Atamis roll-out collaboration recognised with award
Organisations involved in the rollout of a single e-commercial system used across the health system have been recognised at the Government Commercial Function (GCF) Awards.
NOE CPC, along with other procurement hubs, have worked closely with NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to implement the Health Family eCommercial System (Atamis) in health organisations across the country.
Atamis is a commercial system that enables organisations to manage their commercial pipeline, associated value and savings, tenders, contracts and suppliers. The system is available to all NHS organisations.
The Atamis rollout won the Collaboration and Partnership Award at the GCF Awards in November.
NOE CPC, which has been involved in the rollout of Atamis for three years, leads the North of England Atamis Health Family Forum. This supports members to onboard and supports and facilitates discussions around best practice, useful guidance and promotes process improvement.
Steve Balding, Commercial Systems and Data Strategy Programme Director at the Department of Health and Social Care, has been leading the rollout of Atamis over the last three years.
He said before Atamis, the system relied on spreadsheets and email to bring together health commercial information. This information was impossible to maintain. Organisations such as ICS’s can now collaborate and drive commercial benefits using real time data.
Atamis has replaced many different local systems and practices such as these, bring greater efficiency to the NHS and wider health family.
Success in onboarding DHSC and arm’s length bodies such as NHS England and NHS Digital, saw early NHS adopters such as Guys and St Thomas’, prove the case that all of the NHS could benefit from using the same system. Steve and his colleagues gained central funding from Crown Commercial Service to enable every NHS Provider, subsidiary, Commissioning Support Unit and Integrated Care Board that would like to, to onboard.
Steve said: “So far, we have onboarded 270 organisations, with another 40 scheduled to onboard by the end of March. We're now encouraging everybody to maintain their data and make sure it's bang up to date. By having current information, colleagues have the best chance of finding the efficiencies that will deliver the best benefits across the whole of the NHS that ultimately results in better patient care.
“NOE CPC and the other procurement hubs have supported the strategy right from the start.
“You have built a fantastic understanding of how the system operates. You have Steve [Sercombe, Procurement Director] managing the NOE CPC Atamis user group, helping people understand the system and encouraging your members to onboard so that ultimately, you can find the best opportunities for your members.
“If you think about public sector and private sector, I can’t think of another system that holds over £121 billion worth of active contracts, for hundreds of organisations, with over 10,000 buyers and contract managers and 50,000 bidders, all benefiting from the same system.”
Nils van de Winkel, Head of Procurement Data and Performance at NHS England, has worked closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS organisations in the rollout of Atamis. A small but dedicated support team at NHS England supports NHS providers, integrated care boards and commissioning support units in onboarding to Atamis.
He said the strategy from the very beginning was to get as many organisations as possible onto one commercial system. His team worked closely with the procurement hubs across England, including NOE CPC and NHS LPP, to onboard trusts onto Atamis.
Three-quarters (76%) of organisations across the health family have now onboarded to Atamis. The focus now for Nils and Steve is for those organisations to use the system to its greatest capability.
Nils said: “This isn’t one organisation that has won this award – it is each and every organisation that has taken the time to evaluate the options, make the decision to onboard and take the time out of their day-jobs to migrate from legacy systems onto Atamis. Everyone involved has gotten us to where we are today.”
“We are now on a common platform on which we can build great things by driving data completion and quality, to then have collective insight into our planned procurement activity and make informed commercial decisions. So it really is an award for everyone that’s on this journey together.”
“NOE CPC has played a significant contribution in the onboarding of a wide range of NHS trusts. They have played a big part initially to ensure everyone is aware of the benefits of being on a single system and now continues to drive system usage and provides suggestions for system improvements.”
If you need support or guidance in implementing or using Atamis, please contact our Support Desk.