Senior Data Analyst at Sanlam Group

Sanlam Business Intelligence (SBI) is a centre of excellence that delivers data and analytical services within the Sanlam Life and Savings (SLS) cluster. SLS provides clients across different market segments (entry-level, middle-income, affluent, professional market and business owners) with a comprehensive range of appropriate and competitive financial solutions.These include traditional life insurance risk and savings products, investment, retirement, health and fiduciary services. Designed to facilitate long-term wealth creation, protection and niche financing, these solutions are engineered around client needs.

Are you analytically minded, curious and enthusiastic about data? Passionate about finding insights in datasets, with the ability to synthesise and clearly communicate the results and drive business impact?An exciting opportunity exists in the SBI Descriptive Analytics team.

We are looking for an individual with experience in using a variety of data tools, analysis methods and data visualization to turn data into actionable insights with demonstrable business impact.If you believe you have what it takes, then come join the team and assist us to mature our data analytics capability as you grow your skills and competencies in this exciting field. You will be responsible for the end-to-end tasks within the data analysis framework working with business representatives, product owners, etc. to define and elicit requirements, analyse data and create dashboards.

What will you do?

Data Preparation

• Acquire data from various data sources and combine & transform data into interpretable datasets, reports or dashboards
• Assess the effectiveness and accuracy of new data sources and data gathering techniques
• Extend the company’s data with third party sources of information when required
• Processing, cleansing and verifying the integrity of data used for analysis
• Perform data profiling of data contained in source systems
• Provide detailed analysis of all data implemented into the database
• Provide the data mapping and associated transformation rules for each data item
• Ensure that the business requirements and subsequent development activities are supported by accurate information.

Analysis and Visualisation

• Interpret data, analyse results using analytical techniques and provide reports and/or dashboards
• Identify, analyse, and interpret trends or patterns in complex data sets
• Use data to answer key questions about the business.
• Own and maintain dashboards, ongoing reporting, and ad hoc requests from the organization.
• Support and maintain the project data models at multiple levels of detail and functionality (conceptual, logical, normalised, relational, dimensional, application level, subject-level, integrated, etc.)
• Assist Data Modellers to draw up detailed data models.
• Articulate data trends in business terms and provide a narrative around the insights.
• Produce complex data views (prototypes) quickly and generate insights as a team of 1.
• Assist with planning / set up of roadmaps for implementation of prototypes.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Work directly with management and other business users to gather requirements, provide status updates, and build relationships
• Present information using data visualisation techniques
• Facilitate requirements gathering workshops with the business
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to analyse information needs, functional requirements and business processes

Coaching/Mentorship

• Provides guidance, training, and problem solving assistance to other team members.
• Coach and assist junior team members

What will make you successful in this role?

Requirements

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (statistics/data or computer science/engineering) or equivalent
• Practical experience in analytics, data visualisation or reporting

Knowledge And Experience

• 5+ years of experience performing data analytics
• Strong knowledge of and experience with reporting packages (Business Objects), databases (SAP HANA, Cloudera), querying (SQL)
• Experienced in visualising/presenting data for stakeholder use
• Business experience in financial services an advantage
• Strong analytical-thinking and problem-solving abilities
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Experience working with data in various data sources and databases
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to collect, organize, analyse, and disseminate significant amounts of information with attention to detail and accuracy
• Ability to translate business requirements into non-technical terms.
• Demonstrated experience in handling large data sets and relational databases.
• Experience working in an agile environment
• Excellent attention to detail
• Understand different data modelling approaches (Kimball/Data Vault)

Skills

• Ability to translate business requirements into non-technical terms
• Strong analytical-thinking and problem-solving abilities
• Ability to collect, organize, analyse, and disseminate significant amounts of information
• Attention to detail and accuracy