The world of work is changing all the time, and so is the technology to support it. It’s vital that our customers are supported to access the latest capabilities, and that’s a duty Ros Wilkinson takes to heart. Working closely with our customers, she has supported them to achieve new efficiencies, cost savings and sector-critical capabilities. Over the course of nearly 13 years, from an entry-level software trainer to director of graduations, Ros has seen what Advanced can achieve for our customers and why the software we provide can be so vital. We recently spoke to Ros to learn more about her journey – in her own words.
You've been working at Advanced for over a decade. Can you tell us more about your journey at Advanced?
Nearly 13 years ago, I joined Advanced as an entry level software trainer and spent a lot of time very happily travelling around the UK and Europe, showing customers how to use our software and ensuring they were realising value for their software investment. In the early part of my career, I worked incredibly hard both developing myself and the teams I supported. I enjoy change and flourish in environments where I am learning and growing. Through hard work, staying relevant and attuned to industry trends and constantly developing myself I enjoyed many promotions to my director level role in Health and Care and more recently as I transitioned to develop new capabilities within the CSO as Graduation Director.
I’ve been incredibly lucky in many ways through my career at Advanced, both in opportunities to grow and in the access I have had to inspirational role models. I have worked with some great leaders, and I’ve been able to learn from them and bring that forward to the way that I lead today. As I have been so fortunate with learning, growth and opportunities, it is key to me to help my team, colleagues and peers access those same opportunities wherever possible.
What is the Graduations function within Advanced?
Advanced has a wide portfolio of solutions, of which some are more legacy and less embracing of the modern technology and architecture we have available today. We have a population of customers that are on proven but older software that have been superseded by new cloud SaaS solutions. My role is to focus on those customer communities and support them with the creation of new Graduation work packages, tooling and approaches to support their journey to the cloud. It's really important to me that in putting our customers at the centre of all we do to power their world of work that I ensure they are maximising on their software investments into solutions of the future that allow them to scale and realise their own business ambitions.
What are the benefits for a customer going to the cloud?
It’s such a shame I’ve only got one blog to answer that! In terms of cloud and SaaS, benefits range from accessibility, scalability and, in an ever-changing technological landscape, enhanced levels of extensive security and controls. Customers moving to our cloud solutions benefit from cost efficiencies and, with our new work packages, our ambition is to guide our customers journey to realise those benefits.
Can you tell us about a successful customer project?
I do have one stand out example I encountered while working with a growing care provider, who had engaged with us to support in developing processes and deploying our solutions to solve their business problem statements. The care industry faces an ever-increasing demand for service, challenges with recruitment and administrational requirements required to provide relevant industry reporting. In a consulting capacity I had to spend time understanding those problem statements and how we could collaborate to develop an implementation plan that both deployed the software but also further developed their operating practises.
One of the Senior Coordinating Managers there (who I’ll never forget) showed me how she was working and with what tooling. There was reams of files and paper rotas, paper timesheets, paper care plans and medication charts and even a whiteboard to track scheduling changes. The administrational tasks were documented as requiring constant monitoring, and in some cases up to 7 hours per day were spent capturing changes to schedules and care plans. It was a tough conversation to work through because this senior manager had set ways of working in lieu of a robust software solution and at the start of the journey she really wasn’t that technology-embracing. Through perseverance, it was an absolute joy to be able to work with her through setting up templates and processes that through the click of a button and within 90 seconds would create what had taken days to achieve before. In enabling the solution to run its automated rota creation we enabled this manager to focus on care quality levels for over 300 vulnerable children and adults and to this day remains an absolute career high for me. Not just because I took someone through that journey in realising the power of technology and how it can make a difference, but because it gave her so much time back to focus on the business of caring. That’s something that’s vital for customers: connecting with them on that level, by understanding their problem statement and celebrating the successes that our software can support them to achieve.
What’s your role in taking care of a customer in their transition?
My duty as the leader of graduations is to make sure that each and every one of my team connect to customers on a deeper level beyond just implementing software; really understanding their problem statements. Understanding the day-to-day challenges they face, but also having a real empathy for the disruption that organisations can go through when they're implementing new software. My primary objective as a leader is to ensure that everyone can be on-board with the strategy, making the most of our capabilities, and providing the smoothest possible transition at every stage for the customer as they transition to the cloud and all its benefits. My role, crucially, is to develop our strategies so that as part of a customer lifecycle they can be assured they are using the best software solutions to power their world of work.
We’d like to thank Ros for her invaluable insights – and her continued commitment to our customers’ software journeys. Learn more about the way we ensure a positive user experience, in conversation with Christian Baverstock.