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customers and staff |
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| These are times of great change for our customers. The heightened
expectations of government and citizens as the consumers of healthcare
services mean increasing demands on the services provided by healthcare
organisations. In turn, healthcare providers place greater emphasis
on their information management systems. We are grateful to those
organisations that have placed their trust in us to meet their
strategic and operational information requirements. |
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| The majority of our existing customers are contracted with
us on multi-year arrangements in order to support their strategic
information systems requirements. |
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| We are adept at horizon watching to
ensure that emerging business needs are
incorporated into our applications early,
in line with new technology innovations
that provide opportunities for improved
function and utility. |
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| We also recognise the value of the domain expertise possessed
by our customers in terms of healthcare business processes and
clinical best practice and seek to form collaborative working
relationships with them. We have spent more time and significant
resources over the past year to improve our relationship with
our customers through strengthening our service delivery and user
group support. The competency, ingenuity and commitment of our
staff is also crucial to the success of these collaborations.
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We have been very pleased with the performance by many of the
key individuals in the iSOFT team this year. In a dynamic and
changing business, we have been able to harness the enthusiasm,
flexibility and ability of our staff to move our business positioning
forward significantly.
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| The Group’s share option schemes
are used as a motivator for key individuals
at all levels in the business. At the
year end, over 7.2m share options had
been issued to 79 staff, some 12.8% of
the total workforce employed at the time.
Our July 2002 Sharesave Scheme has been
widely participated in, with 53% of eligible
employees in iSOFT’s world-wide
locations joining the Scheme. The success
of the Scheme was recognised by the receipt
of two ProShare Awards in December 2002
as well as being highly commended at the
Employee Benefits Awards ceremony in April
2003. We anticipate that a new 2003 Scheme
will result in even wider employee equity
participation.
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| It is my belief that iSOFT’s operational management and
implementation personnel are unparalleled in their abilities and
commitment. These attributes are shared by their peers throughout
the organisation and are key factors in the successful integration
of the new acquisitions. |
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Customer feedback during the year has
been very positive regarding our ability
to meet demanding project delivery schedules
on time, to specification and to the required
quality benchmark. |
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| We are continuing to enhance our customer support services.
Our i.ASSIST system is a core element of our service offering
and we plan to enhance our remote customer support functionality
still further in 2003. |
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| Over the year our workforce increased to an average of 580
employees compared to 430 in 2002 and, with the closing employee
headcount at 616, we remain committed to expanding our human capital.
iSOFT is a meritocracy and rewards are provided commensurate with
an individual’s contribution to the Group’s overall
results. |
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| A key measure of performance monitored by the Board is staff
turnover and we are particularly pleased with maintaining a low
staff turnover ratio of 13%, a statistic where we are consistently
well below industry norms. It is also important to note that our
calculation of the ratio includes the effect of integration activities
undertaken in the year with respect to acquisitions made. I believe
that this result is a clear example of the exciting, challenging
and rewarding environment we provide to all our employees. |
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