Specialist: Business Analysis

Empowering Africa’s tomorrow, together…one story at a time.

With over 100 years of rich history and strongly positioned as a local bank with regional and international expertise, a career with our family offers the opportunity to be part of this exciting growth journey, to reset our future and shape our destiny as a proudly African group.

Job Summary

The PMO requires a Business Analyst to join the BA Capability team to support and assist the team in delivering against the objectives of the BA Capability as well as fulfill a BA role and execute on allocated medium to complex project/s where required.

As a BA, on projects (BAU or SI) you will act as a liaison between business stakeholders and technical teams to analyse business needs, identify opportunities for improvement and support the delivery of effective solutions. This role requires a solid understanding of business processes, data analysis and requirements gathering, with the ability to contribute to project planning and execution

Job Description

Project Support

• Assist in defining project scope, objectives and deliverables where it doesn’t exist.
• Understand the project scope, objectives and deliverables where this is available.
• Contribute to project planning and scheduling of the analysis tasks.
• Identify potential risks and uncertainties that may impact project success, and support the Project manager to develop mitigation strategies to resolve them
• Help ensure that project milestones and deliverables are achieved on time and within scope.
• Adhoc requests that the project team requires
  
  

Stakeholder Management

• Identify project stakeholders and define/understand their roles and responsibilities
• Work closely with business stakeholders to understand their needs, objectives and challenges
• Collaborate with cross functional teams including project managers, developers, change managers, testers and product owners.
• Build and maintain strong relationships with stakeholders to ensure ongoing alignment and support.
• Facilitate regular status meetings, requirement walkthroughs and feedback sessions.
  
  

Requirements Gathering And Analysis

• Conduct stakeholder interviews, workshops and surveys to elicit business requirements.
• Analyse and document current business processes, workflows and systems.
• Translate business needs into detailed functional and non-functional requirements.
• Prioritise requirements based on business value and feasibility.
• Work closely with SME’s to clarify and validate requirements throughout the project lifecycle.
  
  

Data Analysis

• Analyse data to identify data sources, data relationships, identify trends, patterns and insights that can inform decision-making and solution design
  
  

Documentation and Communication

• Prepare clear and concise documentation including Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s), Functional Requirement Document/Specification (FRD/FRS), use cases, user stories, test cases etc.
• Assist in preparing feasibility studies where required.
• Create process models, data flow diagrams, mockups/prototypes as needed.
• Assist, support and possibly manage the creation of the Target Operating Model based on inputs from various stakeholders across functionalities, integration, processes, data etc.
• Identify gaps between current and desired states of processes, systems, or workflows, and proposing solutions to address them
• Serve as a main point of contact between business and Technical Teams.
• Communicate changes, decisions and updates to the relevant stakeholders in a timely manner.
• Maintain Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM)
  
  

Solution Assessment and Validation

• Participate in Solution Design sessions to ensure proposed solutions align with Business Objectives/Benefits.
• Review and validate proposed solutions to ensure they meet the desired requirements.
• Collaborate with architects and technical teams to design solutions that meet business requirements, considering factors such as scalability, security, and usability
• Ensure that proposed solutions align with the organizations strategic goal and technological capabilities and meets the business benefits
• Develop prototypes or proofs of concept to validate proposed solutions and demonstrate their feasibility and functionality to stakeholders, as required by the project
• Assist with the creation of Test Strategies, Test Plans, Test cases and UAT Close Out reports
• Facilitate and support in User Acceptance testing (UAT) to ensure business needs and requirements are met.
  
  

Roles and Responsibilities – Business Analyst within a Business Analysis Capability

Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as a liaison between business units, other capabilities with PMO, project teams and BA Capability leadership.
• Help stakeholders understand the value of business analysis and structured approaches.
  
  

Continuous Improvement and Innovation

• Identify inefficiencies within the Business Analysis Capability and recommend solutions/improvements.
• Champion the adoption of digitization tools, automation or data driven decision making as part of improvements.
  
  

Capability Building and Knowledge Sharing

• Participate in training sessions, Centre of Excellence (COE) forums and Community of Practice (COP) knowledge sharing sessions.
• Share lessons learnt, case studies, reusable assets (templates, processes etc.)
• Contribute to mentoring and coaching.
  
  

Contribution to Best Practices

• Provide feedback on existing practices and suggest improvements to BA Methodologies, approaches, tools etc.
• Help test and refine new BA techniques, tools or frameworks before they are rolled out.
• Contribute to the knowledge repository i.e. BA capability sharepoint site
  
  

Adherence to Standards and Governance

• Apply standardized BA practices, frameworks and templates defined by the Centre of Excellence (COE)
• Ensure quality and consistency in deliverables across initiatives.
• Support compliance with organizational policies and procedures.
  
  

Education

Essential

• Matric
• Relevant Degree - Bcom degree Information’s systems or Industrial Engineering
• Certificate or Diploma in Business Analysis
  
  

Advantageous Qualification and Certification

• BA qualification from one of the IIBA endorsed educational institutes
• Other Business Analysis related training
  
  

Preferred Experience

• 2-5 years’ experience in Business Analysis
• Financial Services and Banking exposure would be advantageous
  
  

Education

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

Absa Bank Limited is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. In compliance with the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998, preference will be given to suitable candidates from designated groups whose appointments will contribute towards achievement of equitable demographic representation of our workforce profile and add to the diversity of the Bank.

Absa Bank Limited reserves the right not to make an appointment to the post as advertised