As a Lead Business Analyst, you will play a key role within the Business Analysis competency, partnering with business and technology stakeholders to drive data-driven decision making, process optimization, and successful delivery of analytics solutions. You will lead requirements management activities, facilitate collaboration across cross-functional and cross-cultural teams, and translate complex business needs into scalable Power BI solutions that create measurable value for procurement and finance organizations.
What You'll Be Doing:
Business Analysis & Stakeholder Management
- Lead requirements elicitation workshops and discovery sessions with procurement leaders, category managers, finance controllers, IT teams, and data owners.
- Analyze and document current-state and future-state business processes.
- Contribute to and drive continuous process improvement initiatives aligned with evolving business needs within the procurement function.
- Facilitate alignment between business and technical stakeholders, ensuring a common understanding of project objectives and requirements.
- Act as the primary liaison between business users, project teams, and technical delivery teams.
Solution Definition & Documentation
- Translate business requirements into detailed functional specifications for Power BI dashboards and analytics solutions.
- Define data model expectations, calculation logic, KPIs, business rules, visualizations, user stories, and user interaction requirements.
- Produce and maintain high-quality business requirements documents (BRDs), functional specifications, process maps, data mapping documents, and related project documentation.
- Review solution designs to ensure alignment with business objectives and requirements.
Project Delivery & Governance
- Support the Project Manager in delivering project objectives on time and within budget.
- Contribute to scope definition, effort estimation, dependency management, and milestone tracking.
- Ensure requirements-related issues, assumptions, risks, decisions, and dependencies are appropriately tracked and managed through RAID and Decision Logs.
- Communicate project plans, status updates, risks, and issues across governance forums and stakeholder groups.
Testing, Deployment & Adoption
- Coordinate and facilitate User Acceptance Testing (UAT), including test planning, defect management, and stakeholder sign-off.
- Support deployment and implementation activities to ensure smooth solution adoption.
- Prepare training materials, user guides, and knowledge transfer documentation.
- Provide hypercare and post-go-live support to business users and stakeholders.
Leadership
- Provide guidance and mentorship to junior and mid-level business analysts.
- Promote best practices in requirements management, stakeholder engagement, and business analysis methodologies.
- Drive continuous improvement in business analysis processes, standards, and delivery frameworks.
What We're Looking For
- Bachelor's Degree or Diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business Administration, Supply Chain Management, Finance, or a related discipline.
- Minimum 5 years of experience as an IT Business Analyst.
- At least 1 year of experience in a lead or senior business analysis capacity.
- Proven experience delivering business intelligence, reporting, analytics, or dashboard projects.
- Demonstrated success in requirements elicitation, business process analysis, and stakeholder management.
- Experience producing BRDs, functional specifications, process documentation, and data mapping artifacts.
- Hands-on involvement in Power BI implementation projects, including requirements definition, dashboard design, data model reviews, and UAT facilitation.
Language Requirements
- Fluent written and spoken English.
- Fluent written and spoken Japanese, with the ability to facilitate business discussions and documentation in both languages.
Technical Knowledge
- Strong understanding of Power BI, including:
- Data modeling and star schema concepts
- DAX measures and calculations
- Row-Level Security (RLS)
- Incremental refresh
- Dashboard and report design best practices
- Knowledge of Azure-based data platforms and modern analytics architectures.
- Understanding of data integration, ETL/ELT processes, and data warehousing concepts.
- Ability to understand and communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
Core Competencies
- Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
- Excellent interpersonal, communication, and facilitation skills.
- Strong prioritization, organizational, and time-management skills.
- Ability to manage multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.
- Experience working across cross-functional and cross-cultural teams.
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to delivery excellence.
Preferred Skills
- Experience in spend analysis, spend classification, spend categorization, and procurement analytics.
- Experience working with ERP and procurement platforms such as SAP MM, SAP Ariba, Coupa, Oracle Procurement, or similar solutions.
- Understanding of procurement data structures, including:
- Purchase Orders
- Invoices
- Contracts
- Goods Receipts
- Supplier Master Data
- Material and Service Classifications
- Familiarity with spend classification frameworks such as UNSPSC, eClass, and custom procurement taxonomies.
- Experience supporting digital transformation, reporting modernization, or procurement optimization initiatives.
