Senior Business Analyst

Shakespeare Martineau is a leading law firm that combines creativity, commerciality and clarity. We work with blue-chip companies, leading organisations, high street brands and individuals across the country.

Our multi-disciplinary team delivers a broad range of specialist legal services, and particularly stands out for its expertise across sectors including, but not limited to: energy, education, banking and financial services, investment funds, healthcare and advanced manufacturing. 

We’re proud of our people’s varied backgrounds and expertise. Our different qualities stand out and make us interesting to our clients.

We firmly believe in working hard and being ambitious. We look to recruit and develop talented people to achieve their potential - and who will contribute to achieving ours too.

Here you can fulfil your ambitions, whatever they are and however rapidly you want to achieve them. Together, and individually, we create exceptional results.

To provide truly outstanding client service we work as one team.  Our Business Operations Group is made up of business professionals who work with our legal professionals to provide market leading expertise to our clients.  The Groups include; Finance, Operations, HR, Marketing, IT, Risk and the Executive Leadership team.

Our IT team is responsible for providing clients and staff with high quality relevant technology, customised systems and superior service and support to ensure our business needs are always met.

Based mainly in the Birmingham office but also with a presence in Nottingham the team is around 25 strong and includes talented developers, engineers, analysts and service desk support people.

This is an ever changing and exciting area to work in as we constantly look for new and innovative ways to provide the most effective solutions to the business.

The role:

We are looking for a highly flexible Senior Business Analyst to have a proactive role in the engagement of our legal teams.  This will involve identifying, communicating and delivering enterprise IT solutions and services to support and drive the efficiency of the business. 

You will have a high-level of interaction with our senior members of staff and key stakeholders, with a need to develop a strong understanding of how the legal teams work.  You will also progress key business strategies and drivers, apply technical knowledge to find solutions for business requirements, as well as data transformation that can underpin these initiatives and processes.  You will focus on strategic initiatives for the business area and have a lead role in enabling the business to achieve their objectives through the effective use of technology.

As part of a small team, within a very large enterprise, the role requires a broad set of skills and a high degree of flexibility, negotiation and adaptability.

You will not be constrained by a rigid job specification and will be sufficiently experienced to be able to pick up additional duties as necessary.  You must be “hands on” in your approach whilst always maintaining a focus on the higher-level priorities of the business.

Your key duties will include:

• providing a proactive and effective partnering service to the legal groups to find solutions to business requirements
• developing a strong understanding of how the legal teams operate to understand how technical knowledge can be applied to make a difference
• providing highly valued, strategic consulting level support and guidance through key IT initiatives
• a high level of interaction at Group Chair and Team Leader level
• acting as a trusted advisor and to be the primary IT point of contact for stakeholders and line managers
• operating as the key business contact, representing IT in promoting IT services and capabilities
• providing support in delivering technology products that meet the needs of the business
• translating and shaping IT demand into scoped IT projects and effective management of projects agreed
• understanding the IT strategy and influencing the business areas and their IT demands to ensure IT projects contribute to the strategy and don’t conflict with it
• supporting business areas in documenting business cases to demonstrate benefits, risks and financial appraisal for projects to support robust investment decision making
• eliciting requirements using interviews, document analysis, requirements workshops, surveys, site visits, business process descriptions, use cases, scenarios, business analysis, task and workflow analysis
• critically evaluating information gathered from multiple sources, reconciling conflicts, decomposing high-level information into details, abstracting up from low-level information to a general understanding, and distinguishing user requests from the underlying true needs
• proactively communicating and collaborating with external and internal customers to analyse information needs and functional requirements and deliver artefacts as needed: [e.g. Functional requirements (Business Requirements Document), Use Cases, GUI, Screen and Interface designs)]
• utilising experience in using enterprise-wide requirements definition and management systems and methodologies required
• successfully engaging in multiple initiatives simultaneously
• working both independently, with users to define concepts, and under direction of the IT Manager
• driving and challenging business units on their assumptions of how they will successfully execute their plans
• serving as the conduit between the customer community (internal and external customers) and the IT team through which requirements flow and liaise with key stakeholders to assess best fit solution options and recommendations
• developing requirements specifications according to standard templates, using natural language
• collaborating with IT stakeholders, 3rd parties and subject matter experts to establish the technical vision and analyse trade-offs between usability and performance needs
• liaising between the business units, technology teams and support teams

Your additional duties will include:

• reporting to the team on regulatory and legislative changes (identified through monitoring a variety of sources) which could impact the relevant legal groups / the wider profession
• internal auditing of files / work areas to ensure compliance with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 standards
• assisting in risk and best practice improvement projects

Skills and experience you will have:

• a minimum of 10 years’ business analysis / partnering experience across a range of industries
• some previous experience in a legal background is preferable
• a demonstrable track record of delivery in a complex environment
• an analytical approach to problem solving, combined with a creative flair and commercial awareness
• the ability to negotiate desired outcomes from stakeholders at all levels, and customer relationship building
• strong oral, written and presentation skills – with the ability to explain complexity easily to a non-technical stakeholder group
• strong analytical and product management skills required, including a thorough understanding of how to interpret customer business needs and translate them into application and operational requirements
• excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to interact professionally with a diverse group, executives, managers, and subject matter experts
• an aptitude for solving unstructured problems and decision making
• the ability to elicit requirements via multiple means and to determine their appropriateness to given situation, e.g. workshops, interviews etc. IT skills
• the ability to pull data from various sources and to design, construct and execute complex analyses to finally come up with data, reports and proposals that support solving business problems
• strong visual design skills used in creating information dense, easy to understand reports and dashboards
• experience working on multiple data transformation projects
• the ability to clearly communicate stakeholder reporting needs
• the ability to manage more than one complex project in parallel
• strong risk, issues and dependency management experience
• BCS Business Analysis International Diploma is desirable, not essential

Key competencies you will have:

• an analytical mindset and the ability to see the big picture
• knowledge of organisational behaviour
• deductive reasoning
• leadership qualities and strong collaboration skills
• negotiation and persuasive skills

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Shakespeare Martineau is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.