Emma recently joined the digital and transformation consultancy Digital Modus after 15 years in the public sector and procurement.
Most recently, she was Director of Procurement and Supply Chain at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. We asked her what she brings to the new role, and the challenges she can see facing the sector…
Hello Emma. Congratulations on the new role. What does being Chief Commercial Officer at Digital Modus involve? Can you give us an example of the kinds of things you’re doing on a day-to-day basis?
My role involves working closely with procurement and commercial teams across healthcare and the wider public sector. The goal is to understand operational challenges and identify major pain points. This insight allows us to tailor our solutions to add value to public sector operations. We focus on using automation and AI to simplify overly complex processes and systems, thereby driving real efficiency gains for their teams.
Emma James, Chief Commercial Officer at Digital Modus, image courtesy of Digital Modus
I’m essentially the go-between. Linking our technical capabilities with the practical needs of those on the ground – ensuring our system solutions are precise and deliver concrete benefits to deliver lasting, meaningful value.
When your new role was announced, you spoke of how ‘systems and processes can fall short’ and your ability to help NHS teams find solutions. What specific challenges are they facing — and what can you do to help them?
It’s a pretty well-known fact within healthcare, especially procurement and commercial teams, that they’re often stuck using old, legacy systems and running on fumes with not enough people. In some organisations, procurement is still not recognised as a critical, strategic and value-delivering function. Teams face recruitment freezes and vacancy rates of 5% up to 20%, while many organisations are struggling financially, and in some cases required to reduce headcount. However, this seems completely at odds, since investing in procurement usually gives a return on investment and delivers more value.
We deliver applications that work with existing infrastructure, putting a platform ‘overlay’ on top to pull data together across contract management, supplier relationship management, spend analytics and stakeholder management. Yet these often become ‘nice-to-haves’ because teams lack the time, headspace, or sometimes training to do these tasks fully and consistently.
The real magic is using technology to automate behind the scenes. Data analytics and generative AI can answer stakeholder questions, spot overspend, review contract clauses, compare delivery against commitments, reduce administrative burden and repetitive tasks.
How will your experience of working at Nottingham University and UCLH feed into this new role?
Having spent a lot of time in the NHS and public sector, I get what it’s like on the ground. I’ve been in the thick of it, using many of the systems, dealing with tough conversations about recruitment freezes and watching expectations rise while training budgets plateau. Because of my background, I’m genuinely aware of the pressures – they’re always changing, but I can certainly relate to what my former colleagues are experiencing. That realism is essential when thinking about what products like ours actually need to deliver.
The reason I joined Digital Modus, specifically Software Solutions, was a direct result of seeing the potential in the product demos. Honestly, having this kind of resource available in my previous roles would have been a game-changer for day-to-day operations and would have significantly increased the value we offered to the organisation.
It’s a difficult time for local authorities and the NHS at the moment, with constraints on budgets. How does that affect what you can or will be able to do?
It is no secret that the public sector faces significant financial headwinds, impacting frontline services and critical administrative functions. With a decade of experience, particularly in demanding sectors like healthcare, I have led cost-improvement programmes and understand first-hand how the tight financial climate is affecting organisations across the public sector.
Our focus is to clearly demonstrate the measurable value of software solutions. These are not supplementary tools; they are powerful applications designed to build financial resilience and deliver a substantial return on investment, such as smarter contract management, spend analytics that provides real-time visibility of expenditure, or stakeholder management.
Digital Modus solutions enhance financial control, optimise spend and free up talent, delivering sustainable value and enabling focus on core public services.
What would you like to see happening in the sector – are there things local or central government should be doing?
The real secret to success is selecting the appropriate technology – the solutions that consistently deliver clear outcomes. For the public sector, this typically entails achieving measurable efficiencies, both financial and operational, which ultimately result in smoother, more efficient services for citizens, taxpayers or patients. These efficiencies allow for the reinvestment of savings into vital areas, such as increasing frontline clinical staff.
I would say it is absolutely crucial that public sector leaders think of the longer-term technological needs, not only the needs of today but where innovative technology solutions can be used to drive efficiencies and deliver value to their organisation well into the future. Our technology is absolutely designed to support teams, not replace them. The strategic oversight, nuanced decision-making and critical relationship management handled by public sector teams are irreplaceable.
However, software solutions perform a vital service: freeing valuable staff resources from cumbersome, time-consuming administrative tasks. This crucial ‘time dividend’ allows organisations’ personnel to pivot their attention to strategic initiatives, complex problem-solving and value-generating activities that directly assist an organisation in achieving its mission.
By simplifying and automating these foundational, yet often complex, corporate, procurement and financial processes, we help secure immediate, tangible savings and embed a culture of continuous financial efficiency.
Emma James, thank you.
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