Business Analyst Consultant

About Imagine Worldwide
All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don't have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide believes that every child should be empowered with the basic right to literacy and numeracy. We provide an innovative education technology solution and implementation model to the global literacy/numeracy learning crisis using the onebillion application and various toolkits and systems to support implementation. Our model is massively scalable, evidence-based, and can deliver foundational learning to millions of the most marginalized children.

Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are a California-based (United States) nonprofit organization operating across seven Sub-Saharan African countries. Learn more on our website.

Over the next six years, Imagine's goal is to serve more than 10 million children in at least four countries, ultimately achieving three times the typical level of literacy and numeracy outcomes of national education systems in Africa (60% fluency by the age of 10, as opposed to 20%). This all while delivering the program at $3 per child per year. Being a data-driven organization with world-class systems is key to achieving this goal.

Background

As we continue to scale, our ticket (issue) management capability is not yet mature, standardized, or repeatable across countries. How tickets are logged and progressed varies by team and country. Intake channels and categories differ, hand-offs are applied inconsistently, and data capture is uneven, especially for critical fields like school and asset IDs, making it difficult to produce simple, comparable views across countries. Reporting is fragmented, which slows targeted remediation and reduces confidence in trends.

The current practices and tools (e.g., CommCare intake into IWON) show gaps in three areas:

• Service levels & workflow discipline - clear SLAs, predictable assignment, timely escalations, effective reporter–resolver communication
• Data & integration - consistent school/device identifiers and reliable linkage to the asset registry
• Visibility - comparable country views and leadership-ready analytics

A comprehensive capability is needed to support scale, reliability, and learning across countries. This system is critical to improving device uptime, field responsiveness, issue resolution, and data visibility across our three priority countries. Currently, Imagine is serving about 1 million children, with circa 250,000 tablets in the field. At full scale over the next 5 to 10 years, our service management system must be able to support:

• Malawi: 6,000 schools (4m children) with circa 1 million tablets
• Sierra Leone: 4,500 schools (1.7m children) with circa 600k tablets
• Tanzania: 18,000 schools (5.5m children) with circa 1.5million tablets

A formal ticket management process will allow faster response to school and partner issues, predictable hand-offs with clear targets, and reliable data that turns day-to-day fixes into school-, cohort-, district- and device-level insight.

Objective of the Assignment
Establish a fit-for-purpose ticket management capability and produce a Business Requirements Specification (BRS) to evaluate enabling solutions aligned with Imagine's strategy for scale, consistency, and effective delivery.

The consultant will:

• Define user personas (eg. reporters such as Teachers, Field Officers, District Officers; Resolvers such as Field Officers, TSPs, Program Managers; and Managers such as ISP Project Managers, Country IT Lead, District IT Officers)
• Define a Ticket Management Capability Framework (purpose, roles, communication channels, lifecycle, policies, data controls, measurements, and tool-agnostic enablement) that countries can adopt with minimal localisation.
• Design and document the Service Catalog (eg hardware, software, connectivity, infrastructure, implementation) & Taxonomy, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Operating Level Agreements, roles/RACI, workflows, escalation & communication rules, and the operating model.
• Specify minimum ticket fields (eg. device type, device ID, school, school type, district, GPS location, timestamp)
• Specify core KPIs and the standard reporting views (daily operational dashboard; monthly leadership trends with school/device drill-downs)
• Define functional requirements for two-way syncing with the OLA (Open Learning Architecture) school administration platform and the ERPNext inventory management system
• Outline specifications for multi-platform issue submission (in-App, email, SMS, WhatsApp)
• Produce a BRS (functional, integrations, reporting, non-functional), with testable acceptance criteria, suitable for RFP/RFQ and vendor evaluation.

Scope of Work
Analyse current practices, co-design the future state with stakeholders, and deliver process and requirements artefacts ready for implementation planning and solution evaluation.

4.1 Process & Governance

• Conduct structured interviews with Global Programs, Technology and Supply chain, as well as in-country field officers, country IT leads, Tech Teams, Logistics Teams, and program managers
• Map the end-to-end lifecycle (intake, triage, assignment, diagnosis, resolution, verification, closure, insights), including multi-channel intake and de-duplication.
• Define decision points, control checks, and cross-functional hand-offs (Tech, Repairs, Logistics, Programs, M&E).
• Set governance (global to country), decision rights, escalation paths, and a RACI for key roles.

4.2 Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

• Develop concise SOPs for priority flows:

• intake and categorisation

• priority/severity and SLA clock rules (start/pause/stop; business hours)
• assignment and hand-offs
• requester communications

• closure standards; post-resolution verification.

• Provide step-by-step guidance, templates, and quality checks to support onboarding and audits.

4.3 Service Catalog & Taxonomy (with SLAs and Operating Level Agreements)

• Create the service catalog (what can be logged) and the taxonomy (category, sub-category, cause) to be used for routing, SLA selection, and analytics.
• Define SLAs (external response/resolve targets) by category and priority.
• Define Operating Level Agreements (internal hand-off commitments) between teams to enable the SLAs.
• Supply a compact starter catalog in the main pack and place the full catalog and code set in an annex.

4.4 Data, Metrics, and Reporting

• Specify minimum required fields: country, school, cohort, district, asset/device ID, category, priority, timestamps, resolver, closure reason, attachments.
• Define the core KPI set: SLA attainment %, backlog ageing, first-time-right routing %, reopen rate %.

• Define reporting requirement:

• daily operational dashboard (new/in-progress/due-soon/breaching, queues, aged items)

• monthly leadership trends (by country/school/category, top causes, SLA performance, actions), with school/device drill-downs.

4.5 Business Requirements Specification (BRS)
Deliver a vendor-agnostic BRS that defines the target ticket management capability in clear, testable terms suitable for procurement. At a minimum, the BRS must:

• Describe the scope, key user roles, and the standard ticket lifecycle;
• State core functional needs, required integrations, data/reporting needs, and key non-functional expectations;
• Outline what must be configurable by administrators and where limited country-level variations are permitted; and

Duration and Level of Effort
The assignment is expected to run for approximately two months, with flexibility to adjust based on availability of stakeholders and data access. The consultant will propose a detailed work plan and milestone schedule at inception, indicating key phases such as discovery, design, validation, and documentation.

Reporting and Governance
The consultant will report to the Head of Portfolio (Project Sponsor) and work in close coordination with global and country functional leads. Regular engagement will ensure alignment on scope, priorities, and deliverables.

Progress will be reviewed through short weekly or bi-weekly check-ins, supported by concise written updates summarising progress, key decisions, risks, and next steps.

Consultant Profile
The consultant (or consulting team) should have demonstrable experience in business analysis and process design for service or ticket management functions. They must be able to translate operational challenges into clearly defined processes, data requirements, and solution specifications.

Key capabilities include:

• Strong analytical and documentation skills with the ability to facilitate workshops across global and country teams.
• Proven experience in service design and business analysis for IT or operations platforms; or developing process frameworks, service catalogs, SLAs/Operating Level Agreements, and Standard Operating Procedures.
• Understanding of system integration, data flows, and reporting design.
• Ability to produce concise, implementation-ready deliverables suitable for leadership and technical audiences.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and documentation skills.

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Imagine Worldwide is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.