Job Description
JOB PURPOSE: The Business Analyst (BA) collects, analyses and reports on data to improve Islamic Relief’s systems and processes for greater organisational efficiency and impact. The BA engages with stakeholders, representing the wider ICT function, to ensure business needs are understood across stakeholder groups and addressed effectively with any ICT solutions and technologies. The BA works with an internal team of technology experts, end-user support teams, project managers and information security professionals, and coordinates with external technology providers to ensure high-quality sustainable solutions.
Scope of the Role:
- The Business Analyst will contribute to ICT projects within the overall ICT Strategy, performing the required business and systems analysis, process improvement/re-engineering, project delivery support and customer support. The Business Analyst will be required to lead on some projects.
- Contributing business analysis best practice to ensure stakeholders are consulted, engaged and informed through the project and development lifecycle.
- The Business Analyst will ensure that relevant change management processes are regularly followed, particularly for key information systems.
- This role may require international travel to areas where Islamic Relief works.
Responsibility for Resources:
- Responsible for maintaining/contributing to information systems and ICT process documentation, internal knowledge management and project documentation resources (including technical and product knowledge bases)
- Responsible for requirements documentation, user acceptance testing documentation and use of any prototyping tools
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES
The job holder is accountable for fulfilling his or her roles and responsibilities in line with Islamic Relief’s organisational values and principles of sincerity, excellence, compassion, social justice and custodianship in management of resources and interaction with external stakeholders, colleagues and other Islamic Relief staff.
1. Business and Systems Analysis
- Take responsibility for the delivery of business analysis projects, initiating and leading requirements capture processes to define IT system requirements.
- Work closely with stakeholders at all levels to define, agree and sign off requirements and translate them into expected deliverables that support business goals in collaboration with other subject matter experts.
- Produce business process, data and system models to articulate system requirements and present findings to customers, internal team, and other stakeholders as required.
- Outline initial system designs and contribute to the design, development and deployment of final information system solutions
- Prototype system functionality to aid in validating system requirements
- Research and identify options for potential solutions, assess them for both technical and business suitability and present findings to management, customers and other stakeholders as required.
- Actively participate in working groups within the Islamic Relief family and with peer organisations
2. ICT project & service delivery and support
- Support the delivery of projects as identified in the ICT strategy, including mobilising ICT technical teams in the delivery of ICT projects to time, specification and budget.
- Develop and manage appropriate project documents, plans and associated communications documents.
- Create, maintain, develop and utilise business and systems analysis toolkits tailored for Islamic Relief
- Plan, schedule and track project timelines and milestones using appropriate tools
- Contribute to the planning and delivery of the strategic objectives of the ICT department.
- Design and run user acceptance testing workshops/activities as required
- Provide Early Life Support (ELS) for newly operational systems or new features
- Create/update documentation and support the transition of projects to operational support (business-as-usual)
- Provide administration and user support for information systems as required and within agreed service levels.
- Actively support the ICT change management process to ensure changes are duly documented, planned and implemented in line with stakeholder needs
3. Communication with Customers and other Stakeholders
- Build and manage effective relationships with stakeholders across all Islamic Relief offices (International office, field offices and partners) to better understand their needs, support the development of effective solutions and drive realisation of agreed business benefits.
- Effectively communicate project expectations to team members and stakeholders in a clear and timely manner.
- Establish open and fluid communication between all members involved in the project, and at any given time have available the information necessary for key stakeholders
- Maintain and contribute to ICT internal knowledge bases related to business and systems analysis, information systems and maintenance as well as systems support.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
It is essential that the post holder shows a good understanding and sympathy with the Islamic values and principles as well as commitment to Islamic Relief’s vision and mission.
Essential: Knowledge, Skills and Qualifications
- Degree level IT qualification and/or industry standard business analysis related qualification (e.g. BCS/ISEB, ECBA, or CCBA).
- Proven ability to manage high level stakeholders and ability to engage with individuals at all levels
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to map, analyse and re-engineer business processes
- Good planning and organisational skills with ability to manage multiple tasks and initiatives in parallel without compromising quality.
- Ability to translate complex technical terms into customer and business friendly terms for a non-technical audience.
- Ability to lead small project teams of up to 10 people
- Ability to foster motivation within the project team to meet expected delivery dates.
- Business minded approach and ability to make commercially sound decisions
- Good working knowledge of Prince2 (ideally Prince2 Foundation qualified)
- Ability to think logically and also creatively.
- Knowledge of DevOps and cloud technologies (AWS and Microsoft Azure)
- Proficient in use of Excel for data manipulation and reporting purposes
- Working knowledge of Microsoft SQL server analysis and reporting
Experience
- Business analysis background with some experience applying it
- Analysing and documenting complex business processes.
- Writing requirements specifications for Information Systems.
- Working in medium to large project teams and working with technical specialists such as developers
- Exposure to and general understanding of ICT technical areas relating to systems development and infrastructure
- Proven record of excellent people and interpersonal skills with strong communication skills at individual and group levels, including directly with end users.
- End to end experience of the project lifecycle
Personal Qualities
- Aptitude for grasping new technical concepts & problem solving
- Ability and willingness to travel within UK and internationally
- Willingness to be flexible in order to meet target delivery dates
- Excellent customer facing skills
- Results orientated with good communication and interpersonal skills
Desirable:
- A professional or academic qualification in an IT Discipline
- Working knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 or Dynamics 365 (financial/operations, CRM, project, HR/Talent modules)
- Working knowledge of SSRS, SSIS, SharePoint and Salesforce CRM
- Working knowledge of deploying Microsoft Office365
- ITIL v3 foundation qualified
- Knowledge and experience of working with off-shore teams
- Good levels of literacy in another language other than English
Closing Date: Sunday 15 May 2022
