Sr Business Applications Analyst (Program Management Office)

Job Purpose:

Responsible for providing Information Technology functional support and solutions for all areas of the Commission.  Analyze business needs and identify system or process solutions to assist users and improve the commission’s productivity.  Act as the liaison between the Programmer Analyst and the functional departments.  In Application Services & Business Integration Assignments, provide product expertise, functionality support, and first line resolution/analysis assistance as subject matter expert for responsibilities of system health, maintenance, and continuous improvements of corporate applications. In Major Project Assignments, analyze business partner operations, evaluate new applications, identify business/system requirements, and recommend/present solutions to enhance business/system operations.

Primary Functions

• Interface with functional users to define and document business and functional requirements for application software;
• Further define and document system scope, current logical view, general requirements and proposed logical view using structured design and analysis techniques (i.e., Business Requirements, Functional Requirements, Use Cases and Traceability Matrices, as required); 
• Identify opportunities for improvement within systems, including making recommendations on how users can best utilize products to accomplish their functional objectives; research and utilize new features of products;
• Identify opportunities for Business Unit work flow and business process improvements and make recommendations for such to management as needed; work with business units to deliver completely implemented solutions to end user community by leveraging best practices of the core applications;
• Evaluate business impact of errors and provide recommendation for solution through collaboration with developers and business experts;
• Evaluate existing and new system functionality and determine any requirements not met by the specific system and develop action plans to correct deficiencies;
• Guide and participate with the Programmer Analyst(s) in understanding business needs and assist translation for detailed program specifications;
• Develop, research, and evaluate feasibility of alternatives to meet project objectives and recommend optimal alternatives;
• Review existing procedures and identify those that will change; recommend any new procedures that must be instituted as a result of the system. 
• Perform follow-up validation of corrected deliverables with the user community;
• Write training material and conduct user training related to current and new systems or partner with Training Lead when dedicated resource is required for major project;
• Work with the IT Support Center and software vendors to enable support and resolution of software problems;
• Consult with project team and management to assess business needs for major projects and identify system or process solutions to assist users and improve productivity; identify preliminary discovery requirements to better project budget and timeline estimates for projects;
• Analyze business partner operations, conduct complex research, gather and analyze data from various sources, and deliver recommendations to project management team related to major projects;
• Participate in the business process redesign and process documentation related to the identification of new major project opportunities;
• Consult with application team, IT staff, vendors, and other subject matter experts to determine new initiative feasibility;
• Develop and maintain documentation regarding system functionality, prepare documents/reports for Commission and/or senior leadership approval and participate in the creation of the transition to support and triage documentation;
• Partner with Software Quality Assurance (SQA) in the documentation of the Major Project Test Plan and Test Strategy, and in the creation and review of Test Cases;
• Perform smoke testing as needed and partner with SQA in the triage of System Integration Testing defects;
• Partner with business partner operations in planning for and execution of user acceptance testing.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications we are looking for:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field of study, from an accredited college or university;

• Seven (7) or more years of information technology experience providing business/system analysis, and/or support of business applications. 
• May be required to possess a minimum of three (3) years of experience in using business process improvement tools and techniques;

  Working knowledge of:

  Quality assurance methodologies;

  Principles, practices, and methodologies of business process/system analysis;

  Familiarity with utilities applications (including, but not limited to the following) preferred:

  JDEdwards EnterpriseOne (E1);

  Oracle Utilities Suite: Customer Care and Billing (CC&B), Meter Data Management (MDM);

  CGI Outage Modules;

  Enterprise Content Management (ECMS) - Documentum and/or Sharepoint;

  WebMethods, ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), Cognos, Web/IVR self-service, etc.

• Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) or Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA) (preferred);
• Utility experience (preferred).