Cargill Business Services - Business Analyst

Title : Business Analyst

Skills : IT BA, Relationship Management

Position Purpose & Summary : 

- The IT Business Relationship Manager Generalist (BRM) for Cargill Agricultural Supply Chain (CASC) APAC is responsible for supporting the IT service demand in line with the Process, Data and Technology (PDT) strategy. The key activities of this role include business partnering, portfolio management, supporting budget planning, operations oversight, and applied architecture (business and IT).

- The role provides support to CASC APAC BRM leadership for all technology matters in CASC APAC business and serves as the primary interface to all other relevant parts of Cargill's technology organization. This position will work to establish clear understanding, build trust, and enable multiple touch point levels between Global IT and partners.

- This position plays a key role in the Cargill Agricultural Supply Chain business BRM team on technology and related services. Will act locally but maintain a global perspective.

- This position will have a strong understanding of medium complex global applications and infrastructure environments to ensure reliable support of business processes. Position will be responsible for recommending technology direction, ideas and input to CASC business and BRM leaders as it develops and/or enhances its Process, Data and Technology strategy that will be in line with business strategy.

- Work with a global team to reconcile competing priorities, drive execution through influence, support change management, and collaborate with the BRM leaders within business to ensure alignment of various stakeholders and coordination of all efforts relating to strategy execution.

Principal Accountabilities :

Business Partnering :

- Partners with IT Leadership, using deep IT knowledge and broad business knowledge, to develop and maintain a portfolio of services and solutions. Ensures integration across process, data, and technology for all solutions.

- Provides oversight of risk management & supports strategic alignment of IT investments, demand and investment management.

- Applies to understand of business partnering practices and procedures in leading the execution of effective IT demand. Develops a deep understanding of business/country processes, pain points, needs, etc.

- Educates business on the process to regularly identify and evaluate events that could affect business/country performance while keeping alignment with Cargill policies.

- Links business/marketplace trends with technology impacts on the business; communicates impacts to the business.

- Acts as a catalyst to other BRM leadership & to business/country leadership members to pro-actively identify opportunities for continuous improvements across the business/country. Analyzes process breakdowns to ensure lessons are learned. Drives efficiencies with the regional delivery organizations.

- Acts as a process expert within the business to ensure successful introduction of new solutions, technologies, and applications to enable business processes. Aligns all solutions with Enterprise Architecture framework. 30%

Relationship and Service Management :

- Promotes collaboration across the IT service delivery teams and other BRMs to provide IT services to the business as one Global IT organization.

- Creates a shared mindset and establishes contractual agreements (SLAs) with business/country leadership that specify expected outcomes, deliverables, and terms of engagement.

- Integrates qualitative and quantitative metrics to create reports and scorecards for use in decision support.

- Supports the effective management of IT budget for the business/country while sharing the value of IT services with stakeholders.

- Expands and monitors integration across processes, data, and technology for all solutions in the business/country and those defined for the portfolio of services.

- Builds and maintains a sustainable business relationship with level 2 leaders in business as well as other corporate executives where appropriate.

Relationship and Service Management :

- Promotes collaboration across the IT service delivery teams and other BRMs to provide IT services to the business as one Global IT organization.

- Creates a shared mindset and establishes contractual agreements (SLAs) with business/country leadership that specify expected outcomes, deliverables, and terms of engagement.

- Integrates qualitative and quantitative metrics to create reports and scorecards for use in decision support.

- Supports the effective management of the IT budget for the business/country while sharing the value of IT services with stakeholders.

- Expands and monitors integration across processes, data, and technology for all solutions in the business/country and those defined for the portfolio of services.

- Builds and maintains a sustainable business relationship with level 2 leaders in business as well as other corporate executives where appropriate.

- Serves as escalation point for medium impact issues. Influences Global IT to own and implement recovery and long-term resolution.

Strategy Planning :

- Suggest broad guidance to the medium-long term business IT strategy and ensures overall alignment with business/country and PDT strategies.

- Acts as a catalyst to strategic counselor, leveraging industry trends for business partnering activities, while communicating the vision and strategic direction for delivery and investment of IT services and solutions.

- Utilizes knowledge of industry trends to identify business problems that could benefit from a technology solution and opportunities to improve technology productivity and efficiency.

- Identifies internal and external technology initiatives/trends that could affect the business and its ability to manage within its risk appetite. Facilitates an acceptable balance of risk and rewards by communicating tradeoffs to business/country leadership.

Portfolio Management :

- Maximizes value to the business/country for the IT spend.

- Ensures business/country projects are added to the Strategic Portfolio so they are visible and aligned to Global IT.

- Ensures the adoption and consistent use of processes and metrics.

- Prepares realistic estimates of resource requirements and timelines needed to accomplish IT services and solutions.

- Defines business/country requirements for all new initiatives. Discovers project opportunities and their overall concept, scope, sponsorship and value opportunity. Partners with IT internal/external suppliers to search for adequate solution.

- Monitors execution of projects by internal/external vendors. Removes obstacles in order to move the work forward.

- Partners with business to recommend investment and divestiture recommendations within the portfolio.

Education, Experience, Skills :

Required Education :

- BE/ BTECH / BA/BS in MIS, Business or equivalent experience

- PGDM/MBA from Tier1 B-Schools in India

- Minimum 4 years of IT and business/industry work experience.

- Demonstrated leadership skills in the areas of strategic planning and decision making, navigating ambiguity, and building trusting relationships.

- Experience developing IT strategies and business plans.

- Experience with Portfolio Management. Ability to guide business/country leadership with IT investment recommendations.

Skills :

- Ability to identify, clarify and promote the best value-delivering opportunities for IT investments and ensure that promised value is delivered.

- Financial acumen. Ability to manage the creation and delivery of IT budgets. Working knowledge of NPV, ROGI, etc. Ability to define and user metrics (scorecards, trend analysis, etc.).

- Demonstrated strong business acumen. Ability to identify BU/Function/Country needs, expectations and requirements for technology-based solutions. Demonstrated success in proactively solving business-related problems.

- Drive for results. Ability to complete initiatives through Cargill Global IT and 3rd party vendors.

- Demonstrated skills in applying IT industry knowledge to real-world business situations. Proactively seeks information and insights for the industry, internal and external experts.

- Demonstrated skills regarding influence, persuasion, communication, finance and organizational change.

- Exceptional skills in presenting to all levels of leadership in large group settings as well as one-on-one interactions with Platform, BU and functional leaders. Communicates with impact. Strength in synthesizing complex issues in a succinct and clear manner.

- Demonstrated interpersonal savvy capabilities: relates well to all kinds of people, builds appropriate rapport, ability to obtain results through influence and collaboration.

- Demonstrated ability to manage through constructive conflict to deliver positive outcomes. Comfort with asking challenging and difficult questions to business and functional leaders.

- Ability to translate process, data, and technology concepts into business terms.

- Ability to move frequently between high-level strategic view to a tactical view.

- Continuous improvement by continually identifying ways to improve processes or work structures.

- Risk Management, such as the ability to anticipate IT related risks for the business and mitigate such risks.

Preferred Qualifications and skills :

- MBA with 5 year's experience before MBA

- Experience in stakeholder management, business development, consulting

- ITIL Certified or PMP Certified

- Experience in business process mapping, process consulting

- Good understanding of trading and supply chain processes

- Experience of working in a MNC environment with stakeholders in multiple countries

Other relevant information to the position :

- The role can lead to regional BRM and dedicated business BRM leader

- Competency that would be required will be stakeholder management, influencer and build consensus with various business and Global IT stakeholders.

- Negotiation skills will be added advantage