by Jessica Otunuya | Feb 2, 2024
About the Engagement
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, a state-level agency received the task to distribute funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), acting as a grantee in the nationwide initiative that amassed approximately $46.5 billion. The program aimed to deliver substantial economic relief to assist households with low and moderate income who were at risk of homelessness or housing instability by offering support with rental arrears, temporary rental assistance, and utility arrears. In addition, the agency created the Landlord Rental Assistance Program (LRAP), which provides rental assistance for landlords whose tenants are unwilling to apply for the ERAP, including where the tenant has left the rental property.
Business Problem
The agency had to develop internal policies and procedures to erect a grant management and administration operation within weeks. One of the business problems is that the agency required a comprehensive communication strategy and implementation plan to ensure efficient operations, to support timely grant relief disbursement.
Challenges
Due to the nature of the grant program to expend relief to two related but uniquely different audiences, a key challenge was ensuring adequate stakeholder management, specifically factoring in needs of both tenants and landlords. Within each stakeholder group, there were complicating factors and nuances around communication for each. Examples include:
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- Communication approaches were needed for both tenant and landlord.
- Tenant communications needed to be available in different mediums (email, postal mail, and text).
- Text messaging, while convenient, also had limitations due to character limits.
- Landlord communications were focused on one medium, email; however, tenants were not required to provide an owner email address. In those cases, an alternative method, such as text (e.g., application submission) or call (e.g., automated calling) were used to provide important updates.
- Owner communication was provided only in English, while tenant communication was available in nine language translations, with the most common being English and Spanish.
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- The LRAP was designed for Landlord communication primarily, with all communication notices being sent only in one medium, email, and one language, English.
- The one exception to this communication was payment notices; payment approval notices were sent to tenants by postal mail, in two translations: English and Spanish.
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- Beyond payment notices, there was no defined tenant communication, because Landlords were not required to provide the tenant email address, which stifled the completeness of the data point.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team worked with the ERAP and LRAP project leaders to develop the overall communications plan for tenants and landlords. The communication plan improved program communication and led to increased satisfaction from program participants. Notable implemented successes were:
- Communication Database: The communication database is the central repository for all matters pertaining to tenant or landlord communication.
- Communication Tracker: The communication tracker serves as the resource which identifies all outgoing communication, including the following data points: unique identifier, type of communication, audience/recipient, medium, number of applications impacted, due date of notice(s), status, and file path for the shared storage location.
- Customer Service Representative Portal: Bulk communications were managed through a central technology for transmittal in all mediums: emails, postal mail, and text.
- Client Review Tracker: The client review tracker captures notifications requiring the agency’s review, response, and/or approval, and includes a status/resolution of the notification.
- Notification Templates: Templates were created to support consistent, streamlined, and accurate stakeholder communication for tenants and landlords.
- Technology Oversight: The engagement team worked directly with development on application enhancements, routine maintenance, and as-needed bug fixes.
by Jessica Otunuya | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
At the onset of the 2020 pandemic, a state-level agency received the task to distribute funds from the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), acting as a grantee in the nationwide initiative that amassed approximately $46.5 billion. The program aimed to deliver substantial economic relief to assist households with low and moderate income who were at risk of homelessness or housing instability by offering support with rental arrears, temporary rental assistance, and utility arrears.
Business Problem
With households experiencing financial troubles, the agency needed to begin delivering relief funds as soon as possible. The agency had to ensure compliance with state and federal rules and regulations, develop internal policies and stand-up a massive grant management and administration operation within weeks. Specifically, the agency needed to develop processes and procedures to support application submission, applicant verification, benefits calculation, and documentation storage and maintenance. Lastly, given the priority to deliver relief funds as quickly as possible, the operational teams needed to be ready to accommodate changing policies, organizational governance, and technology on a week-to-week basis.
Challenges
Within the engagement, the primary challenge was system architecture and design. The system architecture/design was critical to ensure timely and efficient grant distribution. In addition, the system had to be accessible by varying stakeholders, with varying roles and aligned to the criteria set by lawmakers. The risk assessment(s) all pointed to prospective flaws in the system.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team implemented a series of systems and processes to address the high stakes need for the agency to award grants to applicants. Specifically, the team implemented: 1) Governance to ensure a model for operation and oversight of the program, with a goal of customer ease and satisfaction with the program; 2) Management/Supervision to ensure a defined understanding of decision-makers and all roles; 3) Training to support knowledge and understanding of the technology and use end-to-end among all user types; 4) Quality Assurance protocols for accuracy at all levels of engagement; and, 5) Traceability between agency goals and customer service representatives to ensure everyone understood the goals and the guiding principles to make them actionable in day-to-day operations.
by Jessica Otunuya | Jan 31, 2024
About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure.
Business Problem
In the beginning, the agency’s goal was to deliver benefits to citizens as quickly as possible. As a result, business processes and business requirements were developed with the best knowledge and understanding at the time. These original processes and requirements were adequate but not the optimal business processes and technology.
The engagement team identified three areas of focus: current-state assessment and analysis, future-state requirements and optimization, and change management, recognizing that software development processes were not formalized and therefore created challenges upstream and downstream.
Challenges
The first challenge was managing a large group of stakeholders with competing priorities, interests, and understanding of pain points. Another challenge was maintaining varying agile, hybrid-agile and waterfall software development lifecycle approaches, since multiple systems, or lack of, were used inefficiently. The final challenge was staff proficiency with systems and this challenge showcased the need to develop strategies to support staff in their use of systems and applications.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team worked across various programs, each with multiple departments, and shared services to gain an understanding of the existing pain points with user flows and the system interfaces to understand current-state processes. From there, the team developed future-state user flows and system requirements (e.g., screens, field requirements, etc.) with the goal of optimized workflows. To support staff learning, usage, and understanding the team implemented training and presentations with associated documentation for reference. Staff were trained in quality assurance and quality check procedures. Following this, the team worked with the agency to architect the ideal technology solution, which resulted in an organizational shift to more consumer-driven software development business processes. To complement the future-state recommendations for optimization, the team created a change management roadmap and detailed plan. The team enabled the client to actualize the vision and meet the goal of confidently delivering software enhancements – meeting programmatic needs, on-time, and within budget. Through implementation of the change management initiatives across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), the client’s improved internal processes have enabled staff to ensure better communication and efficient workflows. In addition, the enterprise software and underlying technology are flexible and robust for ongoing needs. Ultimately, the client is able to meet programmatic needs on time and on budget.
by Jessica Otunuya | Nov 7, 2023
About the Engagement
During the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, three co-branded health insurance companies were developed across three states: New Jersey, New York and Oregon. The business model and operating model leveraged by these companies outsourced front-office and back-office vendors – from sales and billing and enrollment, to claims and medical management. The insurance companies required strategic, analytical and facilitation support to help navigate critical issues with their shared business model.
Business Problem
The route of the business problem was the need for a common strategy; however, a strategy that supported differentiated leadership, independent implementation, and oversight for each company.
Challenges
One problem was the lack of a clear customer service strategy and operating model. The next challenge was technology considerations (e.g., Customer Relationship Management (CRM)) and whether this should be shared across vendors between the three companies, and the last challenge was a consideration of the customer life cycle, specifically customer transaction (engagement) and the impact this had to staffing for each company.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team led and facilitated the three health insurance companies to develop a shared customer service strategy and operating model, providing clarity on the shared goals and objectives. From there, based on industry standards and enrollment estimates with sensitivity analysis – the team developed a comprehensive staffing model from sales to customer services. The result was that the engagement team launched the three co-branded health insurance companies with 12 outsourced call centers in 9 months, with a daily call volume of 10,000+ and 200,000 total members being served. The outsourced vendors had a shared understanding of the complex operating model for three separate but co-branded companies; the call centers and back office-maintained service levels agreements, and the staffing model estimations were accurate.
by Christina Magriples | Oct 26, 2023
About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure. In Fall 2021, our engagement team was procured to support the community reconstruction and infrastructure operations team. In 2019, the client underwent organizational restructuring, combining teams and changing roles.
Business Problem
Following the restructuring, staff had little time to acclimate into the new working order prior to moving to full-time remote, as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic. One business problem was that there was not a defined strategy to manage change across the department, and more specifically, the operations team.
Challenges
The primary challenge was stakeholder engagement, ensuring buy-in across all staffing levels to create a shared understanding of the need for and importance of change management. The secondary challenge was understanding and documenting how department interactions occurred across the agency to ensure adequate planning and communication.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team collected data and interviewed staff across the department to determine what was effectively working, where improvement was needed, and areas of the work requiring additional attention or improvement. This data was analyzed and used to create a solutions framework including a [re]training plan for staff, an onboarding plan for new hires, focused team building activities for improved morale and employee engagement, and a new staffing pattern to redistribute the workload.