Organizational readiness assessment helps financial services association mature its data strategy

Client background

This company offers a range of products and services to the credit union industry.

The business challenge

In compliment to data strategy work being led by Baker Tilly, a clear need for a comprehensive change management assessment and strategy was identified.

The focus of this work was to understand the organization’s ability to effectively enact and support the proposed program enhancements and successfully prepare their people for the desired future state, emphasizing the value of assessing their business readiness for transformation.

The company engaged Baker Tilly to conduct a comprehensive organizational readiness assessment to assist the company in identifying areas of opportunity and risk to enable proactive mitigation of potential roadblocks to pave the way for a smooth transition to the future state.

Strategy and solution

Baker Tilly’s integrated approach to program management and organizational readiness played a pivotal role in enhancing the proposed data strategy by addressing opportunities and risks that could impact the organization’s successful transformation. Through discovery interviews and comprehensive understanding of the organization’s strategic priorities and goals driving the business, Baker Tilly was able to devise a change management strategy and road map that directly supported the proposed data strategy implementation that would enable the team to hit the ground running at project initiation.

Baker Tilly conducted an organizational readiness assessment to assess tolerance for change, promote support from leadership and prepare for a smooth, efficient execution that aligns with the organization’s priorities. Baker Tilly also applied the Prosci ADKAR model for individual readiness evaluation. Proposed focus areas resulting from the assessment included:

• Paying careful consideration to job roles, organizational structures, resource allocation and timing to minimize risk
• Leveraging lessons learned from past changes, considering the amount of change prevalent within the organization and monitoring the general willingness to change
• Continually engaging and leveraging leadership/sponsorship support to maintain focus on the related change initiatives
• Preparing a well-defined stakeholder analysis that documents role-based impacts to inform an effective engagement and communication strategy and timeline

Baker Tilly’s comprehensive organizational readiness analysis incorporated various assessment methodologies to measure aptitude and tolerance for effectively supporting and driving change. The results of the organizational readiness assessment provided essential insights required to monitor and mitigate identified areas of risk that could cause barriers or roadblocks to a successful implementation. Some of the outcomes included:

• Preparing the foundation for change by directly aligning the data strategy initiatives to support the organization’s priorities and goals
• Defining a business case that leadership could leverage to set the tone for the proposed change
• Strategies to help promote the organization’s tolerance and ability to effectively support the process of change
• Insights to the risks and barriers that could impact change effectiveness by measuring against key change indicators
• A targeted and tailored road map to effectively lead the organization and its people through the change

Through understanding of the organization’s readiness to support and maintain a data transformation, the organization was able to fully assess the level of effort required to drive successful change while cultivating an environment where people could adapt and embrace the new ways of working. The ultimate outcome of the readiness assessment was a detailed change management road map that directly supported the data strategy implementation timeline to provide an effective and practical approach to preparing the organization and its people before, during and after the transition to the future state of its data governance program.