Roles and Responsibilities for Secondaries moving to Arbor

Your Arbor Onboarding Manager will be your main contact and will be responsible for guiding you throughout your implementation lifecycle with Arbor. Their responsibilities include planning, monitoring and assisting you in the following ways:

• Kick-Off Call: The goal of the call is so that you can understand your project in a lot more detail, understanding your foundational modules and training, targets for onboarding, roles & responsibilities, your project timeline and key events, support process and cutover planning (if you are a weekend migration)
• Providing you with a rollout plan for your implementation including a training programme which will ensure that your staff are confident with how to use Arbor 
• Bi-weekly Status Calls: With so many moving parts to a whole school implementation, these Status calls are a perfect opportunity to touch base with your Customer Onboarding Manager so you can keep track of where you are up to on your implementation journey.
• Manage your end-to-end migration of your school's data from your previous MIS (including your dummy run) 
• Identifying and controlling any risks and controlling any changes associated with the implementation.
• At the end of your implementation, your Onboarding Manager will then hand you over to your Customer Success Team (see below)

A key focus during your school's onboarding journey will be to ensure your school's data quality is a good enough standard to be able to hit the ground running on day one with your foundational modules before moving to Customer Success Management, who will then guide you through further module adoption.

Once you have completed your implementation with your Customer Onboarding Manager, the next phase of your Arbor Journey will sit with your Customer Success Management (for schools taking their Support from Arbor) team where you will continue to build usage and confidence in Arbor by focusing on your Bespoke Modules.  

The Partnership Team at Arbor holds a commercial relationship with the school/MAT. You might not see them as much during your implementation but they will work with you on your contract renewal and are your point of contact for purchasing new packages, products and services.

It is not uncommon for your Customer Success Manager or Partnership Manager to join Project Reviews or Status Calls. This is to ensure that Arbor continues to be aligned with your school’s needs/requirements.

The school’s main point of contact with Arbor during the implementation. This should be a member of your school's Senior Leadership Team, with the ability to make decisions and hold their staff team to account. The Project Lead should be someone who has a good knowledge of the school’s processes, workflows and people.  

Arbor’s Customer Onboarding Manager will organise all aspects of the implementation through the school’s Project Lead and their responsibilities include:

• Meeting bi-weekly with the Arbor Customer Onboarding Manager to discuss progress and next steps. 
• Meeting bi-weekly with the school's internal Arbor project team to ensure the project remains on track. 
• Installing a team across the school to drive success.
• Understanding the school’s requirements and working with your Arbor Customer Onboarding Manager to ensure that the project is aligned. 
• Working closely with the Arbor Customer Onboarding Manager to identify risks and ensuring the correct mitigation is followed. 
• Identifying any change in scope or priorities and notifying your Arbor Customer Onboarding Manager. 
• Managing the end-to-end migration of your school’s data and ensuring the data has been checked before Go Live. 
• Reporting back on the status of your implementation to the wider school team.

An ‘Executive Sponsor’ is a key requirement for success within the school. This should be the Head Teacher or leader of the school in most instances. The Executive Sponsors' responsibilities include:

• Ensures that the project’s goals are aligned with the school’s overall vision/strategy.
• Set/clarify and align expectations. What does success look like at the school?
• Provide resources to ensure the school’s project remains on track. 
• Drive change and overcome resistance across the school by communicating the benefits that a new MIS will bring to the school.
• Willing to step in to support decision-making and mitigate throughout the project where needed. 

The Executive Sponsor and Project Lead should not be the same person. Before you begin your implementation onto Arbor it is important that the Project Lead and Executive Sponsor meet to set their expectations. What does success on Arbor look like and what resources does the Project Lead have to meet these requirements?

The Project Lead and Executive Sponsor should meet regularly and be able to talk about any blockers to change within the school or any resistance.

The Executive Sponsor will not be involved in the day-to-day running of the implementation. This will be the responsibility of the Project Lead.

This will be someone who will be familiar with data across the school and ensures this information is kept up to date. Their responsibilities will include:

• Conducting data cleansing on your current MIS system.
• Facilitating data checks and counts on Arbor, checking migration of key data sets and updates from your previous MIS. 
• Alongside IT Support, contact any third-party applications that you wish to continue using on Arbor and notify them of the change.
• Ensuring that any third-party applications are set up on Arbor for Day 1. 

   

IT Support

This will be someone who will be familiar with all the IT systems across the school and will have access to data files. Their responsibilities will include:

• Sign off to confirm all data cleansing tasks have been completed before migrating to Arbor.
• Alongside the School Data Manager, contact any third-party applications that you wish to continue using on Arbor and notify them of the change.
• Ensuring that any third-party applications are set up on Arbor for Day 1. 

   

Training Coordinator

This member of your school team may be part of your Administration team, or even, a lead on CPD within your school. This role may be undertaken by the Project Lead themselves. Their responsibilities will include: 

• Organising and supporting staff with registration and use of the Training Hub.
• Planning ahead for when key training will take place across the onboarding journey and beyond. 
• Supporting staff in booking training based on their roles and needs. 
• Providing internal training opportunities and updates on training as part of your school calendar. 

Moving your whole school to a new MIS is a complex change programme with lots of moving parts. It is important that you install people across your organisation that can help you drive this change. These people are known as ‘Arbor Champions’.

The responsibilities of the Arbor Champions will be to:

• Help ‘champion’ the benefits of Arbor across the teams.
• Identify and control any resistance to change across their areas of responsibility.
• They will become experts in their Area. They will be able to support their wider team with any ‘how do I’ type questions.
• Attend any training sessions relating to their areas of responsibility. 
• Ensure the data that has been migrated is correct in their area of responsibility and that they will be able to carry out their duties once Live on Arbor.
• Any specific setup/configuration tasks relating to their area of responsibility.
• Help to deliver the schools change plan.

A successful Arbor Champion is someone who is a great communicator who is able to share their knowledge and a representative of a stakeholder group (such as Exams/Assessments/Behaviour etc).