Business Analyst - Home based within the north west, 35 hours per week

Job Purpose

To work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to gather requirements, analyse/model/improve business processes, and deliver systems that increase efficiency, improve the end user experience and align with AFG’s strategy.

The key objectives of this role are:

To identify business problems and improvement opportunities; define business needs and system requirements, and deliver solutions that will enable organisational improvement and transformation.

To plan and lead Business Analysis for projects and workstreams providing end to end business and process design/delivery.

Supporting the Business Systems Manager to champion the use of ‘fit for purpose’ applications across the organisation, ensuring that ICT is being used effectively as a tool to support the business at all times.

Key Result Areas

• Gathering, validating, analysing and documenting business requirements.
• Modelling business processes and identifying opportunities for process improvements.
• Identifying issues, risks and benefits of existing and proposed solutions and outlining business impacts.
• Creating functional specifications for solutions.
• Working closely with the QA Analyst to test the newly designed business processes to ensure that requirements are met and implemented to quality standards.
• Documenting current and future processes, using relevant workflow tools to develop clear and detailed process maps
• Simplifying information and deciphering technical jargon so it is easily understood by the whole team.
• Supporting business transition and helping to establish change.
• Staying up-to-date on the latest process and IT advancements to automate and modernize systems.
• Conducting meetings and presentations to share ideas and findings.
• Effectively communicating your insights and plans to cross-functional team members and management.
• Gathering critical information from meetings with various stakeholders and producing useful reports.
• Ensuring solutions meet business needs and requirements.
• Supporting user acceptance testing.
• Updating, implementing, and maintaining procedures.
• Prioritizing initiatives based on business needs and requirements.

Person Specification - Essential Requirements

Skills & Knowledge

• Exceptional analytical and conceptual thinking skills with the ability to articulate and confidence to challenge the status quo and ‘stuck’ perceptions
• Strong facilitation skills both face to face and remote
• Ability to influence stakeholders at all levels and work with them to determine acceptable solutions
• Requirements gathering - Ability to identify areas for improvement. Ability to understand end user requirements, translate into technically feasible solutions and document accordingly in detailed specifications.
• An excellent understanding of end-to-end process analysis, process design and process re-design and improvement.
• Competency in Microsoft Office suite and process modelling tools
• Excellent documentation skills.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Excellent organisation and time management skills.
• Ability to multi-task.
• Ability to prioritise own workload and deliver to tight deadlines.
• Excellent influencing and persuasion skills.
• Ability to work as part of a team and independently.

Values & Attitudes

• Takes personal responsibility and holds others to account.
• Is solution focused and has a “can do attitude”.
• Is able to inspire others with their passion and enthusiasm.
• Demonstrates honesty and integrity and demonstrates through their behaviors the organisational values.
• Embraces change, viewing it as an opportunity to learn and develop.
• Accurate and methodical in approach to work

Experience & Qualifications

• At least 2 years’ experience in a business systems analysis related role.
• Demonstrable experience of working on the full project lifecycle of large, complex system implementations.
• Experience of assessing, reviewing and documenting existing and future solutions against requirements and making informed recommendations
• Experience of using qualitative and quantitate investigation techniques
• Previous exposure to a continuous improvement methodology with a history of leading and supporting successful projects
• Experience in developing or contributing to business cases and options appraisals
• Demonstratable experience of process improvement to make efficiencies across the organisation through automation of processes
• A strong understanding of different project delivery methodologies (e.g. waterfall, Agile etc.)
• Educated to degree level or equivalent

This role is Band II as per our structure. Due to the requirement for occasional in-person meetings for this role we will only accept applications from applicants based in the north west of England. 

We’re Alternative Futures Group, a health and social care charity providing specialist support for people with a learning disability or mental health condition.

We’re proud to have been positively changing lives and enabling people to achieve amazing outcomes for over 30 years.

We have a vision to create a world where amazing people do amazing things every day. Our skilled and experienced teams work with every person we support to create a personalised, outcome-focused plans to achieve their aspirations.

As a ‘values based’ employer, the people that work for us genuinely care about the people they support, and we are seeking likeminded people to join our team.  If you are passionate about working in Health and Social Care and have a real desire to make a positive difference to the lives of the people we support then we would love to hear from you.

At AFG we also recognise the contribution and value that our staff make.  We would not be able to provide the life changing support that we do without people like you!

In return for your contribution we will support you throughout your career and we provide a wide range of employee benefits, career development and lifestyle support services to ensure that you too feel supported, fulfilled and valued from day one of your employment with us.