RNR Consulting team assisted the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) at Montgomery County, MD with requirements definition for a new system that will interface with the new County wide ERP. The team was focused on two main programs: Rental Assistance Program (RAP) and Working Parents Assistance (WPA). These programs utilized legacy systems; stand alone MS Access databases, and multiple manual processes, which resulted in inefficiencies such as duplicate entries, redundancies and bottlenecks. The RNR Consulting project team worked closely with Subject Matter Experts from the RAP and WPA programs and the Information Technology staff at DHHS to complete this vital initiative. As part of this project, the team obtained and reviewed internal documentation relevant to the WPA and RAP systems including policies and procedures, screen shots, user guides and manuals, position descriptions, etc.

As part of the requirements definition effort, the project team utilized the Rational Unified Process (RUP) to accurately document stakeholder requests and the resulting detailed functional and technical requirements. The Project Team conducted interviews and targeted requirements workshops with Subject Matter Experts from the Rental Assistance Program and Working Parents Assistance (WPA) program and with designated staff involved in the various functions of the business process. Additionally, the team gathered information pertaining to challenges of the legacy systems, missing functionalities, usability issues, security issues and efficiency concerns. RNR project team utilized stakeholder requests, AS-IS process maps, and information gathered from the SME sessions to analyze and develop a comprehensive functional requirement matrix for the new system. RNR consulting team was also involved in developing Use Cases and Story Boards as part of this initiative, which were vital inputs towards the development of an enhanced system.

The new application based on the requirements gathered by RNR Consulting Team replaced the legacy systems, but also capture the functionalities of the stand alone databases automating multiple manual processes utilized within RAP and WPA. The new system offers the capability to transfer real-time data and seamlessly interface with ERP system supporting an efficient RAP and WPA business process, eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies of the legacy systems and the business processes.