For many NHS organizations, the decision to adopt the NHS National Microsoft 365 tenant has brought significant benefits. It provides a secure, centrally managed digital environment that reduces local administration, improves consistency, and enables organizations to benefit from shared services without the cost and complexity of maintaining their own Microsoft 365 tenant.
One concern for organizations operating within the National tenant has been whether they could deploy specialist business applications that deliver enterprise-level capabilities beyond the standard Microsoft toolset.
We’re pleased to confirm that Power Framework PPM can be successfully deployed within the NHS National tenant. This gives NHS organizations access to a comprehensive portfolio, program and project management solution without requiring a separate Microsoft environment.
What is the NHS National Tenant?
The NHS National tenant is a centrally managed Microsoft 365 environment operated as part of the NHS England digital estate. Rather than every NHS organization purchasing, configuring and governing its own Microsoft tenant, many organizations choose to operate within this shared environment.
This approach offers several advantages:
- Reduced infrastructure and administration costs
- Consistent security, governance and compliance policies
- Simplified identity and access management
- Faster onboarding to centrally provided Microsoft services
- Alignment with NHS national standards and guidance
For many NHS organizations, particularly Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), NHS Trusts and other public healthcare bodies, this removes a significant operational burden and allows IT teams to focus on delivering value rather than maintaining core infrastructure.
The Challenge
While the National tenant delivers many operational benefits, organizations have sometimes assumed that using a centrally managed tenant limits their ability to introduce specialist line-of-business applications.
Project management is a good example.
Many organizations rely on basic Microsoft tools such as SharePoint lists, Excel spreadsheets, Planner or isolated Power Apps to manage projects. Whilst these are excellent tools for individual teams, they can become increasingly difficult to govern at an organizational level.
As portfolios grow, organizations often struggle with questions such as:
- Which projects best support our strategic objectives?
- Where are our resource bottlenecks?
- Which programmes are at greatest risk?
- How are benefits being realized across the organization?
- Can executives obtain a single version of the truth?
Answering these questions requires much more than a collection of individual project trackers.
Enterprise Portfolio Management for the NHS
Power Framework PPM has been designed specifically to address these challenges.
Built entirely on the Microsoft Power Platform, it provides a complete enterprise portfolio management capability including:
- Portfolio, programme and project management
- Strategic alignment and investment prioritization
- Resource planning and capacity management
- RAID management
- Financial tracking and forecasting
- Benefits management
- Governance workflows and approvals
- Executive dashboards and Power BI reporting
- Integration with Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Project, Teams and SharePoint
Rather than replacing the Microsoft tools that project teams already use, Power Framework PPM brings them together within a governed enterprise framework.
Why This Matters
The successful deployment of Power Framework PPM within the NHS National tenant removes an important barrier for organizations operating within this environment.
It means organizations no longer need to consider maintaining a separate Microsoft tenant simply to access enterprise project portfolio management capabilities.
Instead, they can continue to benefit from the security, governance and operational efficiencies of the National tenant whilst implementing a mature PPM solution capable of supporting organization-wide governance.
This is particularly valuable for NHS organizations seeking to improve portfolio oversight, strengthen assurance processes, manage increasingly complex transformation programmes and demonstrate delivery against strategic objectives.
Supporting NHS Transformation
The NHS continues to deliver large-scale transformation initiatives across digital services, estates, workforce, clinical systems and operational improvement.
Managing these initiatives successfully requires more than individual project plans. It requires clear governance, consistent reporting, effective prioritization and executive visibility across an entire portfolio.
Power Framework PPM provides the foundation for that governance whilst fitting naturally into the Microsoft technologies that NHS staff already use every day.
See how University Hospital Leicester benefits from Power Framework PPM deployed in the central NHS tenant by reading their case study here.
Looking Ahead
As more NHS organizations adopt the National tenant, ensuring that enterprise applications can operate successfully within this environment becomes increasingly important.
Power Framework PPM’s ability to be deployed in the National Tenant demonstrates that organizations do not have to compromise between the benefits of the shared NHS Microsoft environment and the sophisticated portfolio management capabilities needed to govern major transformation programmes.
For NHS organizations looking to move beyond spreadsheets, disconnected SharePoint lists and basic project tracking, this opens the door to a fully integrated enterprise PPM solution delivered within the NHS National tenant they already use.
Not only that โ our Enterprise Risk and Organizational Change Management solutions can equally be deployed in the NHS National tenant.
Interested in learning more?
If your organization operates within the NHS National tenant and is looking to improve project, programme and portfolio governance, we’d be delighted to demonstrate how Power Framework PPM can help deliver enterprise-level PPM capabilities within your existing Microsoft environment. Just get in touch and book a demo.
