Business Analyst - Absa Bank

Job Summary

Responsible for working with business functions to identify, investigate and analyse problems faced by business/product owners. Based on this analysis, the Business Analyst needs to propose a solution to address the business requirements in full, as needed to optimise the business.

The senior Business Analyst must have the ability to work on multiple project simultaneously and will be responsible for delegating and overseeing tasks assigned to the junior Business Analyst.

Job Description

Accountability: Project Establishment Initiation Activities

• Develop design principles based on the initial brief and scope provided to guide the project's implementation activities, including the requirements planning stage and the management of change requests.
• Assist and support business operations, with the ‘As Is’ and ‘To Be’ process mapping on projects and also when changes to operational policies, procedures and processes occur.
• Build and maintain relationships with key role players by communicating regularly and working closely with them to elicit business requirements, evaluate and recommend possible business solutions, make assessments and produce feasibility analysis.
• Proactively identify project risks and issues through consultation with key stakeholders and communicating these with the Project Manager (PM).

• Assist the Business Analyst Lead with ensuring that the definition of the project scope and all other documentation needed in the Project Concept and/or Project Charter document/s is obtained by facilitating a project definition workshop.
• Develop hypotheses to achieve project goals based on the outcomes of the project definition workshop and use these to guide the fact gathering and analysis.
• Ensure all the business requirements, evaluations and recommendations of possible business solutions, assessments and feasibility analysis are documented, circulated and signed off by the relevant stakeholders, and handed over to the PM for use in defining and designing the project.
• Facilitate workshops in order to obtain business user requirements in terms of the proposed end state of the project so that the project is suitably defined, designed and implemented.
• Assist the PM with defining timelines and milestones for expected deliverables.

Accountability: Business Requirements Activities

• Analyse the “as is” “business architectures”, to identify any issues, opportunities, etc. This includes the analysis of all existing products & services, the procedures and business rules, the organisation structures, functions, roles & responsibilities, the business processes & procedures, the IT systems functionalities, data, performance and measurement metrics.
• Investigate and perform a business needs analysis, by interviewing the product or business process owners, to determine business requirements and identify possible alternatives and or solutions to achieve these requirements.
• Perform “root cause” issues analysis with key stakeholders by either conducting interviews or workshop to further evaluate and identify solutions and/or alternatives to meet the business requirements and document all findings to assist with project definition, design and build.
• Set up and facilitate workshops with relevant stakeholders to gather, identify and document the project and business owner requirements to be used in the project definition, design and build.
• Investigate options available, best practices, alternatives etc. and obtain up to date information in relation to the project requirements / objectives by referring to internal and external parties to ensure the best solution is considered and identified for the project.

Accountability: Solution Analysis and Documentation

• Design the “to be” “business architectures” by using the identified design principles and document the ideas by working through increasing levels of design detail (i.e. conceptual/high level/detailed design levels).
• Identify and design new and/or improved business process systems and/or procedures to deliver project goals by ensuring that the best solution is considered and identified for the project.
• Undertake a feasibility and impact analysis of solutions identified (people, process, data and system infrastructure) with key stakeholders, internal, external and technology staff to further define project requirements for the definition, design and build of the project.
• Able to perform and apply intermediate to advanced level data analysis and data quality principles.
• Identify IT interfaces, IT integration points to ensure integration into functional specifications, by consulting and workshopping with the IT System Analysis teams, Group Strategy, Enterprise Architect, Vendors, etc).
• Develop IT-systems functional, non-functional and service level requirements, reporting requirements, Business Requirement Definition documents (BRDs), use cases, etc. based on the evaluations, meetings, assessments and requirements analysis undertaken during the earlier stages of the project analysis stages, for use by the PM and project team to design, build, test and implement the project.
• Develop a functional decomposition of identified requirements through consultation with stakeholders to ensure that the business requirements will be developed and delivered by the project.
• Validate documented solutions in a walk-through workshop with stakeholders to ensure the solution is compliant in terms of required standards, design and fit to the Enterprise Architecture.

Accountability: Assessment and Validation of Solutions

• Assist the systems-management function with setting up and undertaking the IT-systems user-acceptance tests by both business users and IT staff to ensure that the technology solution meets the business requirements.
• Co-ordinate all user acceptance testing with regard to securing test users, the test location, the relevant access rights and by documenting all results and where required perform User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as undertaken and stipulated by the Absa Group Technology IT methodology.
• Assess the solution/s by benchmarking with industry standards to ensure the solution is compliant in terms of required standards, design and fit to the Enterprise Architecture.
• Evaluate the vendors' products/solutions and the integration capability of the products / solutions to ensure the solution is compliant in terms of required standards, design and fit to the Enterprise Architecture.

Education

Bachelor`s Degrees and Advanced Diplomas: Physical, Mathematical, Computer and Life Sciences (Required)