every step of the recruitment process from application through to payroll and invoicing. The system was used by FIFA to manage the staffing of the stadiums in Brazil during the World Cup 2014.

As a leading player in the UK packaging industry, Four04 needed to replace their out-dated spreadsheets and replace them with a system which would strengthen their processes – beginning with procurement, through sales, manufacturing, invoicing and ending up with the distribution. The result, Opsys3, is a bespoke multi-user enterprise resource planning system which serves to guide the users through the, often complex, transactions between the buyers and suppliers of materials and services, warehouse and delivery staff and customers. The software allows Four04 to monitor stock levels at all stages of the process and utilise available stock in the most cost-efficient ways possible.

Why Excel spreadsheets could be limiting your company’s growth?

Four04 is a privately owned company which supplies packaging materials to a range of industries, but specialises in the food sector and is one of the leading packaging producers in the UK. Customer service, innovation and social responsibility lie at the forefront of their business goals and they promise a professional and passionate service to all their customers. In order to fulfil these promises, Four04 recognises that it is important to have the right tools and technology.

Better late than never. What did we have to work with?

Four years ago, Four04 utilised a range of spreadsheets linked with their macros to support the running of their business. Excel Spreadsheets are a powerful, convenient and immensely popular tool to use among businesses, particularly during the initial stages of business development.

Spreadsheets can store and analyse large amounts of data, and users have access to several data visualisation tools to efficiently display the results of data analysis such as pie charts, histograms and bar charts. More generally, Excel appeals to many businesses because it is cheap, accessible and easy to use.

Despite the numerous advantages of Excel, the software is constrained by limitations that can transform Excel into a burden on the development of a business, instead of a tool of support. As a business grows, and data multiplies and becomes more complex, Excel cannot handle or manage data in a reliable, efficient and convenient way. This happens for a number of reasons. As the data that needs to be input grows, the time taken to input grows, the risk of human error grows, the more information becomes spread out and the slower the Excel application works.

Upon evaluating their business model, Four04 felt that Excel was no longer suitable for their needs. The company uncovered a number of areas that needed to be improved and made more efficient.

This included their:

Supplies management

Delivery time

Production planning and monitoring

Logistics

Level of customer service

As they said; “We were in desperate need of an update to our order processing system and more importantly a stock management system, which we did not have at all”.

At the root of their problems, they realised, was the way that they were storing and managing production-related data. Four04 did not have an appropriate IT system to support their business goals. These goals included purchasing and incorporating a production plant into their organisation, increasing the number of customers, shortening the time-to-market of products and improving their financial liquidity by optimising the warehouse and production management.

The first steps. Devil is not so black as he is painted

In order to find an IT system that could better support their business goals, Four04 initially looked for an out-of-the-box solution. It soon became apparent however, that such a solution would require adapting the whole organisation to suit the requirements of the software. This would take up too much time and money and didn’t suit their long-term goals. Instead, they approached a small local software developer, but again quickly discovered that this path would not meet their requirements either.

They recounted “We initially began the project with another company, but we very quickly concluded that they were not up to the job. It transpired that the business was a one-man band—a project manager with very little experience who contracted external programmers. It was this company which, realising that they were out of their depth, eventually introduced us to HeadChannel”.

The start of something new

Right from the start, we recognised that communication, transparency and collaboration was vital for a successful partnership to flourish.

By highlighting the areas of greatest concern for our work together, Four04 made us aware of what they needed reassurance on, and what we needed to prioritise in our project for them. These areas included:

·        The duration of the project

·        The costs of the project

·        The lack of IT knowledge and specialists among Four04 staff

Four04 also agreed to commit to cooperation with us around several key business areas. The focus of cooperation included:

·        Observation and accurate analysis of business processes in Four04

·        Identification of the bottlenecks in every company department

·        Identification of the responsible decision makers among clients

·        Analysis of the business development plans to prepare in the early stages for future development of the software

·        The business and organisational goals that were set

The plan of action

Once we understood their greatest concerns and we had the opportunity to get to work on several key areas of cooperation, we started to build up our knowledge of Four04 and the goals it had for a new IT system.

We developed an implementation plan based on the following assumptions;

·        We should solve the most significant problems in order to bring immediate financial results and help to finance future investments

·        We should help to develop new processes in the company in order to improve efficiency and productivity

·        We should ensure that the system we develop will be future proof. It should allow for the implementation of new features following the company’s development plans and it should be adapted for scalability and reusability

·        The system we develop should consider market opportunities, threats and business goals

Based on these assumptions, we proposed a bespoke Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with a modular structure and implementation planned for several years, which was synchronised with the implementation of the company’s business development activities. An ERP system is a type of software that organisations use to manage their day-to-day business activities. It connects different business processes together and facilitates a free-flowing synchronised data exchange between these processes.

It was important to make sure that the ERP system was configured for the specific needs and requirements of Four04. This was achieved by tailoring the individual modules of the ERP system to the areas that were highlighted as the most important for Four04’s operational processes.

This included:

·        Stock control

·        Price matrices (this enables a company to determine the correct price of products and takes currency rates into account)

·        Product management

·        Customer management system

·        Order processing system

·        Production planning system

·        Purchase and sales invoice tracking

·        C-level financial reporting

·        Data analysis based on Power BI

We also aimed to give our client a competitive advantage by guaranteeing several key features. These included:

·        Ease and efficiency of use

·        Ensuring that the best UX and CX practises were put in place, in addition to the top technologies and project management methodologies

·        Minimising future costs and risks

Behind the scenes: How did we do it?

Audit and consulting

We aimed to analyse and understand the business processes and customer problems of Four04. We considered the solution prepared by the previous software contractor and concluded that it would be quicker and cheaper to build the new system from scratch. This also allowed us to scale the system more easily in the future.

Technical and business design

We researched industry standards, and developed a solution that corresponded to existing business practices. We were even able to optimise some of these processes based on the information we collected.

Step-by-step implementation

We developed our system in step-by-step modules. This approach allowed us to deal with our most important problems first and then gather feedback for future work.

Ongoing maintenance

We aimed to deliver ongoing support and product development to Four04 as part of our commitment to excellent customer service.

Workshops

During the analysis and prototyping stage of our solution, we held regular workshops with Four04.

Research on demand

In order to fulfil our customer service promises, we took the time to consider and recommend further innovative solutions that could benefit Four04. We also advised them on the best technology and hardware solutions.

Much more than just development

Over the following four years, a successful and rewarding partnership has blossomed. The following lists the projects we have achieved together:

·        Implementation of the stock control system

·        Implementation of the manufacturing brokerage process

·        Implementation of the production management and planning system, including the incorporation of the new production plant into the organizational structure

·        Price matrices

·        Product management

·        Customer management

·        Order processing

·        Production planning

·        Purchase and sales invoice management

·        C-level financial reporting

·        Power BI data analysis

The more we worked together, the more our mutual understanding developed and the faster our development of software and IT solutions became. The following lists a few of the benefits we have provided to Four04:

·        Automation of many processes related to inventory and product turnover

·        Significant reduction of storage costs due to elimination of losses, increase of rotation and reduction of inventory

·        Seamless integration of the new production plant with the company structure

·        Optimising and implementing new, more efficient processes adjusted to market standards

·        Improved visibility of stock levels and availability

·        Tracking selected changes per user

·        Profiling system per permission

·        Product specification templates

We feel that we can confidently judge our partnership with Four04 as a success. We feel privileged to have benefitted the company in a multitude of ways. This success is reflected in the dramatic business growth of Four04 since we started working together. The first year after the launch of our new system, the company’s profit increased by 30%. After three years, their profit growth doubled.

After being asked for feedback on the work that we have achieved together with Four04, The Operations Director described how “The system HeadChannel has created for us has enabled us to keep control of our rapidly expanding business. At the time we started the project, we were turning over around £10 million, now we are over £20 million and the system has without a doubt, enabled us to manage this growth”.

“As a direct result of HeadChannel’s contributions, the company has managed to cope with rapid and substantial growth. The team is very reactive, knowledgeable, intelligent, and polite. Their ability to read between the lines and proactively offer solutions sets them apart from other service providers”.

It brings us great delight to hear such glowing reviews about our team, our service and our partnership. We pride ourselves on our ability not just to fulfil but to exceed our client’s expectations, and we hope to continue to provide this level of service to Four04 and other clients.

Project facts

Team - Developers 6 (Team Lead, Senior backend dev 3, Senior frontend dev 2), UX designer 1, QA 2, BA 1, PM 1

Project management - Scrum for production and Kanban for maintenance

Technology - NopCommerce, ASP.NET MVC, AngularJS, Bootstrap, MS SQL Server, SingalIR, PowerBI 

https://headchannel.co.uk/erp-lean-management-system-for-manufacturing-c...

Working as a freelancer instructor it is often hard enough to manage your diary without having to keep track of which classes need to be invoiced and how many students attended. As an experienced instructor herself, our client spotted an opportunity to simplify the way freelancers work and so improve their efficiency.

Together with her, we designed and developed a responsive web app which enables freelancers to regain control of their classes. Reminding them where they need to be next, prompting for class numbers and automatically generating and sending the relevant invoices at the month end