Senior Analyst Business Intelligence MI (CVM) at Absa

Job Summary

• To provide specialist advice and support in the development and implementation of business analysis and associated service delivery processes, methods and techniques. Develop and maintain commercial models, which include the calculation, predicting or estimation of the financial impact of a new business venture or proposition. These models can range from simple formulae to complex computer programs, including discounted cash flow or value-at-risk methodologies, applicable across a variety of financial and business areas including forecasting future needs, calculating the valuation of a tangible or intangible asset or the size of the market opportunity and to quantify and predict the inherent associated impact thereof.

Job Description

• Building and verifying Information: Check different types of information for accuracy and inconsistency | Business Analysis: To provide specialist business analysis to deliver on projects | Meeting deadlines: Completes tasks timeously | Dealing with Stakeholders: Taking responsibility for managing the expectations of stakeholders

Commercial Finance Execution Accountabilities 

• Serve as a subject matter expert on financial data integrity, accounting processes, reconciliations’, analysis and reporting for end-to-end Financial Management in business area.
• Develop and sustain knowledge and experience on the end to end processes, including relevant systems within scope of work.
• Responsible for continuous operational excellence and real-time responsiveness of finance to enable business to achieve growth and profitability objectives.
• Prepare for all cycles in advance and ensure adequate engagement with the relevant finance and business teams.
• Focus on information-driven performance improvement and formulate data into easy access standardised views.
• Ensure that the CFO is appraised of key financial issues that need to be raised with executive leadership to enable integrity and timely management the BU.
• Create unprecedented, seamless customer experiences via finance BU enablement.
• Embrace our distinctive brand aspiration and infuse in business.
• Identify and innovate operating practices to optimize the function. Embrace digital solutions.
• Drive continuous process efficiency, financial rigor and controls. 
• Adopt what’s ‘best for absa’ approach in finance practices.
• Have a holistic eco-system view of business, that is, geography, customer, channel and product in developing information views of business.
• Book of work contribution: Build innovative finance business case financial information, insights and benefits tracking’s’ solutions to continuously inform management decisions.
• Transform and evolve Finance planning, tracking and control processes.
• Know BU financial ambitions and balance sheet aspirations of RBB in performance reporting.
• Contribute to the effectiveness of the core finance processes for RBB Finance (annual planning, forecasting, spend trajectory and reporting).
• Understand and integrate Treasury, Risk, and Finance data from a BU perspective, where appropriate.
• Maintain stewardship and excellence which drives performance and sustainable growth through preservation of financial integrity.
• Be an active force for good in society through business execution.
• Contribute to BCM & cybersecurity processes relevant to the BU and finance execution.
• Determine the business objective or purpose wherein the commercial solution is going to be utilised. Meet with business stakeholders, where necessary to discuss and clearly define the scope of the analysis, to ensure that relevant & value-add commercial solutions are developed to aid effective decision making by the business stakeholders.
• Utilise various data mining techniques and methodologies to produce the commercial solutions required to assist business stakeholders. This may necessitate the development of statistical models to discover the variables or factors that are correlated with/accountable for a particular trend or outcome. Statistical modelling will also be utilized to predict or forecast the probabilities of certain outcomes being realised.
• Develop extraction programmes to extract the data from the relevant data bases and undertake data preparation of the extracted data in order to correct problems. This involves inter alia checking for and correcting the following data issues ; (i) univariate normality, (ii) multivariate normality, (iii) homoscedasticity, (iv) multi-colinearity, (v) relative variances, (vi) outliers, (vii) missing data.
• Build the statistical model: 1) build the initial model on the training data set, 2) use the validation data set to adjust the initial model, 3) apply the model on the test data set to gauge the likely effectiveness of the model. Undertake technical assessment of the statistical model to determine the error rate (false negatives and false positives) or residuals (difference between the predicted score and the actual measure score).
• Utilise a confusion matrix or lift chart where appropriate. Run the statistical model on the relevant target population, and score all entities in the target population.
• Profile and analyse the data to identify significant trends and patterns that would serve to create insight for business stakeholders. Develop professional presentations of these analyses and present findings and recommendations to the business stakeholders.
• Prepare technical documentation on the SAS extraction programme and the statistical modelling process followed. Include the relevant SAS procedures (PROCs).
• Proactively analyse and identify problem areas and plan/implement steps for process improvement to impact quality and production based on results of analytics work.
• Support the reverse engineering of existing solutions where required.

Financial Reporting Accountabilities

• Build trust in the finance function through the creation of a single source of financial information which is corroborated by related management information sources and alignment to the agreed accounting principles, methodologies, and underlying data are correctly applied.
• Generate innovative easy to comprehend progress reports for leaders on their strategic agenda, short-term and long-term plans and investments, operational success metrics, efficiencies, risks and mitigations.
• Interact with the stakeholders to agree minimum quality standards, as well as an agreed method of communicating and resolving any identified quality deficiencies in the reporting process.
• Own the process of delivery of high-quality information for regular and ad-hoc enhanced reporting to agreed requirements, timelines, and standards.
• Act in line with the correct governance and control frameworks across the Finance team, as well as for proactively addressing any deficiencies and exceptions.
• Develop and implement control procedures as deficiencies or exceptions are identified which support the production of error-free reports. Assess and drive improvement of business accounting practices and policies.
• Take a commercial view on business and provide contextual insights into performance reports.
• Integrate advanced modelling and analysis capability to provide actionable intelligence, beyond data within the function.
• Generate finance narratives and insights driving business; and build pioneering new propositions.
• Ensure appropriate, quality and timeous delivery of accurate financial and non-financial management information to support business objectives and expectations, including appropriate financial and non-financial metrics, valid and insightful comments and packaging the information in a relevant and appropriate manner.
• Deliver reporting reflecting deep commercial, holistic understanding, coherency, clarity, and contextualisation. Tell the story with passion and conviction.
• Provide thought-leadership, insight, influence and challenge on evolving stakeholder information requirements and reporting processes to deliver analytics.
• Align to processes around month-end, year-end and planning cycles across the RBB finance community and BU based on the requirements from Group. Prepare for all cycles in advance and ensure adequate engagement with the relevant finance and BU teams.
• Manage the production of regular, high quality, standardised financial and non-financial reporting and analytics to Business and Finance; and focus on effective collaborative stakeholder hand-offs in the production.

People Investment Accountabilities

• Peer responsibility: Coach, inspire, engage, mentor and develop finance and business savvy leaders.
• Network with finance colleagues across GFD and create awareness of challenges, opportunities and issues and encourage collaboration
• Focus on Finance skills evolution and remaining relevant.
• Embrace the value of finance partnership in Big Data, Advanced Analytics, mergers and acquisitions, and partnerships into the core of our business.
• Ensure deep personal understanding of income statement, balance sheet, margin returns, variance analysis, capital and liquidity requirements, revenues, assets, liabilities and capital, expenses, headcount analytics and other key ratios through relevant business engagement.
• Build effective working relationships with business stakeholders to develop a detailed understanding of their business imperatives and objectives.
• Maintain an interactive process with stakeholders as the analytical solution is being developed - present and receive feedback on work-in-progress.
• Perform a consultancy role with business stakeholders. Present the final analytical outputs to stakeholders and assist in interpreting the results and providing advice & recommendations on the implementation of actions.
• Educate users where required on the design or how to utilise the solution.
• Minimum B-degree (NQF level no.7) Desired Post Graduate Degree (NQF level no.8+), Masters: Mathematics and/or Mathematical Statistics
• 10+ Years’ experience in delivering MI / BI solutions

Knowledge and skills:

• Experience in executing finance processes.
• Experience in commercial innovation environments
• Broad Finance including strategic, commercial, legal, risk and operational aspects
• Understanding of the financial services sector within a professional business environment
• Knowledge of building collaborative work environments

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