The City of Baltimore Story

Government Transformation With a People-Centric Approach to Change

Maryland’s largest municipality delivers critical services to over 575,000 residents. With a growing focus on digital transformation, the City is modernizing legacy systems to improve collaboration, procurement, and contractor engagement. The City invested in Oracle Unifier to emphasize a people-centric change approach, ensuring staff and vendors adopt new processes with confidence.

The City of Baltimore partnered with consultant group JMT to enhance the delivery of its capital projects and transformation vision. JMT identified a key challenge of the transformation initiative as providing a tailored approach to the multi-phase project, which included SOPs, user training, and stakeholder engagement, as different individuals were involved at various stages of the transformation.

“As part of the implementation plan, the City of Baltimore leveraged existing Town Hall meetings to demo Whatfix content and familiarize attendees with the new training approach,” said Vice President, Project Controls at JMT.

The Challenge

Why Traditional User Onboarding & Training Didn’t Work for Complex Government Transformation Projects

The City introduced Oracle Unifier to manage its capital improvement projects, spanning initiation through execution, across major departments. The platform supported contract approvals, tracked minority business participation, facilitated design workflows, and streamlined change order processes.

Traditional onboarding (classroom training, PDFs, and videos) was resource-intensive and couldn’t keep pace with evolving workflows. External partners and small businesses required a consistent, low-friction method to complete tasks accurately in Oracle Unifier without the need for repeated retraining.

The City implemented Whatfix to support Oracle Unifier adoption for a diverse set of user roles and address key people-centric rollout challenges, such as:

• Content that relied on traditional training delivery methods resulted in low adoption rates, user errors, and a high volume of support tickets.
• Static training content quickly became outdated after system enhancements and updates.
• General contractors and consultants struggled with the new UI and unfamiliar government processes, leading to mistakes, duplicate work, and compliance issues.

The Solution

A Seamless Guidance Layer for Government Systems to Provide Just-In-Time Help

With project controls partner JMT, the City layered Whatfix on Oracle Unifier to deliver contextual, step-by-step guidance within user workflows. This simplified onboarding process ensured compliance and accelerated time-to-value.

The City of Baltimore used Whatfix to launch embedded, in-app support across key processes, including:

• 154 Flows guided users through key tasks like design submissions, change orders, and payments.
• 14 Smart Tips that targeted areas of workflow confusion and reduced form-entry errors.
• 6 Beacons that highlighted new features and application updates.
• 127 static training and support content transformed into dynamic, in-app help elements, including embedded videos and process walkthroughs.

“Whatfix empowers users to take action independently, without fear of making mistakes or needing help. Its flexible formats like banners and pop-ups grab attention and drive users to complete tasks.” Unifier Product Manager, City of Baltimore.

The Results

From Higher User Engagement to Reduced Compliance Risk: The City of Baltimore Accelerated Project Delivery and Realized Digital Excellence

With Whatfix, the City achieved measurable improvements in user enablement, compliance, and training efficiency, as well as its target outcomes intended by the Oracle Unifier transformation project.

Key metrics and outcomes included:

• Training time reduced by 63% with in-app Task Lists, replacing the need for live, expensive instructor-led training sessions.
• Reduced burden on IT support: Its in-app ‘Self Help’ achieved a 98% search success rate within the first year, creating a more user-friendly experience and alleviating pressure on support teams and subject matter experts.
• Job aid creation time cut by 60% by replacing PDFs with embedded Flows that update automatically when processes and workflows change.
• 100% of Oracle Unifier users with the Whatfix extension (529 individuals) actively engaged with its in-app guided experiences and intelligent help content.
• Data accuracy and process compliance improved, reducing risk across regulated workflows.
• Public value impact: Supported the City in streamlining capital project delivery by accelerating system adoption, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements, reducing dependency on external training, and improving operational efficiency for internal and contractor teams.

“Whatfix enables us to hear the voice of our users. When people know they’ve been heard, they’re more encouraged to participate because they feel like part of the team.” Organizational Change and Communications Manager, Baltimore City Office of Information and Technology