Senior Business Analyst, Business Analytics, AIS

About the role

The Senior Business Analyst in AIS collaborates with departments and stakeholders to gather, document, and analyze business requirements, processes, and workflows. They work closely with project managers, developers, and stakeholders to ensure business data and reporting needs are met and projects are delivered successfully. The role involves independently documenting user requirements and translating them into specifications for AIS programmers, identifying process improvements, providing data analysis and visualization, and disseminating results through reports, dashboards, and interactive online visualizations built in Advancement’s Quest CRM (an Affiniquest CRM built in Salesforce) or integrated solutions.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with business stakeholders to understand their needs, objectives, and challenges.
• Independently elicit, document, and analyze business requirements, complex processes, and workflows.
• Translate business requirements into clear and concise functional specifications for technical teams.
• Serve as a liaison between business stakeholders and technology teams.
• Communicate complex technical findings, recommendations, and project updates to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Provide guidance, mentoring, and support to lower-level analysts.
• Collaborate with technology teams to develop strategies and design solutions that meet business needs.
• Propose practical and innovative solutions to address business challenges.
• Ensure proposed solutions align with the organization's strategic goals and technological capabilities.
• Collaborate with project managers to define project scope, objectives, and deliverables.
• Coordinate project planning, estimation, and resource allocation.
• Monitor project progress and identify potential risks or deviations from the plan.
• Identify areas for process optimization and efficiency enhancement; recommend and assist in implementing improvements.
• Participate in system testing, user acceptance testing, and validation testing of implemented solutions.
• Create detailed documentation including business requirements, process flows, use cases, and user stories.
• Write comprehensive reports as needed and maintain accurate, up-to-date project documentation.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure data visualization highlights their required datasets.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree.
• Certifications or experience in data visualization tools such as PowerBI, Tableau, Apsona, or other Salesforce data visualization software integrations.
• 5 or more years of experience as a Business Analyst or similar role supporting technology solutions.
• Any appropriate combination of relevant education, experience, and/or certifications may be considered.

Skills

• Proficiency in requirement gathering techniques, process modeling, and documentation.
• Experience translating business needs into formal requirements.
• Ability to multitask between diverse user groups.
• Superior analytical, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities.
• Excellent data analysis, visualization, and reporting skills.
• Experience establishing, documenting, maintaining procedures and processes, and creating functional and technical documentation.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills, including managing multiple demands and/or projects simultaneously.
• Familiarity with project management methodologies and software development life cycle.
• Superior presentation and negotiation skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience documenting workflows and business processes.
• Experience creating dashboards using data visualization tools.
• Ability to perform a cost/benefit analysis of user requirements and proposed technical solutions.
• Specific experience in a fundraising nonprofit or higher education environment.
• Certification in Business Analysis (e.g., CBAOP, CCBA).
• Experience with Salesforce or an Affiniquest CRM built in Salesforce.