更好的劳动力计划挽救了南中央救护车服务中心的生命

Delivering an effective emergency response demands more than racing to the scene. Trained people must be on hand to answer emergency calls when they arrive. Then, the right people and resources must be in the right place at the right time to ensure the best possible outcomes. To achieve the optimum balance between resource capacity and demand, SCAS must predict the number of daily emergency calls it will receive, and use this data to allocate human resources with a detailed workforce plan.

Increasingly, the work requires a strategic mindset. “Five years ago, we were the first ambulance service in the UK to form a planning directorate, recognizing the importance of looking forward in delivering sustainable performance,” says Steve West, Director of Planning and Performance at SCAS. “And the last five years we’ve been developing our model around how we plan our resources, our people, and our finance.”

The scale is huge and the need is continuous. “We employ three and a half thousand staff across 29 sites,” West notes. “We’re planning those three and a half thousand staff every week, 24/7. In the emergency environment, we are required to be with a patient in a time-critical incident, such as a cardiac arrest, within seven minutes—and in that environment, minutes saves lives.”

Although SCAS’s existing planning cycle kept services running smoothly, its manual, spreadsheet-based processes created additional costs and complexity. To ensure value for taxpayers, SCAS sought to replace manual planning with automated processes.

Next-level demand planning

SCAS selected Anaplan solutions to enable this strategic planning transformation and improve integration and automation across the organization. “One of the best things about Anaplan is that it’s interconnected,” says Mary Trustworth, Business Information Analyst at SCAS. “Once you’ve set up a hub, the information can move through into different models quite seamlessly.”

Anaplan’s scalable, cloud-native platform was key to handling SCAS’ huge data volume while keeping operational IT costs to a minimum and supporting multi-location working. The solution processes billions of data points monthly and displays that granular data in dashboards that can be viewed on any device, including tablets. “It’s actually really helpful having a cloud-based solution because that means that, no matter where we are, we’re able to log on and actually see what our resourcing looks like,” Trustworth says.

The solution SCAS built also leverages PlanIQ, the Anaplan intelligence framework that embeds the Amazon™ Forecast ML engine for predictive forecasting and continuous, agile scenario modeling. The time-series forecasting capabilities in PlanIQ enable SCAS to create new predictive models that boost forecast accuracy even more. “Plan IQ brings us a number of advantages within the Anaplan platform,” says David Webb, Head of Forecasting at SCAS. “Most notably, its seamless integration with the platform lets us leverage different levels of information and data, improving our overall data quality and also helping us hone the forecasting.”

With Anaplan, SCAS can analyze its workforce plans in 15-minute increments, enabling it to adapt quickly to sudden surges in demand, meet response-time targets, and deliver more-effective care. “With Anaplan, having a better forecast helps us mitigate risk, particularly around spikes in demand,” Webb says. “And it helps us to ensure that we’ve got the right resource match for the best response and outcome for patients.”

He adds: “I would recommend Anaplan as a platform because it’s given us the ability to bring lots of data points and information together. It used to take us many weeks and months sometimes to leverage the information that we’ve almost got at our fingertips within Anaplan.”

Finally, it is worth noting the critical role Anaplan played in enabling SCAS to meet the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m incredibly proud of how South Central Ambulance Service responded to the pandemic,” West says. “I think my team and Anaplan has

在应对紧急呼叫时，每一秒都很重要，即使是最短的延迟也可能在生死攸关的情况下打破平衡。负责在英格兰南部六个郡提供救护车和紧急服务，南中央救护车服务NHS基金会信托(SCAS)是动员其工作人员和设备帮助有需要的人的专家。

提供有效的应急响应需要的不仅仅是赶赴现场。当紧急呼叫到达时，必须有受过训练的人员在现场接听。然后，正确的人和资源必须在正确的时间出现在正确的地点，以确保最好的结果。为了实现资源容量和需求之间的最佳平衡，SCAS必须预测它将收到的每日紧急呼叫的数量，并使用此数据通过详细的劳动力计划分配人力资源。

这项工作越来越需要一种战略思维。“五年前，我们是英国第一个成立规划理事会的救护车服务机构，认识到展望可持续绩效的重要性，”SCAS规划和绩效总监史蒂夫·韦斯特说。“在过去的五年里，我们一直在围绕如何规划我们的资源、人员和财务发展我们的模式。”

规模巨大，需求持续不断。韦斯特指出:“我们在29个地点雇佣了3500名员工。“我们计划让3500名员工每周24小时不间断地工作。在紧急情况下，我们需要在7分钟内与时间紧迫的病人在一起，比如心脏骤停——在这种情况下，几分钟就能挽救生命。”

尽管SCAS现有的计划周期保持了服务的平稳运行，但其基于电子表格的手动流程带来了额外的成本和复杂性。为了确保纳税人的价值，SCAS试图用自动化过程取代人工计划。

下一级需求规划

SCAS选择anplan解决方案来支持这种战略规划转换，并改进整个组织的集成和自动化。SCAS的商业信息分析师玛丽•托斯卡沃斯表示:“anplan最棒的一点就是它是相互关联的。“一旦你建立了一个中心，信息就可以非常无缝地转移到不同的模型中。”

Anaplan的可扩展云原生平台是处理SCAS庞大数据量的关键，同时将运营IT成本降至最低，并支持多地点工作。该解决方案每月处理数十亿个数据点，并将这些数据显示在仪表板上，可以在包括平板电脑在内的任何设备上查看。“拥有一个基于云的解决方案真的很有帮助，因为这意味着，无论我们在哪里，我们都可以登录并实际看到我们的资源是什么样子的，”托斯卡沃斯说。

SCAS构建的解决方案还利用了PlanIQ，这是一个嵌入了Amazon™Forecast ML引擎的anplan智能框架，用于预测预测和连续、敏捷的场景建模。PlanIQ中的时间序列预测功能使SCAS能够创建新的预测模型，从而进一步提高预测的准确性。SCAS预测主管David Webb表示:“Plan IQ在anplan平台上为我们带来了许多优势。“最值得注意的是，它与平台的无缝集成使我们能够利用不同层次的信息和数据，提高我们的整体数据质量，并帮助我们完善预测。”

使用anplan, SCAS可以在15分钟的增量内分析其劳动力计划，使其能够快速适应需求的突然激增，满足响应时间目标，并提供更有效的护理。韦伯说:“有了anplan，更好的预测有助于我们降低风险，尤其是在需求高峰期间。”“这有助于我们确保我们有正确的资源匹配，为患者提供最佳的反应和结果。”

他补充道:“我会推荐anplan作为一个平台，因为它使我们能够将大量数据点和信息整合在一起。过去，我们有时需要花费数周甚至数月的时间来利用我们在anplan中几乎触手可及的信息。”

最后，值得指出的是，阿纳普兰计划在使SCAS能够应对COVID-19大流行带来的前所未有的挑战方面发挥了关键作用。韦斯特说:“我为南中央救护车服务中心对疫情的反应感到无比自豪。”“我认为我的团队和anplan已经做到了