Business Systems Analyst

Summary

The Business Systems Analyst partners closely with stakeholders across various departments, including Product, Engineering, Sciences, and Marketing, to analyze business needs, translate them into system requirements, and ensure alignment with business goals. This role involves the development of customer journey maps and use cases, collaborating on data models, and evaluating and recommending solutions. The Business Analyst is crucial in streamlining business processes, enhancing efficiency and driving successful technology implementations.

Essential Duties

• Elicits, analyzes, documents, and validates business requirements through stakeholder interviews, workshops, and other methods.
• Collaborates with engineering team leads and data engineers to define and elaborate data models for technology solutions, ensuring the proper structure of data, objects, and attributes.
• Works with Product Managers and UX/UI Experts to develop and refine customer journey maps and use cases to understand user needs and expectations.
• Defines and documents functional, non-functional, and implementation requirements, outlining the necessary steps and considerations for successful technology deployment.
• Analyzes existing systems and business processes, identifying areas for improvement and proposing solutions to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
• Develops and maintains a deep understanding of the product and industry, acting as a reliable source of information regarding requirements and functionality.
• Participates in solution evaluation processes, ensuring alignment with business needs and technical feasibility.
• Creates and maintains comprehensive documentation, including business requirements documents, functional specifications, and user manuals.

Job Duties

• For each assigned product initiative, conducts a thorough analysis of current operations, limitations, and potential benefits to users and the company. Identifies relevant user roles and their specific needs.
• Develops detailed specifications encompassing use cases, integration schemes, data models, data flow diagrams, testing requirements, and usability considerations. Assesses the impact of new features on existing processes and external systems.
• Defines performance and user access requirements, ensuring functionalities align with intended user roles and permissions.
• Identifies potential risks associated with new features and time constraints, proposing mitigation strategies and contingency plans.
• Considers the possibility of phased feature releases, starting with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and planning for subsequent enhancements.
• Plans for the long-term support and incremental improvement of features, ensuring sustainability and adaptability to evolving needs.
• Collaborates with the Engineering and Sciences teams to help determine the best technical implementation methods.
• Provides business guidance for product and technical success, coordinating priorities for cross-functional teams to take features to market, ensuring success metrics inform future efforts, and quickly fine-tuning the product as needed.
• Demonstrates the ability to achieve strategic goals in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
• Solves problems and demonstrates stellar organizational and analytical skills.
• Handles other duties as assigned.

Soft Skills and Work Approach

• Work Speed & Quality: Demonstrates the ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and produce high-quality documentation efficiently, minimizing the need for rework or clarification. Analyses should be clear and concise, at the level of detail required, and agreed upon with the collaborators and stakeholders.
• Proactivity & Communication: Proactively identifies opportunities for improvement and takes the initiative to address them. Effectively communicates progress, challenges, potential solutions, and any changes to the solution scope to the team, ensuring transparency and alignment.
• Decision Making & Requirements Documentation: Confidently makes informed decisions and drives initiatives forward while taking ownership of outcomes. Employs a "progressive detailing" approach to requirements documentation, ensuring clarity, structure, and comprehensiveness.
• Presentation Skills: Efficiently and confidently presents ideas and requirements to stakeholders and development teams.
• Data-Driven Approach: Ensures that project decisions are backed by data, including user surveys and relevant statistics.
• Continuous Improvement: Constantly analyzes and optimizes own workflows, creates checklists and guides, and strives for increased efficiency and quality.
• Industry and Product Knowledge: Possesses comprehensive knowledge of the domain and product, becoming a reliable source of information on requirements.
• Optional: Technical Depth: A deeper understanding of the product's technical aspects can be beneficial for minimizing the need for developer interpretation during implementation.
• Optional: Code/Data Model Comprehension: The ability to read and understand code and/or data models is beneficial but not mandatory.

Education & Experience

Bachelor's degree (B.A. or B.S.) from a four-year college or university or equivalent practical experience; 5+ years of product management, business analysis, system analysis, or related experience. Experience with business process modeling, requirements gathering and analysis, solution assessment, and UML and Agile methodologies.

Experience in advertising is preferred. Knowledge of multiple functional areas such as sales, customer support, finance, or marketing.