Press releases

Oct 19, 2009

Receives ‘BPO Project of the Year' and ‘Outsourcing Professional of the Year'

 

NHS Shared Business Services, the unique joint venture between IT services provider, Steria and the Department of Health (DH), has won two prestigious awards from the National Outsourcing Association (NOA). Peter Coates, CBE, Commercial Director of the Department of Health, was named ‘Outsourcing Professional of the Year'; and a project which transformed the NHS SBS's accounts payable function won ‘BPO Project of the Year'.

Amongst several key achievements, NHS SBS was principally recognised for delivering annualised cost savings of around £3million, resulting from improvements made to the accounts payable process. In addition, the growing popularity of NHS SBS helped drive an increase in the volume of invoices processed from 3.1 million to 4.1 million. Finally the number of directors of finance who said they, "would recommend SBS" leapt from 39% in 2007 to 86% in 2009.

Peter Coates' Outsourcing Professional of the Year award recognised the key role he has played in the strategic management and development of NHS SBS, by delivering transformational change and efficiency savings to NHS organisations.

John Neilson, Managing Director of NHS SBS, said: "Winning the ‘BPO Project of the Year' award is a huge achievement for us coming from a well-respected industry body, such as the NOA. We are also very proud to have worked with Peter Coates, who helped turn vision into reality through his championing of NHS SBS, and we congratulate him on this award and also for his contribution to the continued success of NHS SBS.

NHS SBS Gains Steady Momentum

2009 has been significant for NHS SBS. Earlier in the year, the organisation was commended in the Treasury's Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP) and recently announced winning a further eight new NHS clients - bringing the total to 17 new NHS organisations since April 2009.

About NHS Shared Business Services: www.sbs.nhs.uk

NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) is a unique joint venture between the Department of Health and Steria, and leads the way in developing and providing Finance & Accounting, Payroll, e-Procurement and Family Health Services to all types of NHS organisations. More than 21 million people in the UK have NHS healthcare delivered by NHS SBS clients.

NHS SBS provides a range of value added services to enable NHS trusts to focus on strategic decision making and business improvement activities whilst benefiting from operational efficiencies.

NHS SBS was cited in HM Treasury Budget Report earlier this year "improving efficiency in back office functions by building on the success of NHS Shared Business Services" and also featured in the OEP final report on efficiency savings.

With over 1000 people employed and in excess of 4 million transactions processed per annum, NHS SBS works with around 30% of NHS organisations to deliver operational efficiencies, and is on target to deliver savings around £250m over ten years - which could pay for more than 12,000 extra nursing jobs.