London Ambulance Service Optimise Emergency Operations Centre Performance with GMT Planet™
UK’s Busiest Ambulance Service to Enhance Resourcing and Flexible Working Options for its Call-Handling Staff
CALL CENTRE EXPO 2007: BIRMIINGHAM, UK -- (Sept 26, 2007) - GMT Corporation announced today that London Ambulance Service NHS Trust has deployed its GMT Planet™ workforce management software to drive performance and enhance resource management within its Emergency Operations Centre. Through more accurate matching of resources to demand, London Ambulance Service aims to improve its service to the public by raising and sustaining KPI targets. GMT Planet will also support more pro-active management of resources and facilitate flexible working conditions for call-handling staff, aimed at improving staff retention, whilst reducing overtime and sickness.
Richard Webber, Deputy Director of Operations, Control Services, London Ambulance Service explained, “As a public-facing organisation, we are continually looking at ways to innovate around improving service levels, enhancing best practice and driving effectiveness. We wanted to improve our planning and forecasting capabilities in order to pro-actively manage fluctuations in call demand and sustain call-handling targets at five seconds. GMT Planet offered strong functionality and reporting capabilities allowing our resource management team to make resourcing decisions based on historical fact and different skill sets. This will also allow the Service to regulate breaks more effectively and introduce self-service initiatives around annual leave and shift changes.”
London Ambulance Service provides services to seven million people from 70 ambulance stations. Between April 2006 and March 2007, the Emergency Operations Centre responded to 1.2 million calls, attending 865,000 incidents over a 620 sq m radius across London. Over the last couple of years, London Ambulance Service has made on-going improvements to its call-handling service, including enhancing resource management to respond to call demand and introducing initiatives to reduce sickness, which has reduced quite significantly.
Implementing GMT Planet is a further step in improving performance, in line with the findings of the Bradley Report in 2005, which concluded a strategic review of NHS ambulance services in England with a set of recommendations aimed at transforming the ambulance service. One of these recommendations is to improve the speed and quality of call handling, providing more clinical advice to callers and working in a more integrated way with partner organisations to ensure a more consistent telephone service for patients and the public.
Richard Webber continued, “GMT Planet workforce management was the best fit for our organisation, in part due to its previous experience with various Police Forces in England. We were impressed with the functionality of the solution, particularly around offering more flexible working conditions around set shift parameters. Approximately 80 call-handling staff currently work on flexible shift patterns, but we have struggled to offer this option to more staff, due to the necessity to provide the right level of staffing 24/7, particularly around busy periods. GMT Planet is supporting the drive to offer more flexible shift patterns to a larger group of staff, based around our parameters, and our desire to promote more self-service around shift changes and annual leave.”
Simon Angove, CEO of GMT said, “The emergency services environment offers one of the toughest challenges for contact centre management who are often faced with unpredictable demand in pressurised environments. GMT Planet is supporting London Ambulance Service to proactively manage call demand and resourcing issues, whilst providing detailed management information to assist in delivering their strategic organisational change initiatives.”
About London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
The London Ambulance Service NHS Trust is the busiest emergency ambulance service in the world providing healthcare that is free to patients at the point of delivery.
They are the only London-wide NHS Trust and are at the frontline of the NHS in the capital. They have two principal functions; providing an accident and emergency service in response to 999 calls and a patient transport service which performs an important role by taking non-emergency patients to and from their hospital appointments.
About GMT Corporation
GMT’s workforce and cash optimisation solutions create competitive advantage by enabling companies to improve customer service and sales, while decreasing their variable expenses. The company’s product line combines precision forecasting and intelligent scheduling with powerful analytics and performance management tools – together delivering a complete solution that is priced to deliver quick return on investment. GMT serves financial services and contact center customers worldwide, including ABN AMRO, Citibank, Nielsen Media, Pizza Hut, SunTrust, UPS, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo. The company is privately held with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and offices in the U.K., Australia, and India. For more information, visit www.gmt.com.
For further information regarding London Ambulance Service, please contact the Communications Department on Tel: 020 7921 5113.
For further information regarding GMT, please contact Beth Axon at jd marketing on T: 020 8297 5388 or betha@jdmarketing.co.uk
