Senior Business Analyst (Planning and Merchandise) - (PERMANENT) (N)

Purpose of the Job:

This role plays an instrumental role across business and delivery teams to ensure that solutions are delivered according to the business requirements considering cost, user and organisation benefit. The nature of projects in this role are generally across domains, high profile and complex in nature demanding expert business, process and technology perspectives and recommendations.

Job Objectives:

Information Seeking & Analysis:

• Perform high-level analysis activities in the CE cycle (assisting to unpack Features, identify high-level impacts and dependencies etc.) at a Senior / Specialist proficiency level.
• Understand, analyse and identify areas for improvement in the current business environment and across other shared process/system business environments.
• Operate confidently within and make contributions where appropriate to business strategy, current trends and developments in the retail industry.
• Operate confidently within the multiple domains, integrated systems and operational processes and make relevant connections across domains. Consider the enterprise-wide solutions and impacts. Handle new domains with the same confidence as familiar domains.
• Operate confidently within multiple current and potential integrated systems and E2E business processes.
• Analyse, understand and take a new perspective on customers (Internal and external) and multiple domain impacts through the use of user journeys, research and/or spending time in the various operational areas.
• Collaborate with user stakeholders in the identification and documentation of user requirements.
• Assess and document the business implication of user requirements to the business process involved.
• Propose and document process improvements where appropriate and provide alternatives / options.
• Assess risks, costs and potential benefits of alternative business process designs.
• Define business rules and guide the implementation of these rules in the development of the various application systems.
• Devises, initiates and drives effective change initiatives in own area or department as well as across functional area.

Leadership, Facilitation & Influencing:

• Taking ownership to provide knowledge within specific area and identify possible improvement within the team. This includes interviews, presentations and workshop facilitations with both business & IT.
• Works closely with Architects, Designers and Business stakeholders to evaluate suggested solutions.
• Advise on alternatives presented by the technical designers and providing recommendations regarding the business design.
• Lead others to advance objectives of the organisation.
• Influencing stakeholders (within IT and Business) to consider solutions which will work best for the business.
• Persuade stakeholders to change practises and consider other alternatives.
• Coaching and mentoring for the Junior and Intermediate BA resources on business analysis processes and delivery.

Communication, Building & Maintaining Relationships:

• To build and maintain a trust relationship with business users and IT stakeholders by ensuring solutions are delivered as promised and providing the necessary support and making recommendations.
• Liaising with business stakeholders, IT disciplines and the delivery teams.
• Collaborating with all disciplines and benchmarking value adding solutions.
• Evaluate and improve solution assessment and validation.
• Eliciting and analysing cultural, business and organisational constraints effecting options for change.
• Continuously support the business environment and provide recommendations for improvement
• Thinking partner and ambassador for the business.
• Able to manage vendor relationships where projects involve third parties

Organising, multitasking & time management:

• Strong commitment to organisational objectives and ensuring high quality delivery on work.
• Take responsibility for the timelines within the project plan, of the business analysis effort related to a project.
• Ensuring costs are monitored and users and the organisation benefit.

Qualifications:

• Degree with 5 to 8 years related experience.
• Advanced BA certification, CBAP, AAC or similar

Experience:

• Experience working within all aspects of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
• Business Process Management experience
• Excellent communication, both written and verbal
• Excellent relationship management and collaboration skills
• Good planning and time management skills
• Willingness to coach and mentor junior team members
• Good business and IT acumen
• Self-starter, with a can-do attitude
• Customer focused
• Analytical thinking
• Decision making
• Results driven
• Facilitation or Coaching qualification / experience
• Business understanding of the broader retail industry
• Solid SAP Master Data experience
• SAP Pricing experience
• Exposure to the retail environment
• Good understanding of the buying processes in the retail environment

Knowledge and Skills:

• Operate at an Expert level in terms of methods used to analyze and benchmark business cases, which will align with the business strategies of the organisation (including feasibility and business benefits).
• Research and identify opportunities to improve the business' offering and add value to our customers through the solutions we provide.
• Drive / shape input into the scope of solution and ensure understanding of scope by business user.
• Deploy appropriate techniques to elicit and analyse business problems and translate them into business needs.
• Assess technical solutions and business processes against business requirements.
• Lead in the mapping out of data conversion and reporting requirements.
• Drive the change management barriers impacting User Acceptance Testing.
• Produce fit-for-purpose specification documents for business requirements and processes using appropriate tools, while following the guidelines and standards for analysis artefacts.
• Assist to solve & mitigate project risks.
• Liaise across teams to co-ordinate interdependencies and resolve issues.
• Actively contribute in the development of the BA practice within the organisation.
• Act as an SME in Communities of Practice to learn from the community and share knowledge and expertise with the community.
• Contribute to improving ways of work for the BA community, with specific focus on how to improve alignment, output, driving and influencing standards and quality.
• Creates a sense of team spirit by encouraging harmony, co-operation and communication.
• Communicates proactively and encourages others to share their views. Consults others when decisions need to be made.
• Develops and openly communicates self-insight such as an awareness of own strengths and weaknesses and what may come naturally or less naturally to them.
• Demonstrates detailed and comprehensive knowledge of own area, and is recognised as an expert by people across the organisation. Maintains a comprehensive knowledge of related external issues and knows about research and upcoming developments.
• Develops own technical skills and knowledge by looking out for opportunities to engage in continual professional development.

• Finds out about the activities of a wide range of other departments in the organisation and how they should work together as a system.
• Sales and distribution knowledge (desired)
• SAP Purchasing knowledge (desired)

Kindly regard your application as unsuccessful if you have not heard from the agency within 2 weeks.