Congratulations to the Smile Together Systems Support team of Nick, Kate and Joe, who have been honoured with the “Rockstar of the Year” award in the inaugural IT Pro Day Awards, which recognises IT professionals who have demonstrated excellence in their profession.
The team were nominated for their response to the COVID-19 pandemic – fast-tracking their 3-year strategy for a more ethically and environmentally minded way of working whilst also ensuring that Smile Together employees were able to keep working productively through and beyond the recent lockdown.
Over the past 18 months the Systems Support team had worked to get Smile Together’s IT and telephony system stable so that it worked “anytime, anyplace” and at the beginning of 2020 had configured the Teams platform for Harleigh Road Dental Centre, enabling colleagues to attend meetings remotely – making us more time efficient as well as environmentally friendly. Their flexible telephony solution meant we could immediately implement a telephone triage dental service for patients when COVID-19 saw the closure of ‘normal’ dental services. They also streamlined our clinical systems, for example enabling clinicians to view and retain videos and images sent by patients of their dental condition to help remote diagnosis and determine the urgency of treatment required. These and other successful service improvements are being retained as we get back to practice in the ‘new normal’.
When lockdown hit, the Systems Support team rolled out MS Teams to the entire company in a matter of days, driving all over Cornwall delivering the necessary hardware and assisting in setup to enable professional support colleagues to work remotely or from home. They’ve been on hand at all times to troubleshoot issues, created easy-to-follow technical guidance for our intranet, and have been integral to the filming and upload of virtual updates, thus aiding internal communication for clinical and professional support colleagues working remotely and/or in team bubbles – keeping everyone fully informed in our employee-owned CIC.
Although moving us to a more flexible and sustainable way of working was already in process, the team went above and beyond to ensure we could all remain connected and keep delivering essential services for our patients at a critical time and during unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19. They delivered a 3-year strategy inside of 6 months, forever changing how Smile Together functions as a company. We’re so grateful to have such an efficient, effective, flexible and ‘can do’ team keeping us working and are thrilled that they’ve been recognised with this award.