Advanced gets ready for GP consortia push

The Coalition Government’s plans to scrap Primary Care Trusts and devolve procurement back to local GPs has seen NHS-focused technology vendor Advanced Computer Software strengthening its channel to target a potentially lucrative new market.

The firm, which has around 88 percent of NHS Trusts taking one or more of its products, is now looking to expand into the 500 new foundations that are likely to form as the country’s 10,000 GPs consolidate to streamline the procurement and delivery of IT goods and services.

As Vin Murria, CEO of Advanced explains, “[The NHS] is a very difficult market – you either make it or you don’t and the lead time to sale is long,” she explains. “But once you get the relationships established, it’s OK.” The firm, which currently has around 50 partners is not trying to recruit on a massive scale: “We are happy to talk to anybody but we are looking for partners with specific domain expertise and a existing user base that can grow.”

Murria believes that the problems with big marquee IT projects, like the failed The NHS National Programme for IT, have helped to strengthen the position of local IT suppliers who were not tainted by the collapse of the project. The realignment in the decision making process will offer more scope for NHS customers to choose systems and suppliers based on merit and not centrally mandated edicts.

The Group, which also manages several of its customers’ cloud environments directly using public cloud platforms, is realigning its divisional structure to accommodate new service delivery requirements, “The channel is a great route to market – if we do managed services, it will increasingly be with the channel,” Murria notes.

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