Karen Chandler, Author at CACI

Uncovering the power of Power BI: embedding new practices, empowering users & the handover process

Posted on: 24 April 2025

In our previous blog in this three-part series, we explored the ‘meal delivery model’ for the Power BI platform and the tools and teams required to bring this model and its methodology to life. In the final blog of this series, we’ll assess how new practices can be embedded and users empowered as the solution build is underway, as well as how to effectively carry out the handover process for a seamless go-live.

To read our full whitepaper that outlines additional methodology and best practices to unlock all that Power BI has to offer, click here.

Embedding new practices and empowering your users

To effectively embed new practices and empower users, evaluating training and resources will be fundamental for a successful Power BI migration. Conducting a training and resource assessment to evaluate users’ training needs and ensure they’re equipped with the necessary skills and confidence to use Power BI will be key to maximising its value. Planning a range of training for various users will be particularly impactful in this case, as will offering the right training to the right users. Communicating expectations, project and migration updates and overarching benefits will also be critical, especially when users are asked to contribute and to change established practices.

The handover process

Prior to going live, ensuring the necessary solution documentation is in place for both user and developer reference will be vital. Holding handover sessions for your BI team, your IT team and management, unifying support and resources and making sure the helpdesk is both responsive and reactive to any technical issues that arise will bolster this.

To help determine response times for any technical issues arising, users’ needs that would have arisen during the discovery phase of the project must be understood. Departmental or team champions for non-technical Power BI users can therefore bolster outcomes in these circumstances, and managed support can alleviate the burden of updates and adaptations in fast-changing NHS environments.

Time must be allocated for handover sessions for the BI team, IT team and management. This will serve as an additional opportunity to reiterate the benefits of the new PowerBI solution along with a practical introduction. Consistent monitoring and feedback should be sought out to refine helpdesk processes and continue deriving the full benefits that the solution can provide as the handover stage continues.

While PowerBI is an exceptionally flexible platform and will expand and adapt to accommodate new data and reporting requirements, having the necessary development resources available to make changes and upkeep the solution will be paramount.

How CACI can help

Migrating to PowerBI enables NHS stakeholders to achieve new strategic goals and transform their analytical capabilities. CACI understands the value that migrating to PowerBI can bring, which is why we have developed our own set of best practices and key principles for PowerBI migrations within the NHS. We strive to deliver a seamless migration built on our extensive experience in NHS data and technology, prioritising stakeholder engagement, providing reliable reporting, secure data sharing and self-sufficient BI capabilities for data-driven decision-making.

For more information or help with Power BI project planning, delivery or ongoing managed services, contact us today. To learn more about how you can tap into the power of Power BI, our whitepaper outlines the best practices and methodology that will boost your understanding and usage.

Read the rest of the series here:

Uncovering the power of Power BI: ‘meal delivery’ model & critical resources

Posted on: 17 April 2025

In our previous blog in this three-part series, we uncovered the value of thorough discovery and how to build a successful project delivery framework. Today, we’ll explore the ‘meal delivery model’ for the Power BI platform and the tools and teams required to bring this model and its methodology to life.

To read our full whitepaper that outlines additional methodology and best practices to unlock all that Power BI has to offer, click here.

What is the ‘meal delivery’ model for Power BI?

The ‘meal delivery’ model is an analogy for Power BI data insight in NHS systems, stemming from a challenge of making data insight (food) available to a range of different NHS users (eaters). In this context, there are a range of preferences and capabilities among Power BI users and audiences to consider. Therefore, data architecture must enable the experiences and nuances within them, catering to the specific needs of various users:

Analysts: These users will need direct portal access to usable data building blocks and analytics tools. With the ‘meal delivery’ model in mind, these users will need to select quality ingredients to make a meal for themselves.

Executive users: These users need dashboard access to pull reports from selected datasets. They will want the ingredients packaged and provided along with a basic recipe to make the meal in a way that best suits their individual needs.

Report consumers: Finally, these users will need Power BI reports sent direct to their inbox or accessible from Teams. They will want the meal delivered to them, ready to eat.

The people and tools that make it happen

Using all the insights that have been discovered, a plan can be created to maximise Power BI benefits and meet all identified requirements, goals and constraints. The development process and method will determine the pace of the Power BI implementation and the level of disruption to business as usual. It will also define a team’s size, roles, skills required and cost of resources. An Agile Scrum Project method can be utilised here to maximise developer and user collaboration and allow for continuous improvement across each sprint to incorporate change in a controlled way without derailing the project’s progress.

With Power BI project delivery being split into two workstreams— one being data and infrastructure, the other reporting— this method offers the flexibility to continuously embed best practices and ensure data and infrastructure workstreams do not diverge.

How CACI can help

In the upcoming and final blog in this series, we’ll investigate new practices to be embedded and how to empower your users to ensure a successful handover.

Read our previous blog in the series ‘Uncovering the power of Power BI: discovery & delivery framework’ here

Uncovering the power of Power BI: discovery & delivery framework

Posted on: 11 April 2025

NHS organisations that pursue data transformation will achieve substantial changes in their data-driven decision-making that ultimately improves efficiency, quality and patient experience. Power BI is an optimal contender for NHS organisations seeking a complete data transformation. However, achieving this and reaping its many benefits requires a carefully planned migration process, necessitating a partnership with a reliable data partner that possesses innate experience.

Having worked with many NHS organisations over the years to plan and implement data migrations, this three-part blog series is developed from the principles of our Power BI migration methodology and real-world experience of NHS data projects, sharing key questions you should consider asking and areas to address to ensure a successful migration to Power BI.

As such, the series begins with understanding the value of thorough discovery and how to build a successful project delivery framework. To read our full whitepaper that outlines additional methodology and best practices to unlock all that Power BI has to offer, click here.

The value of thorough discovery

Unearthing all the information that will influence and affect your migration is a vital—albeit lengthy— first step. Skimping on discovery can compromise the solution’s effectiveness.

Stakeholder mapping and collaboration

Stakeholder mapping and collaboration can make a significant impact to help define migration goals, as it will unearth possible issues and harvest key requirements to define migrations goals. Workshops with key stakeholders can aid this process, helping establish users’ needs and gauging their use of the Power BI platform.

Conduct a current state analysis

Reviewing current data architecture, data processing locations and transformation methods will help you intrinsically understand stored data and information flows. During this review, inefficiencies within the operating landscape where your new solution will be situated can be identified and a solid foundation for new data architecture objectives can be built and defined.

Building the project delivery framework

Building a successful project delivery framework will begin with defining features and functionalities required, including visualisations, connectivity, AI functions, data modelling and relationships between datasets. Ensuring you have a single version of the truth that is built on high quality data will also be critical. Reporting and analysis must also be transparent, enabling users and auditors to visualise how figures are produced. To facilitate this, solutions and configurations by audience type should be proposed to ensure users’ needs and Power BI access requirements will be met.

Furthermore, developing a full target data architecture and identifying software/licensing requirements based on an assessment of your current analytics development process and available resources will be an integral part of the development of this framework. Availability will also need to be considered, as will security across all apps, including different access levels and permissions.

How CACI can help

Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, where we’ll explain the ‘meal delivery model’ and the teams and tools that activate it.

CACI is delighted to announce its acceptance onto the BOS2 framework

Posted on: 10 April 2025

CACI is delighted to announce its formal acceptance onto the Crown Commercial Services’ (CCS) Back Office Software 2 (BOS2) procurement framework. This milestone enables public sector organisations to procure CACI’s wide range of SaaS, software and technology products with greater ease in a cost-effective manner.

“We are delighted to have our products and services available for procurement via the BOS2 framework,” says Greg Ayles, Director of Enterprise Systems at CACI. “This demonstrates how applicable our services are to public sector organisations, making them more straightforward to procure than they would be via lengthy contract award processes.

“As part of this award, CACI went through a stringent tender process. The process itself ensures that CACI and its products and services have been vetted to ensure they meet the quality standards expected by organisations procuring software solutions via the BOS2 framework.”

For more information on BOS2, click here.

Additionally, CACI’s products and services are available on the VAS and G-Cloud 14 frameworks.

For more information on VAS, click here.

This announcement follows on from CACI’s listing on the G-Cloud 14 framework.

How Cygnum supports the delivery of Shared Lives in South Wales

Posted on: 25 March 2025

To begin with, the NHS’s description of Shared Lives: “Shared lives schemes support adults with learning disabilities, mental health problems or other needs that make it harder for them to live on their own. The schemes match someone who needs care with an approved carer. The carer shares their family and community life, and gives care and support to the person with care needs. Some people move in with their shared lives carer, while others are regular daytime visitors. Some combine daytime and overnight visits.” Caerphilly County Borough Council leads a Shared Lives partnership of eight, comprising six other local authorities and one health board.

All care offered on the scheme takes place in the carer’s home. It ranges from daytime care, which might mean a couple of hours during which the person with support needs visits the carer’s home, through to one arrangement in Caerphilly where the carer has been providing full time support for over 30 years. Shared Lives relies upon the commitment of ordinary people from within the community who are trained, assessed and approved by the scheme to provide care to those who need it.

“We support, monitor and train every carer,” explains Martin Thomas, Shared Lives Business manager at Caerphilly County Borough Council. “We then deal with referrals that are made to us and match people with appropriate carers.”

How Shared Lives operated before

Prior to going live with CACI’s Cygnum solution in 2024, Caerphilly’s Shared Lives scheme used a system that was designed for it at its inception in 2011. “It was a standalone, bespoke system,” says Martin. “It served us well over the years but there was no scope to develop it. It had been designed and built by a freelancer who had moved on. The system started to fail, which prompted us to look at other options.” The scheme needed new software that could handle the key components of tracking and managing carers, matching their availability and skills to people who need support and then paying the carers correctly for the placement.

Why Cygnum?

“We needed the flexibility of a system that could expand with us,” explains Martin. “For example, if new local authorities join us in the future, we need to be able to integrate them quickly. Cygnum offered that flexibility and I can alter so much in the system myself, such as fee levels, local authorities joining or leaving and the people who come and go from the scheme.

“It was important to me that we could become autonomous in our system usage and not reliant on outside help to set things up and function. With Cygnum, we can make the changes we need without assistance from the team at CACI.”

How the Shared Lives team got up and running with Cygnum

As part of onboarding, CACI provides project management, training, go-live and ongoing support with Cygnum. “The whole end-to-end process was good, from initial conversations through to the design and build that we needed” says Martin. “Samppa and the rest of the CACI team captured our needs really well in the full delivery of Cygnum. I had a very clear view in my mind of what I wanted and CACI captured that. We’re a bespoke service and the system suits our needs. It can be complicated, but it works and CACI adapted the system for us.”

One area that always causes concern when switching to a new system is change. Change management is a vital step in any project. Effective training is a central component of this. “The training, led by Odette, was excellent,” says Martin. “It was intense, but it made it easy for us to get started with Cygnum.

“This meant that we could manage the transition from the old system to Cygnum well. With each step, it enabled us to develop a strong working relationship with CACI, too.”

The final stage was to go live with Cygnum. “After testing and training, we were ready,” explains Martin. “Our in-house go-live saw our team of 32 start using Cygnum. I was a bit nervous because I was expecting some reluctance to it all, but everyone has taken to it better than I had hoped. We rolled out delivery so that some of us were using it first and getting things set up, but this meant we ended up rolling it out to a team who were immediately comfortable with Cygnum.”

The role of Cygnum in Caerphilly’s Shared Lives scheme

“Carers are set up on Cygnum and we can easily access what sort of care they can provide, for example if it’s respite, shorter term care, or long-term care where someone will move in with them,” explains Martin. “Similarly with referrals, we can get them into the system and understand their needs quickly. Our team can use the wallchart in Cygnum to see who can provide what and match them to the people who are referred to us. It makes it easy for us to add people, both carers and referrals, and understand their needs and availability. We can then understand the needs of the person being referred and the availability, skills and training of the carers in the system.”

Another support role that Cygnum performs is in calculating pay to be allocated to carers within the scheme. This varies by carer, depending on factors such as how long they have someone with them, be it for a few hours or more permanently, and the type of care required. Caerphilly can utilise Cygnum’s customisable rules engine to ensure that pay is accurate, on time and flexible to evolving requirements and methods of calculation.

“As part of a more gradual roll out, we will be increasing the functionality available to the team as we go,” continues Martin. “To start with, however, Cygnum has delivered the essentials that we need; managing caseloads, managing referrals and ensuring that carers are paid on time. To that end, Cygnum has delivered exactly what we needed and I’m excited to roll out more functionality as we go.”

What’s next for Cygnum and Shared Lives?

As Martin and the team expand upon the early success of their use of Cygnum, there’s positivity that it will deliver even more increased efficiency and time savings. “I’m excited to build upon our use of the system,” he says. “We will be able to use it for things such as DBS record checks, contacts database and reporting.

“We will be training the whole team on reports next. At the moment it’s a manual process whereby the team have to go to our administrators to access historical information which is relevant to the referrals and carers they are working with. If the administrators are busy, this slows the process down. Once we’re up and running with reporting in Cygnum, this will take them a couple of minutes and they can self-serve. This will improve our response time and increase efficiency.”

Conclusion

“Working with CACI has been a real pleasure,” concludes Martin. “The project ran as smoothly as I could’ve hoped and the communication from CACI was good throughout.

“I’m excited that Cygnum gives us the opportunity to deliver our Shared Lives services to our communities in the way we need.”

For more information on the Shared Lives scheme and how it supports people, please click here.

For more information on Cygnum, please click here.