Collaborathon 2018 by Bill Linnane

COLLABORATHON 2018 Trinity College Dublin September 19, 2018

The great American basketballer Michael Jordan once noted that talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. For any human endeavour, be personal or professional, collaboration is key to success - a fact celebrated at an event held in Trinity College Dublin.

n the 19th September 2018 three organisations came together to host the inagural Joint Digital Collaborathon the first cross border and cross government platform.

The three organisations were Health Business Services, (Health Service Executive); Belfast Shared Services, (Health and Social Care Northern Ireland) and Ervia. The aim was to look at the digital transformation journeys of all three organisations and by sharing knowledge across all organisations support

each other on their journeys. All three organisations brought forward three challenges they were facing in their digital journeys. Customers, partners, start ups and academic organisations were invited to hear the challenges, learn from some industry experts, brought in to speak on the art of the possible and discuss how together we could future proof our organisations to tackle these challenges. The workshop in the afternoon enabled multi disciplinary, diverse groups to collaborate with the aim of presenting different ways/ ideas to solve the challenges. The collaborathon would bring openness and transparency around the challenges all organisations are facing in their digital transformations; utilise shared resources; build relationships with partners and codesign solutions incorporating diverse perspectives.

Working with partners was how this event was brought to life. We had great support from many of our partners from the conception of this event including Invest NI and Enterprise Ireland who brought Irish startups who are building innovative technologies that are making an impact on digital transformation globally to the event, KPMG who supported the event and provided facilitators for the day and Gartner who brought key note Graham Waller VP and executive partner to open the event.

The collaborathon began a few weeks prior to the day itself, the organisations worked with their senior management teams to discuss the three challenges that would be opened up on the day. The challenges and current states were described using posters and animations that were shared with the ecosystems. People were invited to register their interest for the event as these were distributed via social media and partners. The interest was so hight for the event that we had to close the registration a week early. Subsequently all those who registered were sent another link where they could confirm their attendance for the day and select their top three challenges. Almost everyone was seated at their chosen top challenges.

Graham Waller asked everyone to “keep your creative minds open” and the fact that technology possibility combined with human ingenuity is what makies the impossible possible. Graham gave us a fascinating presentation on the art of the possible by utilising digital. He spoke about the need to create new business designs which could be reached by blurring the digital and physical worlds and reinventing the value proposition for our staff and citizens. He asked us to consider all of our solutions and how we can engage people to use them, focusing on challenges that will drive outcomes that we can use. He finished his presentation with a quote from Peter Drucker “ The greatest danger in times of turbulence is to act with yesterdays logic”

The day opened with Jane Carolan welcoming nearly 140 people who had braved Storm Allie to attend the collaborathon. The key note

Ashling Cunnigham from Ervia gave us an overview of where Ervia was in their digital transformation, how they had moved from craftmaship, to

industrialisation and now to digitisation and the increased focus on capability, digital leadership and tools techniques to build on these capabilities. She spoke strongly on the importance of security in risk regulated environments and to remember that digital is different to different people. Ashling finished with some inspiring stories of companies who are making a difference, she spoke about how Apple blew up the market by collaborating with multiple partners to provide a multi functional device that people wanted to use. She thanked and wished all the participants luck in the collaborathon workshop, expressing her excitement on what would come out of it. Liam McIvor the CEO of the Business Shared Services, HSCNI began by thanking everyone who had travelled to make it to the event. He spoke about the three challenge areas they were facing in terms of digital

communications tools, data analysis and robotics. He described the importance on delivering and demonstrating the value and progress we are making both to staff and citizens. Liam enthusiastically spoke about the importance of exceling by engaging with our staff; empowering our staff and enriching the journeys for our staff and the strong impact that has on citizens journeys. Liam also finished with the sentiment of looking forward to seeing what the outcome was of the day not just for their own challenges but for all the challenges that had been presented.

needed to use digital as a substitution, others to augment processes, others again to modify the outceom and finally the power of digital to completely redefine what we do and how we do it. Jane gave some background on the large programmes of work being delivered with complete transformations for all 109,000 staff in the HSE, right through to how digital was being deployed as pilots in the areas of robotics collaborating with other government bodies. Jane finished by speaking about her passion of developing a culture within all the staff to believe that “digital is part of everyones job”.

Jane Carolan finished with her presentation on HBS Digital Transformation Journey and the challenges they were putting forward. Jane spoke about the importance of digital being an enabler for connection and how she was looking at digital in different ways for different areas. Some

Finally David Collins wrapped up the session with a very informative presentation on Digital Stagey and Innovation. He spoke about the importance of being clear on your strategy; what arena you are in; how you differentiate yourself and how you are we going to get there? He

got everyone thinking about innovation and the type of innovation needed was it Core; Adjacent or Transformational or was it all three at different times depending on your need. After an informative and rich morning the next steps were announced which included lunch to feed the brains and for everyone to get to know some of the likeminded amazing collaborators and innovators who have came to be part of this inaugural event. The workshops were started straight after lunch, the atmosphere was electric as people from different organisations and walks of life enthusiastically and excitedly discussed the different ideas they had to solve the 9 challenges. The challenge owners and facilitators did a fantastic job of keeping the teams to the tight time frame and they utilised the digital flips to create very different and creative representations to showcase their chosen

solution. At 3.45pm the teams were give the head up that they had to prepare their three minute elevator pitches. The panel who were made up of the senior management of all three organisations listened to the different pitches and went to discuss their feedback on what had came out of the challenges.

There was a fantastic response from all three organisations to their own specific challenges and the solutions that had came back from them. Each organisation has agreed to take back the three solutions proposed for each of their challenges and to look at them in more detail. Also the organisations agreed that they wanted to follow up with each other on specific challenges that were not their own, both BSO and HBS wanted to keep in contact with Ervia to see how their idea of creating an Innovation Hub had progressed and Ervia on the Agency Staff System. The Data analytics challenges were also ones

that all three organisations wanted to hear more about. There are meetings being held internally by all three organisations to review the outcomes of the challenges, there are meetings between Ervia, HBS and BSO organised at the start of December to update on where they move to next. We are also working with Enterprise Ireland to see if there are any fits between any of the outcomes and the SBIR challenge. We will be sending a digital magazine out in October and will update all involved as we learn more on the progression of all challenges. The collaborathon was a great success for all three organisations and for the people who attended. This can be seen from the fantastic quotes and feedback gathered on the day, where more than once it was commended that the collaboration, between different suppliers and vendors added a different perspective, not

competitively but cooperatively which was totally refreshing. Before the day had ended we had great interest from other organisations not there that wanted to be involved in the next event. A huge thanks has to be given to all who attended and gave their time, energy and passion to coming up with innovative solutions to the problems we were facing. We all look forward to Collaborathon 2019!

JANE CAROLAN, National Director, HBS

The day itself has been very interesting, the engagements levels have been high and the networking phenomenal, but we want to have tangible product as well. We are really hoping that some of the companies come up with solutions that we will be able to take forward. We have had our head of procurement here from the HSE because we are always conscious of conducting business in a compliant way, so he has been giving advice to industry on how it can do business with us. There is a huge amount of follow up required now, a very long list that we won’t get through straight away, but we did agree [in the judges’ room] that one of the takeaways, aside from the actual challenges and potential solutions, is that we will think about how we can continue this

collaboration – it has been really powerful. Our door at HBS is always open and it is only through working together that we can improve the healthcare that we deliver to patients.

A sh l i n g Cunningham, CIO, Ervia We had the opportunity to come together with the HSE and BSO and put forward some of the challenges that we have, but also challenges which would be aligned to those that they are having in their organisations and what we wanted to do was to take the opportunity to get the academics and industry experts in the room, take and day out to work together to see what type of innovative solutions they could come up with in response to our challenges. Our challenges are not just unique to Ervia, we see

similar problems in both the HBS and BSO. By putting our three alongside their six, it has been an opportunity for us to network and find potential solutions. First of all, I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who turned out for the Collaborathon, from across different areas of industry. I think there is certainly opportunity for state and semistate bodies to work with other organisations in this regard, not just internally but to collaborate externally as well. The guys in the field have produced some phenomenal ideas that we will be in a unique opportunity to take up and roll forward in the best interest of the organisation for better business outcomes.

Julie Erskine, BSO

In the first instance, our rationale for participation today was that we were invited to collaborate with likeminded organisations. We have an ongoing relationship with HBS and, although we are meeting Ervia for the first time, we provide similar services to a similar set of customers, so we were very keen to establish common themes for digital innovation, shared learning and, possibly, shared action. Also, we very often don’t get to the time or headspace to actually consider our challenges in a shared setting like this, so that was motivational factor as well. We talk to each other a lot with regard to ehealth and clinicalrelated systems, but this was the first time that we stood back and actually looked at our business of supporting back office services [on a crossborder basis]. We very much appreciated the opportunity

to receive feedback from others look at our challenges, with a cold eye and not knowing our history and background.

Liam McIvor, CEO, BSO Today was about leveraging the wisdom of the crowd. We shared challenges and really invaluable to get a different perspective on these. Bringing in academia and the private sector to help us to understand these challenges and consider what opportunities there are to address them spurs innovation, but it also opens our eyes to thinks which are already there and that is always going to be much easier to implement. We have emerged from today with a number of ways forward and with a new perception, but importantly, we now have a realisation and a reassurance that we are not alone.

Richard Lyons, Enterprise Architecture Manager, Ervia I think today has exceeded our expectations. Initially, when we came up with the concept, and in fairness to the HSE and HBS, who approached us regarding today, we were a little bit sceptical. We had seen days similar to this which had not ignited or taken off. That was dispelled today by a well organised event with a good crosssection of the market and organisations with similar challenges to ourselves. I think the big plus for us today was getting out and away from daytoday work and, at the same time, being in an environment which is of business value to us. Also, we are finding a lot of thematic commonality across the challenges presented today and I think everyone benefitted. Another mark of success is

the commitment from the judging panel to take things forward. We will be meeting again at regular intervals to pursue some of the top ranking potential solutions and find funding to take them forward within our own businesses. It was unique in that three public or semistate agencies met in a public forum. As such, there was a bit of apprehension in revealing our own challenges to our peers, suppliers and the market. However, the openness and collaboration worked very well. This is our first time in engaging with our colleagues in the North and it was a very positive experience and the feedback that we have received from the [breakaway groups] has been very strong and we are looking to take things forward.

Emma Gavin, IBM 14

I work with the HSE currently on the HR/payroll side as well as on technical support projects. Today, I think the collaboration, even outside the HSE as the client, between different suppliers and vendors added a different perspective, not competitively but cooperatively and this was refreshing. Building up networks and connections was very valuable.

Martin McNamara, IBM It’s my first time being at a collaborathon so I didn’t know what to expect. It’s actually amazing how well it went overall and how valuable the networking element has been.

Edith Cormican, BearingPoint I really enjoyed the day and thought it was very interesting to hear that the

BSO are having some of the same challenges as the HSE as well as with Ervia. It was also useful opportunity to cross paths with old and new faces.

Elaine Lynch, Communications Manager, HBS I am absolutely delighted to be a part of today’s event. The energy from the very beginning has been fantastic, with the momentum continuing right the way through. It has been a great opportunity to bring fresh perspectives to the whole business area and to have great minds under one ceiling. A lot of networks and natural synergies had emerged from today and I think it has been a winwin from both a business perspective and from a health service perspective. It has introduced something innovative to build new relationships through collaboration. It’s always a

challenge for businesses to find their way into an area like the health service and when the get an opportunity like today, they see it as pathway to develop a clearer understanding as to how the business actually works. Industry will go away from today with a different sense of the HBS in terms of what it is all about and feel that it is more approachable and suitable in relation to what they might be able to offer by way of solutions. Today was a big test of our approach and probably a big risk, but it has paid off. The feedback from everyone who came here today has been resoundingly positive.

Scott Andrew, Dell Ireland

The collaborathon was about bringing organisations together and the number of people here is a testament to the commitment the desire to make change using digital

technology.

Ken McGrath, Head of Public Sector Sales, eir Business There has been an ecosystem that has really developed around healthcare over the last number of years. We have been working within that and it has been fun to come into a room with competitors under the umbrella of true collaboration. It’s about implementing digital innovation in the healthcare space. One thing that did come out of today is that it was a really positive atmosphere. The HSE gets constantly criticised on a daytoday and people don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes in terms of efforts to deliver innovation and the fact that they are going crossindustry and crossborder ticks all the boxes in terms of

collaboration. That’s really positive and, as with anything that’s positive, we want to be part of it.

Catherine O’Flaherty, Samsung We have been working the HSE for a few years in relation to innovative products so it’s really good to be able to come in and work alongside their partners to see how we can bring consumer products to what they are trying to do on a wider scale and from a business perspective.

Produced by HBS Communications