Title: ERP Analyst – Grants Accounting
Start Date: ASAP
Bill Rate: TBD
# of Openings: 1
Position Type: Contract
Locations: Chicago, IL
Job Profile Summary:
This is an 18 month project on the south side of Chicago.
We are looking for a resource to serve as a Functional Lead (60% Functional & 40% Technical) with a focus in Grants Accounting for the Financial Systems Modernization project. The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will take a lead role in the analysis of business problems and opportunities, including problem definition and the recommendations of process redesign and technology alternatives. The candidate will be highly skilled and knowledgeable of industry best practices in business systems analysis insuring that the delivered solutions and associated artifacts meet business requirements, while adhering to university technical and governance standards. This position will be responsible for leading activities related to configuration of Grants Accounting applications.
The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will provide leadership and support to systems implementation project teams in addition to stand alone analytical efforts. The percentage of time working as part of a project implementation team will vary based on university business needs as well as the participating affiliates of the university. This position will take functional leadership roles for projects as needed applying candidate's strong business knowledge to ensure successful implementation projects.
The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting is expected to work closely with the program director, project manager, functional manager, business transformation team and vendor resources in synchronizing all operations involved in the successful completion of the project. In this role ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will demonstrate experience in implementing large scale ERP projects. The candidate will also exhibit experience in implementing Financial and Budgeting & Planning applications including, but not limited to, GL, AR, AP, cash management, fixed assets, budgeting, planning, forecasting, and purchasing. The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will also have demonstrable and strong experience leading financial business processes improvements. Finally, the ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will have had experience serving as a liaison between Business personnel and IT staff. This includes the requirement of organizing, communicating and managing administrative activities per project plan
The candidate must demonstrate a proven background in requirements gathering, managing project plans, executing on project management, and coordinating project resources. This position requires strong leadership skills for understanding reporting and analytic needs, translating those into feasible scope and plans of action, while insuring proper governance of the university's technology and financial assets.
Duties and Responsibilities: Responsibilities include defining and documenting both current and future state business processes, new system requirements, screen configuration, report specifications, functional specifications for system use cases, supervising converted data testing, functional testing, supervising the development of an appropriate training strategy and materials, providing initial support to the business community at product roll-out time, and working with the operational management of new systems to design and establish an ongoing business systems analysis support strategy, supported by documented policies and procedures for the operational system. Other duties and responsibilities include:
20% of the work will involve serving as a key member or leader of analytical teams which will:
40% of the work will involve serving as a key member during all phases of the FSM program that includes pre-implementation, system implementation, configuration and testing, and support of the applications post implementation. Participate in development of the detailed pre-implementation specifications and project plan and help carry out that plan. This role may be a functional lead or supporting business system analyst. Such tasks include:
10% of the work will involve supervisory and quality assurance support as well as systems documentation and training, including:
30% of the work will involve serving as a key member or lead technical team with a focus on the Grants application:
Qualifications:Required:
Preferred:
Required:
Preferred:
Job Competencies:Required:
Preferred:
Physical Demands:
Start Date: ASAP
Bill Rate: TBD
# of Openings: 1
Position Type: Contract
Locations: Chicago, IL
Job Profile Summary:
This is an 18 month project on the south side of Chicago.
We are looking for a resource to serve as a Functional Lead (60% Functional & 40% Technical) with a focus in Grants Accounting for the Financial Systems Modernization project. The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will take a lead role in the analysis of business problems and opportunities, including problem definition and the recommendations of process redesign and technology alternatives. The candidate will be highly skilled and knowledgeable of industry best practices in business systems analysis insuring that the delivered solutions and associated artifacts meet business requirements, while adhering to university technical and governance standards. This position will be responsible for leading activities related to configuration of Grants Accounting applications.
The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will provide leadership and support to systems implementation project teams in addition to stand alone analytical efforts. The percentage of time working as part of a project implementation team will vary based on university business needs as well as the participating affiliates of the university. This position will take functional leadership roles for projects as needed applying candidate's strong business knowledge to ensure successful implementation projects.
The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting is expected to work closely with the program director, project manager, functional manager, business transformation team and vendor resources in synchronizing all operations involved in the successful completion of the project. In this role ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will demonstrate experience in implementing large scale ERP projects. The candidate will also exhibit experience in implementing Financial and Budgeting & Planning applications including, but not limited to, GL, AR, AP, cash management, fixed assets, budgeting, planning, forecasting, and purchasing. The ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will also have demonstrable and strong experience leading financial business processes improvements. Finally, the ERP Analyst-Grants Accounting will have had experience serving as a liaison between Business personnel and IT staff. This includes the requirement of organizing, communicating and managing administrative activities per project plan
The candidate must demonstrate a proven background in requirements gathering, managing project plans, executing on project management, and coordinating project resources. This position requires strong leadership skills for understanding reporting and analytic needs, translating those into feasible scope and plans of action, while insuring proper governance of the university's technology and financial assets.
Duties and Responsibilities: Responsibilities include defining and documenting both current and future state business processes, new system requirements, screen configuration, report specifications, functional specifications for system use cases, supervising converted data testing, functional testing, supervising the development of an appropriate training strategy and materials, providing initial support to the business community at product roll-out time, and working with the operational management of new systems to design and establish an ongoing business systems analysis support strategy, supported by documented policies and procedures for the operational system. Other duties and responsibilities include:
20% of the work will involve serving as a key member or leader of analytical teams which will:
- Utilize an agreed upon business analysis methodology; insuring quality control of and contributing to the further enhancement of that methodology.
- Take a leadership role in analyzing business problems, issues and opportunities across the university as needed.
- Take a lead role in translating business problems and opportunities into plans of action to address these problems or opportunities.
- Take a lead role in business process or systems analysis and/or take a support role as needed.
- Work heavily with other university departments and participating affiliates. Facilitate and lead discussions in 'white board' sessions. This role requires strong relationship building and communication skills.
- Analyze business or IT issues. This can include business process issues and inefficiencies or systems problems and require the development of clear problem definitions by doing root cause analysis.
- Analyze competing vendor solutions relative to each other and to University needs and document those findings.
- Analyze peer University implementations of similar systems to provide best practices and guidelines for the University of Chicago and its participating affiliates FSM project.
- Document current and future state business processes, including discovery and articulation of underlying reasons and goals for those processes.
- Analyze interaction and interdependencies of different business processes.
- Investigate and evaluate alternatives to build progressively improving "straw man” proposals for functionality to be delivered, based on requirements gathering activities, fit/gap analysis after a vendor is chosen, data conversion testing, and user review during configuration.
- Assess the impact of changes to processes and/or systems.
- Facilitate and ensure common understanding of the business problem, requirements and overall vision during design activities.
40% of the work will involve serving as a key member during all phases of the FSM program that includes pre-implementation, system implementation, configuration and testing, and support of the applications post implementation. Participate in development of the detailed pre-implementation specifications and project plan and help carry out that plan. This role may be a functional lead or supporting business system analyst. Such tasks include:
- Utilizing an agreed upon project methodology, which is standard, insuring quality control of and contributing to the further enhancement of that methodology.
- Creating and reviewing the data for the new system insuring accuracy and appropriateness.
- Participating in tests of new business processes being implemented with the new system after it has been selected.
- Participating in detailed tests of system components before system goes into production.
- Partnering with users to test effectiveness and usability of system interfaces.
- Providing front-line support to the business users, communicating and coordinating with the appropriate operations team to resolve system issues/questions.
10% of the work will involve supervisory and quality assurance support as well as systems documentation and training, including:
- Develop templates for project documentation.
- Provide quality assurance for BSA deliverables created for other projects.
- Conduct training for business users in business systems analysis methodologies and deliverables.
- Work with web developers to prepare and deliver information for the project's internal web site as well as for web site aimed at all the new systems users, and the general University community and its participating affiliates.
- Help maintain project or sub-project plans, record progress to date, monitor variances, flag issues needing attention.
- Manage sub-projects as assigned.
- Prepare University specific "help” text and other documentation for the new system.
- Provide content/process expertise for development of system training materials.
- Help deliver training to system users.
30% of the work will involve serving as a key member or lead technical team with a focus on the Grants application:
- Performs hands-on technical design in support system development and enhancements.
- Collaborates with business analysts and other functional leads to ensure successful integration between ERP system, and multiple system platforms.
- Develops technical specifications to guide the design and configuration of the Grants system and oversees system design/configurations to Client areas of improvement.
- Assumes ownership for the ERP system reliability, availability and integrity.
- Provides Infrastructure assessment
- Manages Systems Inventory and Rationalization
- Identifies Systems Integrations Requirements
- As a functional lead, help coordinate and facilitate the technical aspects of the solution.
Qualifications:Required:
- Bachelor's degree in related field
Preferred:
- Master's degree.
Required:
- Minimum six years' of experience in business systems analysis and business process redesign.
- Experience with a minimum three implementations of large scale tier1 ERP systems involving Grants Accounting (Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Workday, etc.)
- Experience as subject matter expertise in Project Portfolio Management
- Experience with clients leading workshops and defining business requirements
- Experience conducting gap analysis between ERP system delivered functionality, client requirements and recommend solutions
- Experience serving as a liaison between Business and IT
Preferred:
- Experience in higher education financial accounting
- Knowledge of Financials, Procurement and budgeting & planning areas of ERP systems
- Experience with ERP cloud implementations
Job Competencies:Required:
- 60% functional and 40% technical in Grants Accounting, Project Costing and Project Billing.
- Map customers business process to ERP processes
- Collaborate and be a team player
- Effectively converse with and listen to all levels of users to understand their environment and the impact of system changes
- Communicate with all levels of management
- Record information accurately and effectively
- Proficiency in defining user requirements and designing business processes
- Advanced business analysis skills: business case development, business process design, application usability and structured testing
- Systematize and organize large amounts of data , via strong oral and written communication skills
- Learn new content areas and skills quickly
- Possess a strong technical acumen
- Manage time well and achieve objectives with minimal supervision
- Represent the Department in a positive way to the business community
Preferred:
- Experience in ERP full lifecycle implementations or upgrades involving General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Assets, Procurement and Budgeting & Planning
Physical Demands:
- Ability to safely and successfully perform the essential job functions consistent with the ADA and other federal, state and local standards
- Sedentary work that involves sitting or remaining stationary most of the time with occasional need to move around the office to attend meetings, etc.
- Ability to conduct repetitive tasks on a computer, utilizing a mouse, keyboard and monitor
