Business Analyst

Role overview

The Business Analyst will play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between business needs and IT solutions. As a key point of interface and liaison between the sector users, stakeholders, subject matter experts and our system support vendor partners and their sub contactors. In this role you will be responsible for gathering user requirements, understanding business priorities, and translating them into actionable plans for process improvement, system enhancements or new application development.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities

Requirements gathering and analysis

• Conduct in depth interviews and workshops with stakeholders, subject matter experts and end users to understand business processes, needs and pain points.
• Analyse business rules and identify opportunities for streamlining processes or improving efficiency.
• Document business and user requirements clearly, concisely and accurately, ensuring alignment with business objectives.
• Conduct data analysis; reviewing data sets for problem utilising SQL and other data analysis tools as required.
• Support the Practice Lead to develop the business requirements and functional design of a legislatively compliant payroll system.
• Contribute to setting and monitoring standards for documentation of business analysis artefacts (e.g. business requirements, business processes, user guides.)

Solution development and implementation

• Work closely with the development and test team to ensure requirements are integrated into the development and testing plans.
• Develop innovative solutions and ensure they comply with established business rules and industry regulations.
• Assist with the development and maintenance of comprehensive test plans to ensure the functionality and effectiveness of new systems and processes.
• Use data driven approaches to analyse information and identify cause to improve long term solutions.

Communication and liaison

• Act as a liaison between business users, IT teams and external vendors, effective communication of technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Clearly articulate business requirements and solutions to stakeholders at all levels.
• Manage client expectations throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring their needs are heard, understood and addressed.

Production support

• Provide ongoing support to business users after system implementation or process changes.
• Troubleshoot any issues that may arise and work collaboratively to find resolutions.
• Monitor and evaluate implemented solutions to ensure they meets business needs and identify areas for further improvement.

Business acumen

• A strong understanding of the business areas assigned to them, based on the data collection, sector, vendor and internal interfaces and relationships.
• Strong understanding of the education sector, EPLs role in it, vendors who supply it, and its structure and relationships.
• Actively build and maintains EPL, Ministry of Education and client relationships within the sector.
• Adapts plans as change is priorities arise.
• Continue to keep abreast of activities within the education sector.
• Support the agile methodology and play an active role in embedding the Agile practice at EPL.

Leadership expectations

Lead self

Demonstrate the EPL values – Treat everyone with respect; works as a team; make things easier; improve through understanding; learn through doing.

• Maintain positive relationships.
• Hold yourself accountable.
• Be agile and adaptive.
• Show courage.

Lead EPL

Strategic planning

• Actively contribute to creating and maintaining a strategy that aligns actions, plans and resources with business objectives.

Business planning

• Plan and take actions that ensure a sustainable workforce now and into the future, including developing succession plans.
• Define and prioritise initiatives across the medium and short-term that align with the EPL strategy and objectives.

Risk management

• Identify, assess, mitigate and record risks arising from internal process, people, systems or external events that could potentially disrupt business operations and/or breach legislative requirements.
• Escalate risks that cannot be sufficiently mitigated within your span of control.
• Take collective responsibility for enterprise risk management and understand the cumulative impact of risks across the organisation.

Customer orientation, continuous improvement and quality assurance

• Consider the customer perspective, needs and satisfaction in all aspects of business strategy and operations.
• Approach operations with a continuous improvement mindset, working to enhance products, processes and services incrementally over time.
• Assure performance and quality objectives are being met through regular assessments and reviews. Take appropriate action where performance is below standard.

Required experience, skills and knowledge

To be successful in this position you will need:

• proven experience as a Business Analyst or similar role
• strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical audiences
• proven experience with all aspects of the System Development Life Cycle
• proficiency in leveraging a range of technologies and the organisation’s available tools to support business requirements
• experience in the development of current state baselines, future state modelling and business requirement gathering and documentation
• experience of analysing complex issues and developing effective options for action
• a good understanding of business process management and process modelling using BPMN 2.0 with experience to ARIS as a relevant toolset
• working knowledge of SQL for data querying and analysis
• well developed and applied attention to detail
• the ability to build strong relationships with key stakeholders and customers
• demonstrated operational knowledge of payroll practices, processes, and technology (desirable but not necessary).

If you have more questions about this role email myhr@edpay.nz and we will be able to get you talking to the right people.