Business Analyst

Job Summary

The University of British Columbia ("UBC") is a global center for teaching, learning, and research, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world and recently recognized as North America's most international university. UBC is a diverse environment, with almost every industry vertical represented, from healthcare, education, food and beverage, legal, media, real estate, etc., and with more than 70,000 members of the community. UBC's service providers need to be able to meet a variety of stakeholder needs with both robust and mature operational capabilities combined with the agility and innovation required to meet the ambitious objectives laid out in its new Strategic Plan: Shaping UBC's Next Century.

The Business Analyst consults with user groups to determine business needs and introduce solutions that support the needs of an enterprise, multi-stakeholder technology solution. This position provides both business and technical expertise to develop overall strategies for sustaining a strategic application system, Planon. Planon is a single unified software application providing best-practice processes for maintenance management, inventory management, and asset management (building and grounds assets associated with maintenance and work orders) with integrations to other UBC applications.

Team members within this unit will work cross-functionally with other departments/units across UBC. The focus will be on providing business stakeholder oversight and long-term direction, integration and application support, requirements definition, functional application design, configuration, implementation, testing, data validation, new application updates/releases, training, troubleshooting, and documentation.

Maintains the reliability and availability of a UBC mission-critical 7x24 system by providing Tier 0 knowledge base, Tier 1, ITSC logging issues, and Tier 2 support, triage, incident and problem resolution, liaising and working with Tier 3 support, and ensuring services meet or exceed customer service levels at all times. Provides input to strategies for the growth, improvements, and upgrades of this system and actively participates in the implementation of such enhancements. Team members within EMMS Sustainment will use Workday, Planon, Mulesoft, Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, and Canvas Catalogue systems.

Organizational Status
Reports to the Manager, EMMS. Works independently and jointly with departments across UBC. Collaborates with management and staff from other administrative groups to facilitate application support, enhancement projects, and integration with other enterprise systems. Interacts directly with other university technology professionals and third-party software vendors.

Work Performed
- Partners with key stakeholders to develop business requirements; details functional specification documents and test cases.
- Conducts ongoing business and systems analysis, systems/software enhancements, integrations, and new development that aligns with the University's goal to be operationally efficient. Makes recommendations on usage of new functionality, takes an active role in project design, and acts as functional project lead during the implementation stage.
- Identifies functional requirements for EMMS by consulting with the stakeholder community to determine design elements and prioritize enhancements, changes, and releases.
- Fields specialist knowledge tickets and supports problem and incident resolutions.
- Maps business processes for releases, evaluates release capabilities to determine if they meet current and/or future business needs, and investigates custom solutions if the release does not meet business requirements. Conducts business/functional tests, configuration validation, and facilitates integrated testing. Develops user test cases and validates test results during user acceptance testing and system acceptance testing stages. Typically performs functional testing.
- Gathers, analyzes, and defines reporting needs and requirements and develops reports; creates, runs, and provides analysis on reports
- Monitors workflow logs, performs proactive checking of the key workflow routing data, analyzes each failed workflow, and escalates technical issues that are causing workflow processes to fail.
- Provides Tier 0, 1, and 2 operational support for production systems, including troubleshooting system availability, integration issues, problem reports, resolving issues, defining operational support processes, and providing end-user support. Analyzes and assigns priority to incidents and problems. Works with Tier 3 as necessary for problem resolution.
- Simulates or recreates user problems to resolve operating difficulties. Recommends system modifications to reduce user problems and improve data integrity.
- Acts as a liaison with the vendor technical support center in order to resolve product issues.
- Develops and maintains relevant documentation, including that for customers, end-users, operational procedures, and application support teams. Assists with development of sound business continuity and disaster recovery plans for applications.
- Plans and identifies systems issues which require analysis; determines and recommends priority.
- Identifies customer requirements, designs business processes, analyze sand reviews product features, identifies integration requirements, security requirements, and scalability, performance requirements, change requirements, and change approval. Recommends implementation options, discusses approach and recommendations with systems staff and customers, and provides input to technology recommendations for new and changing systems requirements.
- Administration of user profiles and access, and collaborates across the EMMS user group and UBC departments to onboard new stakeholder groups.
- Compiles, analyzes, and interprets data. Designs reports and analyses of varying complexity.
- Solicits feedback, fostering an agile, innovative, and collaborative transformation experience, and partners with relevant stakeholders to resolve issues related to engagement, adoption, sustainment, and continuous improvement to advocate a partnership that moves UBC's practices from "system of record" to "platform of engagement".
- Performs other related duties as required.

Consequence of Error/Judgement
Contributes to UBC's broader strategies. Supports decision-making regarding the planning and delivery of complex and campus-wide products and services. Focusing on partnerships and product excellence will ensure optimal functionality and customer satisfaction and support of EMMS's strategic goals.

Must be able to work independently and take on full responsibility for their decisions. Decisions and actions taken will have a direct impact on how efficiently and effectively the products and services will perform and function. Errors in judgment, poor analysis, or failure to act decisively could have a detrimental effect on these systems. Unreliable systems or failure to meet contractual obligations for performance and availability will damage the reputation of UBC enterprise systems and UBC

Supervision Received
Reports to the Manager, EMMS within the EMMS leadership team. The Business Analyst must be able to work independently as well as contribute actively and collaborate openly as a team member. Work is reviewed in terms of quality, achieving operational metrics, and in terms of achieving objectives.

Supervision Given
Acts as a mentor or coach to peers as required.

Minimum Qualifications

- Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. (Business Administration or Computer Science preferred)

- A minimum of 5 years of experience or the equivalent combination of education and experience

- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own
- Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience working with Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) software is preferred (i.e., Planon). Workday experience is an asset. Experience working in a complex, academic and multi-union environment is preferred. UBC experience is an asset.
- Experience with supporting enterprise applications and supporting integrations with other enterprise applications at the Tier 0, 1, and 2 level. Experience working with Tier 3 level is an asset.
- Experience with asset, inventory, purchasing, and/or maintenance management solutions, and finance/purchasing solutions is highly desirable.
- Experience working with functional and business stakeholders.
- Communicates effectively and persuasively with team members, collaborators, and end-users, with sensitivity to the level of technical communication appropriate to the task and audience.
- Able to work on several streams at once and to change priorities quickly as needed.
- Able to analyze the advantages of new technology and tools and to select the appropriate technology for a given task.
- Demonstrated experience collaborating on cross-functional teams to meet critical, time-sensitive deadlines and communicating to diverse audiences.
- Technical expertise in enterprise service delivery.
- Ability to write functional specifications is an asset.
- Demonstrated experience administering and upkeep of an IWMS (ie., Planon) and/or an enterprise system throughout periods of significant change.
- Demonstrated ability to engage with stakeholders and to analyze and provide insight.
- Proven knowledge of business process re-engineering/improvement, data analysis, and data modeling (conceptual, logical).
- Demonstrated experience in agile management or other related methods is considered an asset.
- Demonstrated knowledge and proven experience in producing business requirements, use cases, user scenarios, user stories, and business process maps.
- Excellent interpersonal skills including active listening, written and verbal communication, and conflict management.
- Strong attention to detail and accuracy; exercise tact and discretion.
- Proficiency with MS Office Business Productivity Tools specifically for reporting, metrics, and data validation.
- Demonstrated ability to work in a collaborative and inclusive manner, fostering equitable experiences and a respectful environment through reflection, empathy, sensitivity, and curiosity towards differences across teams.
- Demonstrated experience navigating change and working within an innovative, fast-paced environment.
- Ability to effectively manage multiple tasks and priorities and work under pressure to meet critical deadlines.
- Ability to quickly grasp new concepts and adjust accordingly.
- Good organizational and planning skills.