Results Based Analysis (RBA) & Business Planning

Results Based Analysis (RBA) is a powerful organisational tool which can provide data to monitor progress and evaluate why services, programmes and interventions are succeeding or failing.

RBA provides a basis for answering the questions:

• What are we trying to achieve, and why?
• How are we progressing?
• Have the desired results been achieved?

Evaluation using an RBA approach , in practice, can help to answer different, but equally important questions:

• What are the results we want to achieve?
• Why were results achieved or not?
• What is the connection between intervention and outcome?
• Do we need to repeat or discard anything we do?
• Have there been any unintended consequences?
• How do we need to change?

Val Connors, our associate consultant, recently ran a seminar on how RBA maybe used effectively to enhance business planning and the development of the ACRF within Wales. Here are some reflective notes based on the discussions held.

Perceived benefits of RBA

• Increases opportunities for engagement of ‘customers’ and other stakeholders in a shared vision and how to achieve it
• Increases ownership of outcomes and means
• Supports creativity and ensures interventions are relevant and timely
• Provides a gateway to move from a reactive to a proactive culture
• Provides increased opportunity to explore how joint intervention can be integrated to achieve shared outcomes
• Improves ‘customer’ focus by examining success and failure through collection and analysis of ‘customer' experiences
• Supports more accurate commissioning of internal/external services
• Improved performance management, better use of resources
• Provides a continuing opportunity to demonstrate results and build public confidence
• Can cut across departmental , corporate and collaborative joint‐planning processes
• Supports political scrutiny and organisational governance

Challenges

• The focus of RBA must be on outcomes and improvement
• Careful choice of performance measures is critical
• Data should be chosen to illuminate difficult issues, rather than to show the organisation in the most favorable light
• If RBA is to become more than a ‘flavour of the month' concept, personnel must see a direct link between what they do and the data they collect
• Implementing, organisation wide RBA, needs a longer‐term strategy with a shared language
• Collaboration and trust will be needed, if RBA is to deliver required results, particularly in
  relation to population accountability
• Welsh Assembly Government PIs do not fit well with an RBA approach and will need to be
  adjusted
• In return for measurable results, agencies, with commissioning and contracting
  responsibilities, will need to delegate authority and resources

Implementing & RBA will require additional capacity to:

• Develop a shared language
• Engage customers and stakeholders
• Set clear outcomes
• Agree shared indicators and measures of success
• Collect and use data beneficially

The current financial climate is challenging. Sharing costs in a collaborative venture, across
geographical and agency boundaries, offers a possible solution to the issue of capacity.

Gabe Conlon
Practice Solutions
17.1.2011

How Practice Solutions benefit from Cloud computing

In the early part of 2010, to manage our expanding team of associates, we identified a need to develop our existing IT setup. We were aware of the concept of cloud computing and sought the advice of M2i Communications to provide us with a hosted IT solution that would meet our business needs. The whole process took less than two weeks to complete. M2i set up the system, imported our email archives and showed us how to get the most out of the new services. They also upgraded our existing mobile phone set up, and we now have smart phones that are synchronised and configured with our email and calenders. Nearly a year on, we feel our organisation has really benefited from using M2i, they understand our business and provide us with a reliable infrastructure that contributes to our continued success. Furthermore we have saved several thousands of pounds in set up costs for a traditional email and data storage server, and a further one thousand pounds per year with ongoing maintenance contracts.

The hosted technology we now use gives us email, diary and contact management for everyone within the business, making a real difference from from using individual email accounts and diaries that aren't connected. It works with Microsoft Outlook, via a web browser and our smart phones. This is vital as it means our staff and associates can connect from any device, anywhere at any time. We continue to operate whatever the weather!

The SharePoint solution, which gives us access via a web browser to the latest versions of working documents has also really improved our time management processes, because we can always find what we need. There's a lot less time spent emailing others trying to find documents.

Everything is hosted in secure data centres which can be accessed over the Internet. We are billed on a monthly basis and are charged per user. M2i manages our account so we can easily add new users as we develop and grow however, we only pay for what we use. Besides saving money, using hosted services also reduces a lot of risk for us, as the M2i solutions provides back up, continuity of service, hardware and software maintenance, upgrades and disaster recovery. All Practice Solutions staff and our associates need to work effectively is a laptop, or smart phone, with a connection to the Internet.