SAP Analytics Manager

Head Of - Analytical Application Development

Analytics & Insight, Group Finance

Bristol

Reports to: Director, Group analytics & Insight

Why this role matters:

Group Analytics & Insight is a new function within the Finance, established to ensure that the Finance leadership team has the right information, analytics and insight to help us achieve its strategic goals. This important new role is both strategic and technical in nature and will form part of the leadership team of this exciting new function.

You will be responsible for:

• Leading the Analytical Application Development team in the design and delivery of insightful and intuitive front end applications for end-users across Finance
• Designing and driving an Application Development strategy and roadmap to improve the level of analytics capability across Finance, putting the right tools in the hands of the right people

You are:

• An experienced leader of Application Development in a large organisation, with a strong track record of delivering high quality front end applications
• A commercially astute applications advocate, comfortable discussing the commercial impact and return on investment of building analytical application capabilities
• A technical specialist, who leverages their skills and experience to build the right applications to support commercial decision-making

What you will be doing:

• Leadership of the Analytical Application Development team, growing and motivating the team, setting direction and pace, and establishing standards and principles for delivery and engagement
• Leading the design and implementation of an Analytical Application Development strategy and roadmap that improves the level of analytics capability across Finance
• Partner with the Analytics & Insight team to identify visualisation opportunities that require a new analytical application to be developed
• Be a vocal advocate for application development and the value-add that can be achieved through effective visualisation and application design
• Lead the design, development, delivery and BAU support of innovative and intuitive analytical applications across multiple platforms
• Lead the selection and deployment of appropriate tools for application delivery alongside our current strategic tools of SAP Analytics Cloud and Qlik Sense
• Implement best in class development practises to deliver flexible and versatile solutions
• Manage application development projects, reporting on progress, risks and issue resolution
• Establish robust checking and validation processes for application development with a zero-tolerance approach to technical error
• Build a high-performing team culture focussed on quality and pace of data delivery, recruiting top talent into open vacancies and developing individual team members
• Maintain sufficient understanding of current performance trends across our company to ensure the application development roadmap is aligned to key operational challenges

The skills & experience you need

• Strong leadership and influencing skills, able to act swiftly and decisively with confidence
• Experience leading and growing an Application Development function within a large organisation
• Strong technical skills background to enable clear direction and effective evaluation of Application Development projects (e.g. SAP Analytics Cloud, Qlik Sense or similar tools)
• Expert understanding of application development best practice and new/evolving tools
• Brilliant stakeholder management and relationship building skills. Adept at interacting with senior executives and adapting style to different audiences
• Experienced in setting and driving Application Development strategy from the short to long term, and selling this in to key stakeholders to secure business case funding
• Strong presentation skills, in particular the ability to interpret and summarise complex technical proposals and solutions for non-technical and senior executive audiences
• Strong attention to detail with a zero-tolerance approach to technical error
• Solution driven, innovative, pace-setting and focused on commercial impact
• Commercially minded, with sufficient understanding of company Financials to support creation of business cases for investment in application development

Top 5 Skill Summary

• Leadership & Influencing
• Analytical application development
• Application delivery and support
• Strong technical background
• Experience with Financial and non-Financial data