What Users Need
Reduced hidden operational handling costs
and improved visibility across digital intake.
Transforming fragmented digital demand into a single front door service
The problem
Hidden operational cost
Demand intake processes were absorbing significant staff time, with over £1m per year spent managing requests before delivery work begins.
Inefficient request handling
Reduced unnecessary support contact driven by unclear request routes frequently arrived without the information needed for triage, leading to repeated clarification, reassignment and delays.
Unclear entry points
Staff were often unsure where to submit requests, resulting in inconsistent routing, duplication and avoidable effort.
Key insight
Demand was not just increasing, it was being mismanaged and driving avoidable cost across the organisation.
A significant proportion of effort was being spent handling incomplete, misrouted or duplicated requests, creating avoidable cost and pressure across the organisation.
Client
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust is one of the UK’s largest NHS trusts, delivering care across hospitals and community services.
Over the past three years, multiple initiatives attempted to improve demand handling, but these focused on downstream process improvements rather than identifying and addressing the root causes of demand at the point of entry.
What we did
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Facilitated cross-team stakeholder workshops
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Conducted user research on demand flows
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Mapped demand intake across services
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Defined structured digital intake model
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Designed single route for requests
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Improved first-time triage information capture
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Introduced earlier governance visibility
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Supported implementation using existing tools
My responsiblities across the programe
Research and Discovery
Understanding user needs,
pain points, and operational challenges.
Service Redesign
Simplifying how digital demand entered and moved through the trust.
UX and Form Design
Designing clearler, faster, and more user-friendly request exeperiences.
Stakeholder Alignement
Facilatating workshops and bringing clinical, operational, and digital teams together.
Governance and Risk
Improving triage, visablity,
assurance, and decision making early.
Digital transformation
Shaping a scalable intake model to support organisational change.
Stakeholder workshop
User journey mapping
Hypotheses development
Persona development
Current process simplified
Digital demand spans multiple roles and hand-offs across the trust.
No single team owns demand, and risk visibility comes late.
Discovery revealed the intake model had become the problem
The existing process placed governance, routing and operational complexity onto staff before requests could be assessed.
A clearer front door for digital demand
