COVID Home Testing Kit Programme for the UK Government

What our client needed

During a time of national crisis, this was a high-profile and complex project that required rapid mobilisation and  deployment, a very high level of Busines As Usual (BAU) service delivery, and operation to very stringent Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Following the original publication of the  opportunity via Crown Commercial Services (CCS), Royal Mail Group (RMG) and Paragon Customer Communications (PCC)  made a strategic decision to utilise each other's core strengths, by joining forces to design and execute a best-of-breed, endto-end proposition to deliver a robust, UK-wide fulfilment and distribution solution for the Covid-19 test kits ordered online for home delivery in the UK.

What we gave them

PCC rapidly developed and deployed a seven-site fulfilment service delivery model ensuring that we could deliver to the DHSC’s strict SLAs on a national basis. Alongside our compliance capability, our size, scale, and strategic UK-wide delivery footprint ensured that  we were ideally placed to deliver this vital solution at scale. 

We quickly got to work. Teams from across our businesses came together to design the required technical and operational ecosystem to deliver the project, including 
fully integrated, technology platforms to ensure constant communication and real-time data was available to all internal and client operations teams. 

A bespoke single-view customer interface was developed so that DHSC had complete, real-time visibility on orders placed, orders  fulfilled and stock movements by test kit type. This provided  DHSC with vital insight into the uptake and usage of the home testing programme and an effective mechanism to proactively manage a large, complex service.  PCC holds daily calls with DHSC, working closely to ensure key information is shared between teams and constant SLA adherence is achieved, so that we are able to meet the  constantly changing specification and demand for the service. Naturally, the solution provided a serious logistical challenge to overcome, requiring the secure warehousing of over 5,000 pallets of stock at any one time at our strategically placed hubs spread across the country, as well as the need to inject and deliver a huge volume of kits through the RMG postal network.  As part of the solution, PCC proactively manages stock  movements across all fulfilment sites to ensure that product is  always available to meet demand. Orders for test kits are placed  via NHS Digital. Relevant data is then securely transferred to PCC, and the API feedback loop updates the NHS systems once the kits have been despatched and delivered. This is a 7-day service, 365 
days a year, and any order placed by 8pm must be fulfilled same day and made ready for delivery next day. 

PCC procures and manages all packing materials, fulfilling and delivering 20+ kit types in various formats, which are dictated by end user location, test type defined and personal requirements.  Fulfilled kits by PCC are transferred into secure, pre-designated postal cages. Multiple collections are made each day, whereby the  kits are then injected into RMG’s solid and scalable postal network. Now, every test kit that arrives to a UK recipient via the postal 
channel is delivered via this solution

What was the impact

As of November 2022, we have fulfilled and dispatched more than 93.5 million test kits to people across the UK. We designed, built and implemented a large and complex solution in less than three weeks, and its success led to a new longer-term Agreement being awarded. This solution continues to evolve and reshape to fully support and deliver against DHSC’s national Test and Trace objectives  for the effective management of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

As such, PCC has to deliver flexible and robust quick-turn IT development alongside an ability to rapidly scale up  and down production capacity to react to quick changing 
volume demand.  To demonstrate our agility to proactively manage changes in volume demand, we see daily volumes fluctuate between 120,000 and 280,000 and on several occasions, we have had to quickly ramp up capacity to meet 560,000 per day forecasts.

PCC has been a key ingredient in helping the UK  population to safely and conveniently test themselves at home, minimise the spread of the disease, and help to return the country to a sense of normality. Working in true  partnership style, PCC has expertly delivered a solid, scalable and future-proof fulfilment solution for DHSC.