The Brief:

The Comms Director at NHS Connecting for Health wanted to send out regular briefings and updates to management, but had very little left in his budget for print. He also wanted a method of communication that allowed for the collection of data and feedback from managers and staff.

Our solution:

Ouno recommended an interactive PDF as a flexible and cost effective solution. The latest version of Adobe Acrobats Professional V9.0 Extended is an extremely powerful piece of software, which can generate interactive PDFs that contain hyperlinks, embedded video (without the need for the viewer to a video player on their desktop), complex forms and much more.

We called the briefing document INFORM, which was designed to adhere to NHS brand guidelines. It include an interactive navigation bar, hyperlinks on stories to direct readers to additional information online or on the intranet, mail links to story authors, drop-down panels containing extra data and a regular feedback form for readers to fill-in.

The latter was to prove extremely useful to the client and to the management team. Within minutes of INFORM being distributed feedback would start to return via email. A special mailbox was set-up to receive these feedback forms and the data was automatically extracted and placed into an auto-generated spreadsheet. Once all feedback was collated into spreadsheet format it was easy to see trends or pick out important comments.

Compared to hiring a specialist company to produce internal surveys this method was cheap and easy.

A further bonus for the client was that Ouno was able to train the client's in-house designer on interactive PDF creation and they have been able to produce recent editions of INFORM themselves with Ouno providing technical support if and when required.

The result:

Inform has been a very successful product, meeting all the brief requirements. Advantages to NHS CFH include:

• Zero distribution and print costs
• Faster turnaround than print
• A useful channel for receiving immediate feedback from staff/managers on issues affecting the organization
• A secure method of communicating information to managers due to encryptation and password protection
• Almost universal approval by CFH staff who see this as a great initiative

What users have said about INFORM:

There was almost universal approval by CFH staff who see this as a great initiative. Here are just a few samples of the feedback received by the client

"This is absolutely brilliant. Well done. Clear, informative (as much as can be given current uncertainties etc), right length, good structure. Makes you feel part of an organisation you want to be part of. Good use of technology in this clever pdf thing." Peter Dyke

"A really good new look, and the offline format is very useful to those of us who regularly work remotely." Matthew Burrow

"Great idea, great content" Kevin Holland

"This has a professional look which maintains interest. The interactive nature is excellent." Andrew Pine

"This brief hits the spot - succinct enough to be read in a limited amount of time - and has finally helped me understand the new structure. Many thanks to all" Denise Veasy