Business Architect

Overall Role Purpose:

The Business Architect role sits within Divisional Services and is responsible for translating business strategy into a practical operating model that meets the division’s needs. Maintain the operating model for a division and quality assurance of architectural decisions high level business requirements and other architectural deliverables to ensure alignment and best fit solutions for the business needs of the divisions and alignment to enterprise business architecture.

Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• Providing the approach and framework to help the business divisions identify how they want to run their business to deliver the company’s vision and their strategic objectives, applying the appropriate strategic analysis models and methods to deconstruct a problem to identify, clarify and articulate change.
• Preparing analysis, materials and recommendation to the Division Senior Leaders to approve and Enterprise Design Authority to resolve for cross-divisional impacts, and ensuring a standard approach and quality of design work across the organisation.
• Discovering, challenging, recommending and articulating operating model change, strategic questions and responses to achieve strategic goals.Completing Programme and Project Business Architecture deliverables, i.e. Target Operating Models (TOMs), high level designs, impact and risk assessments which detail the key components the organisation needs, the scale of the change and the transition required to achieve its target state and deliver its strategic and business objectives.
• Identifying opportunities for business innovation and shape design proposals for taking this forwards; driving innovation at a divisional level where this delivers quick wins and business benefit and is in the boundary of the division’s business architecture roadmap.
• Contributing to the relevant communities of practice, providing thought leadership, coaching and mentoring of other employees to build the overall business architect capability within the service.

Minimum Criteria

• Experience working as a business architect / business analyst, either in professional services, financial services, or the public sector / regulated environment.
• Experience in conducting market, customer and value assessments and using insights to shape business architecture in support of business strategies.
• Experience of designing target operating models for large organisations and leading business areas through the development and execution of their strategy through business architecture.

Essential Criteria

• Expertise in architectural frameworks and concepts, methodologies and mapping standards and approaches i.e. capability maps, value chain analysis, value creation and business models and experience in the use of enterprise architecture tooling.
• Detailed knowledge of people, processes, technology, partnerships/interactions and governance that supports the relevant business division and how divisional objectives, outcomes and initiatives impact other business areas
• Overall knowledge of a broad range of technology, trends and standards in providing IT products as services.
• Good facilitator, drawing out problems, involving and gaining commitment from the relevant stakeholders in the business with credibility and gravitas to establish trust, gaining consensus and buy-in, orchestrating engagement and collaboration with senior leadership
• A proactive and creative thinker, whilst grounded in the use of analysis tools and frameworks to solve problems and innovate.
• requirements into easily understandable and digestible content for a business audience.

Desirable Criteria:

• CBA/BCS qualified.
• Understanding the relevant business divisions and its functions, processes and the outcomes they are seeking to achieve, including how this links to company strategy and objectives.
• Commercially aware, the ability to understand supplier proposals and promote cost effective solutions.
• Politically aware, able to facilitate outcomes where priorities and personalities are in conflict.
• Experience with formal programme management methodologies (e.g. Prince2, MSP, Agile).