Finance Business Analyst (Analytics Lead)

Background

The Office of Financial Resources Management (OFRM), Bureau for Management Services, supports the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the promotion of its sustainable human development agenda. It achieves this by developing and making fully operational a dynamic and harmonized integrated resource management framework based on comprehensive analysis that enhances UNDP’s financial performance, as well as facilitates UN reform and coherence. To these ends, the framework addresses strategically critical financial resource planning and management issues, including results based budgeting; the integration of the Programming Arrangements and the Institutional Budget within the context of the integrated budget from 2014 onwards; enhanced cost classification and cost recovery; capital budgeting; adherence to IPSAS; foreign exchange and investment activities; management of assets; other performance management tools and initiatives; and support to UN harmonization.

As part of OFRM's Financial Business Partnering Division, the Financial Innovation and Solutions Manager, reports directly to the Deputy CFO and provides guidance and support to them through the formulation of new and complex innovative financial solutions.

The team is the primary resource for senior staff to seek advice on complex and new financial and related policy issues that go beyond the existing financial frameworks, to transform finance and support development results. The services provided include policy advice, financial management training, review of new types of agreements, tools and information management. Innovation and Solutions also supports other OFRM units in extracting and interpreting financial data from Atlas, and managing the Analytics team located in Kuala Lumpur in their support of all OFRM Units for their analytical needs and the wider financial community in the development of standard queries and reports

This post is established in UNDP’s Global Shared Service Centre (GSSC), in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Under the day-to-day supervision of the Specialist, Financial Analysis , FBP/Innovations and Solutions, the incumbent will manage the Analytics team, responsible for data mining/extraction, and the interpretation of information to help solve financial and budgetary information and report generation needs, to help enable informed decision making and improve financial performance, whilst ensuring that the resultant reports present a consistent and accurate view.

In servicing clients, this role also aspires towards supporting them to become increasingly self-sufficient in information and report production. The role will also provide some support to the refinement of functional specifications for Financial system changes.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Analyse and interpret financial data, and transform it into meaningful narrative and financial information:

• Draw conclusions, predict, create inferences, and present findings to clients;
• Carry out variance analysis on data and identify root causes;
• Create effective narratives and accompanying visuals to tell the story and be easily understood.

2. Design and develop business intelligence content by identifying report requirements and determining business rules through a structured design process, and ensure that information and reporting satisfies business and reporting needs:

• Develop system extracts, reports, dashboards, visuals or other outputs and ad-hoc data requests to support the reporting and information requirements of clients;
• Ensure that all extracts, reports, dashboards or other outputs have been appropriately tested; and
• Ensure that data integrity is maintained, including consistency with audited corporate reports;
• Support business units refining their business requirements, including through formal interviews or facilitated sessions;
• Assist the Specialist, FBP in developing the work plan and timelines to facilitate timely delivery to clients.

3. Provide responsive, quality support to OFRM, providing tools and information for the Global Finance Function, in meeting their reporting and informational needs, through providing hands-on support in the tools used to extract and formulate reports, in order to enhance the capacity of Finance users to extract and interpret finance data from the financial systems of UNDP:

• Provide expertise to business areas in understanding enterprise data content, definitions and usage, and the available Business Intelligence (BI) tools;
• Support users in the formulation and extraction of financial and administrative information;
• Guide business area users in developing self-service solutions for their reporting and information needs;
• Guide business areas in identifying new data needs and delivery mechanisms for reporting information;
• Manage the provision of standard and ad-hoc information requests from the Analytics team.

4. Ensure data integrity within the financial and administrative systems, and in the reports and extracts provided, including consistency with audited corporate reports:

• Reducing system reconciliation issues, through formulating and developing appropriate checks and diagnostics, and the creation of processes to run defined queries and reports on a regular basis;
• Reporting discrepancies to the user community, and identifying solutions to resolve data discrepancies;
• Propose original, technical solutions for maintaining data integrity and expanding UNDP’s data collection and analysis capability for its finance management practice.

5. Contribute to the design and development of new systems/tools and/or better integrated, existing systems to accelerate UNDP’s capability to capitalize on business intelligence:

• Support and contribute to the design and development of PeopleSoft, IT Financial tools, functional specifications by OFRM, in partnership with OIMT, through reviewing and refining functional specifications where necessary;
• Contribute to user-centered design in developing BI tools / resources to ensure that UNDP’s analytics systems are accessible and useful.

Analytics Team plays a key role in the Office of Financial Resource Management and, by extension, in the Global Finance Function

• Can obtain the data and information required to objectively interpret how well UNDP is utilizing its financial resources;
• Receives assistance in understanding UNDP’s financial reporting and interpretative tools;
• Continuously seeks to improve its access to data and information necessary for financial resource management;
• Receives support in interrogating and creating scenarios from financial data; and
• Can be supported in obtaining necessary technical support (in particular from OIMT).

Competencies

Corporate Competencies

• Demonstrates commitment to UNDP’s mission, vision and values
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability

Strong Technical Skills

• Firm understanding of business intelligence tools, and the architecture and design of advanced integrated management systems, preferably including PeopleSoft.
• Must have strong SQL skills and ability to extract data from PeopleSoft using SQL, SQR, and other tools. People Tools expertise is also an asset
• Must have strong skills in data visualization and developing reports and dashboards using Microsoft Power BI.
• Excellent skills in data mining and modeling.
• Must be able to analyze data to ascertain information or other system issues

Business Knowledge

• Strong organizational skills which allow progress on concurrent tasks from separate projects
• Detailed understanding of budgetary, financial and administrative processes

Teamwork

• Proactively initiate, develop, and maintain effective working relationship with team members
• Demonstrate the ability to cooperate with a variety of people and achieve results
• Ability to establish and maintain a high level of user trust and confidence in the team’s concern for the users

Communication

• Good presentational skills
• Accurately prepare written business correspondence that is coherent, grammatically correct, effective, professional and engaging
• Ability to communicate technical issues effectively to “non-technical” personnel

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Masters degree in Finance, Business Administration or a professional accounting qualification from an internationally recognized institute of accountancy, with certification in SQL, SQR or equivalent, and complex data extraction routines; or
• Masters degree in Information Technology, Computer Science or related quantitative field, with a professional accounting qualification from an internationally recognized institute of accountancy;
• Professionally qualified accountants from an internationally recognized institute of accountancy will have a distinct advantage.
• Long-listed candidates will be required to undergo the UNDP Accountancy and Finance Test (UNDP AFT).

Experience:

• Minimum 5 years relevant experience in Finance
• Relevant experience with Business Intelligence (BI) environments, including the mapping of source to target data, documenting requirements, designing and conducting data quality tests, and creating reports and dashboards in the financial arena
• Hands-on proficiency with SQL, BI tools, Microsoft Power BI preferred
• Hands-on proficiency with ERP systems, ideally PeopleSoft

Language Requirements:

• Fluency in English

Disclaimer

Important applicant information

Internal mobility is strongly encouraged and we reserve the right to reassign the newly appointed staff members with similar skillset and educational qualifications for similar functions and job categories at the same level. The internal lateral movements will be determined based on the needs of the organization while allowing the newly recruits to broaden their skills, build networks and gain fresh experience and to better align their profiles with the jobs.

All posts in the GS categories are subject to local recruitment.

Applicant information about UNDP rosters

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Workforce diversity

UNDP is committed to achieving diversity within its workforce, and encourages all qualified applicants, irrespective of gender, nationality, disabilities, sexual orientation, culture, religious and ethnic backgrounds to apply. All applications will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Scam warning

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Candidates must be resident in Malaysia, or have the right to work in Malaysia.

For further information, and to apply, please visit our website via the “Apply” button below.