Unitary Transformation Practice Lead

We’re looking for people to join the Access family, who share our passion for believing in better, and who will help us continue to grow.

Love Work. Love Life. Be You. - is central to our success and how we give our customers the freedom to do more of what's important to them.

What does Access offer you?

We offer a blended approach to office working, encouraging you to collaborate and connect in one of our thriving offices. We deliver on what we say, taking the development of our people seriously. We’ll work with you to progress your success plan and provide opportunities to accelerate your career.

On top of a competitive salary, our wellbeing days taking you to 25 days leave a year and a health contribution, you’ll also be able to choose from a range of benefits to suit you. We’re an organisation that likes to give back, so you’ll also have three charity days allocated to support a cause that matters to you.

What are we all about?

At Access, we love software and how technology never stays the same. It's this obsession that drives us to work closely across sectors to understand the business needs of our customers - from the Hospitality sector to Manufacturing industry to Not for Profit’s to Construction, and many more.

We're passionate about helping our customers stay one step ahead of the challenges facing their industry and business, currently helping over 60,000 customers to have the freedom to do more.

About you:

Access is seeking a Unitary Transformation Practice Lead to join our dynamic Growth Operations team, reporting to the Director, Growth Operations. This is a newly created, standalone role sitting at the heart of the PaySuite division's Public Sector strategy, making PaySuite a trusted partner in the local government reorganisation currently reshaping the UK’s public sector.

You will be PaySuite’s primary point of expertise on the payments-specific challenges of LGR, being a partner that is in the room early, understands the council's specific situation, and works collaboratively to identify the right Payments approach for the Unitary’s journey.

You will develop and agree PaySuite’s Unitary framework approach, liaising with all impacted and contributed functions across the division, to enable us to deliver a customer engagement model that both supports a Unitary through the Payments element of their transformation and achieves the right commercially packaged offering for their organisation.

Alongside direct customer engagement, the Practice Lead will build the internal capability, tools and frameworks that allow the rest of the business to operate confidently in this space — and will do so in a way that creates genuine, lasting expertise across the organisation rather than a single point of dependency.

Day-to-day, you will:

Customer Engagement and Advisory

• Attend early-stage meetings with forming unitary authorities to understand their specific structure, timeline, legacy systems, and political context — typically before any commercial discussion is on the table.

• Work collaboratively with councils to map their payments transformation options, identify the right sequencing, and navigate the trade-offs between immediate consolidation and a phased approach.

• Act as a credible peer in pre-sales and new business conversations — providing assurance about the implementation journey ahead and reducing risk perception at the point of commitment.

• Support sales and account management colleagues in identifying and qualifying unitary-related opportunities across the existing customer base and new prospects.

• In conjunction with Marketing, lead the design and delivery of a PaySuite webinar series on unitary transformation — covering the transformation horizons councils face, practical considerations for payments and income management through each stage, sequencing decisions, common failure modes, and what good looks like at each point. The series should position PaySuite as a knowledgeable, credible partner in the LGR landscape, rather than a product vendor talking about its own features.

• Represent PaySuite in external-facing activity — roundtables, webinars, peer forums — on income management through the unitary transition, that build PaySuite’s presence and reputation in this space.

Framework and Tooling:

• Design and own a structured Unitary Discovery Framework, liaising with colleagues across functions, to build a consistent mechanism for capturing each authority's situation, constraints, and priorities, which customer-facing colleagues can use and build on.

• Develop recommended delivery pathways for the two primary scenarios: authorities seeking immediate consolidation of systems and processes, and those prioritising a stable day one with phased rationalisation to follow.

• Define clear roles and responsibilities within a unitary engagement for internal stakeholders — from first contact through to post-go-live — so that accountability is clear and the Practice Lead is not a bottleneck.

• Build and maintain a delivery template covering the full arc of a unitary implementation: engagement and scoping, sequencing, data migration, go-live support, and post-go-live stabilisation.

• Establish operating guardrails for the role — criteria for when to engage, what a good outcome per interaction looks like, and how handoffs to delivery teams are managed — to prevent the role becoming high-volume and low-outcome.

• Define a specific model for Elevate customers (PaySuite's most strategically important accounts), covering how unitary transformation engagement is structured differently for this tier.

Internal Capability Building:

• Design and deliver a training programme for all customer-facing functions — sales, account management, delivery, and customer success — so that colleagues can speak confidently about the unitary landscape, the challenges councils face, and where PaySuite can and cannot help.

• Create and maintain reference materials that non-specialists can use independently in customer conversations without needing to involve the Practice Lead directly.

• Identify and develop two or three individuals across the business to carry unitary expertise forward, removing single-point-of-failure risk and embedding institutional knowledge over time.

Implementation Oversight:

• Act as subject matter expert and senior point of oversight on the first unitary implementations delivered under the new framework, setting the standard for how PaySuite operates in this context.

• Ensure the first cohort of implementations produces a validated, repeatable model — not a bespoke delivery each time.

• Transition direct implementation responsibility to trained colleagues as the model matures, moving into a quality assurance and escalation function.

Proposition Development:

• Work with the Director, Growth Operations and Product & Engineering to contribute to the evolution of the PaySuite unitary proposition — ensuring it reflects what authorities actually need and is grounded in real engagement.

• Over time, contribute to the case for packaging the unitary partnership offering commercially, with evidence drawn from customer outcomes and delivery experience.

• From Year Two, carry a commercial contribution objective covering revenue retained from existing authorities going through unitary transition, and new unitary business influenced. This is an influenced metric — structured in the same way as Pre-Sales — not direct commercial ownership. Specific targets will be agreed at the 12-month review, informed by pipeline and retention evidence from Year One.

Your skills and experiences might also include:

• Direct, hands-on experience of income management or payments transformation within a UK local authority — ideally through a major change programme or system transition.

• A solid working understanding of how councils are structured financially and operationally, including the roles of S151 officers, finance directors, and transformation leads.

• Demonstrable ability to build trusted relationships at senior levels within public sector organisations.

• Experience designing or contributing to delivery frameworks, implementation methodologies, or service models — with a practical, outcome-focused approach.

• Strong communication skills — able to operate credibly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, and to simplify complexity without losing accuracy.

• Comfortable working in a commercial environment, with an understanding of how advisory and engagement activity connects to revenue protection and growth — and comfortable being measured against an influenced commercial contribution from Year Two.

• Direct experience of a unitary authority formation — either as a council employee, an external consultant, or a supplier working through the transition.

• Existing relationships with S151 officers, finance directors, or transformation leads at authorities currently in or approaching unitary transition.

• Experience designing and delivering internal training programmes or knowledge transfer initiatives.

• Familiarity with payments or income management platforms — not necessarily PaySuite specifically.

• Outcome-oriented, self-managing, comfortable with ambiguity, pro-active, collaborative but direct.

What does Access offer you?

We are a growing software company, and we deliver on what we say we do! We take the development of our people very seriously and we will work with you to carve out your success plan and an opportunity to accelerate your career and make a real difference.

On top of a competitive salary, our standard 25 days holiday (which goes up the longer you’re with us), and a matched pension scheme you’ll also be able to choose from a range of benefits to suit you. We pride ourselves on being an organisation that gives back so you’ll also have a charity day you can take to support something that matters to you.  

Worried you don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that some people will check out the job role profile but hold back from applying if they can’t match up to every single point. At Access, we are dedicated to building a diverse workplace where people feel they belong, so if you are excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t match perfectly with everything in the job description, we encourage you to still apply, you might just be who we are looking for.

Become part of our amazing Access family and apply!

What are we all about?

The Access Group is one of the largest UK-headquartered business management software providers. It provides solutions that empower more than 160,000 small and mid-sized organisations in commercial and non-profit sectors across Europe, USA and APAC, giving every employee the freedom to do more of what's important. Its innovative cloud solutions and integrated AI software experience across multiple Access products transform how business technology is used.

With over 9,300 talented individuals driving innovation and customer excellence, we’re shaping the future of work. And we want you to be part of it. At Access, people are at the heart of everything we do. We’re committed to creating an inclusive, high-performing culture where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to thrive. If you’re excited about this role - even if your experience doesn’t tick every box - you might be exactly who we’re looking for.

We believe in equality for all and the transformative power of diversity. So why not join our vibrant team, where you can love what you do, love how you live, and most importantly, be authentically you?

Let’s make a difference together.

Love Work. Love Life. Be You.