North East Ambulance Service Deploys Workforce Management System To Enhance Operational Efficiency

Online, December 3, 2012 (Newswire.com) - The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) has awarded Sinclair Voicenet a major contract to supply and install a NICE IEX Workforce Management system. The new solution will be deployed at three contact centres across the North East of England where 300 agents handle over 1.5 million calls every year. It will allow real-time scheduling of staff and resources to reduce the reliance on overtime working and enhance the operational efficiency of the service.

According to Tom Howard, Head of Contact Centres for NEAS: "After conducting an extensive tender process, we awarded Sinclair Voicenet this contract as it not only offered the most appropriate system, but it also shared our vision of what we wanted to achieve. The company also demonstrated that it could meet our requirement for delivering the highest levels of support both during deployment and on an on-going basis."

NEAS is known as being one of the most innovative ambulance services and played a leading role in the development and piloting of the NHS 111 non-emergency number service. It has recently won a £45 million contract to roll out this service across the North East.

"The NICE system will automate existing spreadsheet-based planning processes within the Contact Centre and replace the GRS (Global Rostering System) tool traditionally utilised by Ambulance Services," continued Tom Howard. "This will deliver significant cost savings, allowing us to make further investments in future strategies."

The robust and stable solution from Sinclair Voicenet meets resilience requirements with all databases and applications replicated on a separate server at a remote location. The NICE IEX Workforce Management system also has a powerful multi-site functionality which could be utilised in the planning and management of operational resources.