FRP GRANT BUSINESS ANALYST

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty.

The University of Washington’s Grant and Contract Accounting department has an outstanding opportunity for a Business Analyst to provide a key role in the planning and implementation of an enterprise-wide financial system and modernization of related business processes.  UW’s Finance Transformation program (UWFT) is a multi-year effort to transform the UW’s existing financial processes through business process redesign and the replacement of legacy systems with modern technology.  This position will support operational readiness efforts by working with other central offices within the University to ensure that Grant and Contract Accounting is operationally ready to execute new processes, policies and procedures with excellence post “go live”.

The Business Analyst will support the successful remediation of SAGE (UW's grant administration system) and integration to Workday to streamline the award set-up process. The purpose of this position is to analyze, measure, design, depict, and present current and future state business and operational processes along with their relationship to and utilization of technology. This position is responsible for navigating the wealth of award data and turning it into actionable and insightful information for the University.  The Business Analyst will work directly with University Department/unit leaders, providing consultation and support in the development, analysis, interpretation and management of a variety of complex internal and external data sources as well as business process areas.  The incumbent draws on expertise in data collection methodologies to support subsequent data analysis, and finance processes and statistics; prepares charts and graphs; applies appropriate statistical tests; provides analytical commentary; and educates analytical concepts in an understandable and actionable manner.  The Business Analyst operates under general or minimum supervision, and performs duties with broad latitude for exercising independent judgment.

Position Responsibilities:

Analysis:

• Understand Workday data model to support integration between SAGE and Workday and conversion between UW’s legacy Financial Accounting System and other applications

• Be a subject matter expert for GCA’s core business processes, including the award set-up process and impact on downstream processes and customers internal and external to the University

• Work closely with the Office of Research to streamline current processes

• Highlight areas of significant impact and participate in discussions about how to reduce the impact

• Capture, evaluate, prioritize and understand business needs and translate them into business process and system requirements

• Support data mapping and conversion efforts between the current financial systems and Workday

• Become proficient in post-go live business processes for post-award grants management in Workday

• Understand the current and future process workflows and system configuration

• Organize and synthesize large amounts of information provided by stakeholders and develop relevant business analysis artifacts, such as use cases, as-is and to-be process flows

• Draft post award grants policy and make recommendations to RCO leadership

• Maintain a proactive and forward-thinking approach to data management and report generation

• Support systems disposition and participate in the creation of gap applications that pertain to post-award grants management

• Analyze business problems and develop solutions; identify and assess alternatives; develop business cases and proposals that support decision making among a diverse set of process partners

Project Management and Leadership:

• Collaborate and partner with multiple stakeholders across the organization including project team members

• Work effectively in a large team environment and learn and apply program methods and approaches

• Lead process transformation teams focused on documenting current state and envisioning future state for major institutional end to end financial processes

• Communicate complex processes, problems, and solutions in a simple, compelling, accurate, and highly visual manner

• Work independently to manage key components of the project—includes defining tasks, managing the work, and being accountable for the deliverables of assigned components such as the total cost of ownership.

• Use independent judgement to determine appropriate escalation and resolution of issues within program structure.

• Work with all levels of management to critically evaluate and communicate business issues/risks with conviction to campus clients and team members

• Meet project deadlines to full completion

• Facilitate meetings and/or design sessions to validate, prioritize, and document requirements

• Make presentations to user groups and key stakeholders

• Work directly with the project manager(s) to track time, schedule, budgets and compile reports as needed for quality assurance and executive review.

Other Responsibilities:

• Support change management efforts for the Research & Student Accounting and coordinate with UWFT’s OCM team and UW Finance Readiness Program

• Support training efforts in the Research & Student Accounting as needed

• Provide mentorship to junior business analysts

• Serve as critical liaison between business, technical, program and support teams

• Operate effectively in a matrixed environment

• Serve as liaison with the vendor BA resources, and maintain project standards and consistency across the implementation team.

• Conduct ad-hoc analysis for project team

•Other duties as assigned

As a UW employee, you will enjoy generous benefits and work/life programs. For a complete description of our benefits for this position, please visit our website, click here.

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree in accounting, finance, business administration or other related area.

•Five years of experience doing progressively more complex business and financial analysis within a project or program environment such as scope definition, requirements gathering, business process re-engineering, etc.

• Comprehensive understanding of GCA’s current processes and improvement methodology

• Significant understanding of financial terms, business processes, and financial reporting.

• Experience with system implementation deliverables and financial analysis, including fit-gap analysis, total cost  of ownership, benefits analysis, and business process improvement

• Self-starter and able to manage multiple priorities and tasks in a dynamic environment.

• Demonstrated excellent written/oral communication skills, technical documentation skills, user liaison skills, and personal interaction abilities.

• Advanced ability to develop efficient and effective analytic methodologies and approaches to generate value, address a broad range of operational and performance issues, execute the analysis in a timely, accurate and reliable manner, communicate findings clearly and concisely to diverse business leaders, key contributors and stakeholders.

• Advanced critical thinking and problem solving skills

• Demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of a team in a cooperative effort.

• Ability to deal with trade-offs, conflict, and change management in a collaborative and positive manner

• Demonstrated excellent written/oral communication skills, technical documentation skills, user liaison skills, and personal interaction abilities.

Equivalent education/experience will substitute for all minimum qualifications except when there are legal requirements, such as a license/certification/registration.

Desired Qualifications:

•Experience with SharePoint (or similar project management tools), spreadsheet, word processing and presentation applications

•Experience with a major audit, accounting or consulting firm

•Experience in a large university, large medical center, or other large complex enterprise

•Knowledge and experience developing/implementing enterprise level software systems in support of administrative or operational needs

•Experience dealing with organizational change management

•Demonstrated success in facilitating work groups and ability to develop consensus

•Previous experience in a lead business analyst role or as key point of contact.

•Previous experience with higher education financial and/or budget processes

Application Process:
The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These assessments may include Workforce Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others.  Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your "My Jobs" page to take when you are ready. Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed.