A Day in the Life of Emma Lowry

What’s your name and job title?

Emma Lowry, Head of Digital Commerce.

What team do you work in at NHS Supply Chain?

Digital Commerce.

What does your typical working day entail?

A typical day would include some regular meetings to ensure that we’re on track with all our initiatives, quite often to problem solve or prioritise work, but also planning and working on longer term future projects, connecting with stakeholders and partners.

My team works across early concepting (identifying needs and opportunities to create concept designs) with user research and analysis, through to the detail of delivery and preparing our pilot customers for launch. There’s a lot of variety and we’re constantly learning and adapting our ways of working to ensure we’re working efficiently and effectively.

You’ve been working on the Digital Commerce Platform project, how is it going?

We’re currently testing with five trusts, a new and improved catalogue that our customers will eventually use for all their ordering needs. It’s been challenging, but overall, it’s going well and we’re getting a good response from our pilot customers.

For us, our number one objective is to make sure that we are delivering value to our users through greater product visibility, improved search and compare capability and an overall improved catalogue experience. Our pilot trusts have been integral to our design process and have been partnering closely with us through the journey so far and will continue to do so.

Having them on board has been invaluable, and it has helped steer our new ways of working to develop a collaborative and co-design approach.

We’re now at the exciting stage where we’re expanding the number of trusts who will get early access to the platform, we’ve recently added another nine trusts into the mix to test and feedback on some of the features now available on our pilot site and who are working with us to further refine the experience.  

It was the pilot trusts who really encouraged us to expand at this stage as they can see the value already whilst providing a base for us to improve features on the pilot site utilising their feedback.

Our aim is to have a basic catalogue established for a small number of trusts by the end of the financial year.

See our Useful Links section for our Digital Commerce Programme page for more information.

What surprised you about this project?

When we started the design process, we had a good understanding of the pain points that users were facing with our current offering, however we soon came to realise how many assumptions could be made, and workarounds existed in trusts to handle the experience we currently offered, which was in danger of skewing our designs.

We combatted this by enhancing our research methodologies and design process to dig deeper into the route of user needs and design from that base so we could identify the true opportunity.  

What motivates you?

Delivering impact and value – I’m a big believer that this starts with the foundational work of understanding where the value lies, the measures of success and then finding the right plan to deliver it effectively. The process along the way can be challenging, but when the numbers are delivered and the customers feedback is positive it’s hugely satisfying for the whole team involved in the delivery.

What job did you to prior to joining NHS Supply Chain? Which previous role did you enjoy the most and why?

I’ve been in digital roles for most of my career, with my previous role was Head of Digital Commerce very focussed developing and owning the digital commerce channels for a company specialising in licensed merchandise such as Harry Potter, Warhammer, Minecraft, Sonic and multiple anime licenses. This included the development of the channels and experience, but a significant focus was on the ‘off the shelf’ product development so we had an appealing range for different customer types, and digital marketing (Harry Potter handbags and anime hoodies!)

I’ve been very lucky in my career and had many roles that offered me challenges and opportunities, but I think the role I enjoyed the most was as Global Digital Experience Director in Avon developing and delivering digital strategy globally to make a step change in the Representatives digital proposition – I worked with fantastic teams across the globe and together we delivered huge change.

Finally, tell us about yourself!

I have a grown-up son who has recently moved out so I’m finding that I have more time on my hands, so I’ve recently taken up running – I’m not a natural runner so going very slow! My target is 20k and so far, I have managed 9k at tortoise pace!

I have two cats (Obi and Anakin) who rule my house and insist on joining as many calls as they can to share their opinion – apparently (according to them) they are the real brains behind digital commerce!