Readiness Liaison

Title: Readiness Liaison/Change Management Practitioner Term: 18-24 Months (With the possibility of extension) Location: Boston, MA 02108 Work Model: 1 Day/Week Onsite Hours per Week: 37.5 · The Readiness Liaison are change management practitioner responsible for preparing agencies for the rollout of the new financial solution. They assess the readiness of agencies to adopt changing business practices and procedures and provide support to agencies in these efforts. There will be 8-12 Readiness Liaisons assigned to work with multiple agencies on readiness tasks. The 150+ agencies using the new solution will be organized into logical groupings, by a business entity such as or by business function, such as users of grants management. Each Readiness Liaison will be responsible for one or more of these groups.

· The Readiness Liaison plays a critical role in the program as there will be business process changes with the new financial solution. Readiness Liaisons must have a solid understanding of change management principles, processes, methodologies, and tools, as well as strong organizational, analytical, and communication skills. They should also possess the ability to motivate others and build trusted relationships with agency staff.

· The Readiness Liaison is part of the Organizational Change Management (OCM) workstream and works under the direction of the Readiness Team Lead who reports to the OCM Lead. The Readiness Lead and Readiness Liaisons are responsible for creating and managing the end-user readiness strategy and plan.

Readiness Liaisons will: · Achieve a deep understanding of the new business processes that will be implemented with the new solution and how these differ from current practice. This will enable the liaisons to clearly articulate the vision and rationale of the Program to agency managers and the end-user community, promoting successful understanding and adoption of the new solution and processes across the enterprise.

· Promote the adoption of new enterprise functionality supported by the new solution, which may replace existing agency applications in areas such as federal grants management or vendor management. Guide agencies migrating to the new solution, assisting them in understanding policy and procedure changes related to improved business processes, and emphasizing the importance of adopting and adhering to these new practices.

· Implement the process to provision end users with security roles before going live with the new solution.

· Work with agencies to assess their readiness for go-live by maintaining a checklist of tasks that must be completed, such as user training, security provisioning, successful trial access to the new solution, and the ability to meet system requirements for desktops or other setups needed to use the solution successfully and optimally.

· Maintain a list of technical tasks that must be completed by each agency for go-live, including items such as interfaces to and from the new solution, data warehouse queries or extracts, and reports that the agency will need to run from the online system.

· Communicate clearly and concisely with diverse audiences, both orally and in written form. Be comfortable giving and receiving feedback. Ensure that communication materials are disseminated to agencies promptly.

Specific Duties · Participate in the development of a readiness engagement plan that details the tasks necessary to ensure the successful preparation of agencies and end-users to adopt the new solution; the plan includes a schedule of engaging with agencies and identifying resources and barriers or areas of support.

· Assist in identifying a team of agency champions who will work with the Readiness Team to prepare their organizations for change. This includes providing support in security provisioning steps and other necessary tasks.

· Create and administer change assessments to gauge agency impacts and readiness. Utilize the assessment results to inform updates for the project plan and rollout and deployment strategy.

· Responsible for facilitating change network meetings, including educational sessions., Track attendance and engagement during these sessions and provide coaching to champions as needed on change management topics.

· Apply a structured approach to complete change readiness interviews. These interviews will help assess the readiness of individuals and teams for the upcoming changes.

· Map existing processes to new processes, evaluate the impact of the changes on each agency, and collaborate with functional teams, System Integrator (SI), and product vendors to gain a comprehensive understanding of the new or changing business processes. Coordinate and lead multiple working sessions with agency stakeholders to transition existing processes to the new enterprise-wide business processes.

· Create agency-specific readiness plans that include various aspects such as communications dissemination, organizational and operational readiness, technical readiness, and user security provisioning and training.

· Provide regular, timely status reports regarding current challenges, foreseeable problems, anticipated issues, or potential risks and offer alternatives, possible solutions, or mitigation plans.

· Develop and maintain effective relationships with program team members, agency employees, and stakeholders.

· Partner with Technical Workstream to manage and update a list of technical and operational readiness-related tasks that agencies must complete before going live, including such items as interfaces to and from the new solution, data warehouse queries or extracts, and reports that the agency will need to run from the online system.

· Understand the desktop system requirement for the new solution to perform optimally.

· Work with agency champions to provide post-implementation support, identify issues, and mitigate risks.

Required Skills · Understanding and experience with the basics of business process mapping.

· Experience using Visio to create as-is process maps based on outputs from interviews or working sessions and overlay the as-is process on new to-be processes.

· Experience working with clients to assess impacts and identify changes needed to move from the current "as-is" process to the new "to-be" process.

· Capable of building trusted relationships with front-line leaders and employees at all levels.

· Good business acumen and understanding of organizational issues and challenges.

· Ability to influence others and move toward a common vision or goal.

· Excellent business interview skills with the ability to actively listen, analyze, and synthesize information.

· Well-developed presentation, communication (oral and written), and interpersonal skills.

· Must be a team player and able to work collaboratively with and through others.

· Exceptional ability to excel in a fast-paced environment, consistently meeting deadlines while effectively resolving conflicts. Demonstrated experience in using computer-based tools including Visio, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

· Extensive travel to different state agencies, within the Commonwealth, may be required.

· The successful candidate will be an individual who has an energetic, can-do approach to work, who tracks and follows up on tasks independently, who seeks out additional work, and who recommends ways to improve upon current activities.

Preferred Skills · Basic understanding of the following functions particularly in large public sector organizations:

o Sophisticated Chart of Accounts to support budget controls and reporting across multiple units or organizations

o GAAP reporting

o Federal Grants Management

o Project Management

o Asset and Inventory Tracking and Management

o Procurement and Contracting

o Billing and Accounts Receivable

o Data Reporting and Analytics.