Business Analyst

Who we are

The Economist is a leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs, published weekly in print and digital editions, and daily through our Espresso app and Economist.com. We deliver our information through a range of formats, from newspapers and magazines to conferences, films and digital editions. What ties us together is the objectivity of our opinion, the originality of our insight and our advocacy of economic and political freedom around the world.

Headquartered in London, The Economist Group has offices and people across the globe, and is valued by its customers for its world-class insights and rigorous analysis. We have individual and corporate customers for our analysis, data and educational offerings. We value individuals who think differently and can challenge the status quo.

What we’re looking for

The Economist Group is in the middle of a multi-year multi-platform transformation, the last two years have seen us transform our Subscriber experience for both Print and Digital customers. We have now initiated a Sales & Marketing Transformation programme for our B2B business. This aims to transform the B2B landscape, delivering the required foundations across the five core pillars of process, people, technology, toolkit and content to support our 5 year business strategy.

The first phase of the programme, Discovery, is about to commence. The aim is to prepare the groundwork to ensure the programme is set up for success and delivers the agreed expected commercial outcomes.

We are looking for an experienced Business Analyst to join the programme team. The successful candidate will have experience of working as a business analyst in a complex B2B sales and marketing environment and will be familiar with principles and practices in a media or consultancy business.

They will initially be focused on discovery and the collaboration to define the future state. Then supporting the development and successful incremental delivery of change for the business teams across process, technology and ways of working. As such experience of delivering change across these areas in a large and complex programme would be a distinct advantage.

While technology is not the only focus of this programme, the implementation of new systems and tools is a key deliverable. To support this, experience from an organisation where Salesforce is the principal CRM and a marketing automation platform such as Marketo would be an advantage.

They will be part of a team of three Business analysts in this programme and close collaboration across a vast remit will be essential.

This role is part of the Business Analysis and Change discipline at The Economist, the team actively collaborates with each other to learn, grow and discover new skills to deliver effective change and value.

•  Proactively collaborate to scope and plan the required analysis at early investigation into the value and purpose of potential changes or problems (discovery phase).
• Use suitable techniques such as root cause analysis, impact mapping or other to determine and demonstrate links and reasoning between reported problems and the underlying issues.
• Develop and maintain engaging and valuable relationships at all levels of seniority across the business and related third parties, and be able to challenge constructively for the benefit of all
• Collaborate with the Programme team, Business team and third party partners to deliver a future state that supports our business growth through simplicity, efficiency and clear value.
• Develop visualisations of business outcomes, whether through process mapping, system interactions, data processing and mapping, team responsibilities and interactions or other relevant depictions.
• Produce high quality analysis that generates a consistent understanding or prompts constructive discussions. Proactively tailor analysis scope for maximum effectiveness, with the experience to focus and prioritise the approach.
• Support and collaborate with the Engineering team throughout delivery with detailedand well structured requirements and clear acceptance criteria alongside measures of success.
• Support requirements with appropriate analysis from the most appropriate focus and at the level required to solve the problem faced or answer the question at hand.
• Ability to present the value of a piece of work, whether through quantitative data or qualitative reasoning, with an argument and impact measures to proceed or delay.
• Facilitate productive and engaging workshops at any and all stages of the process with clear aims and outcomes.
• Drive for improvements to ways of working within the team that increases the delivery of value and improvements in team culture.

• Experience of providing effective and valuable analysis in a B2B sales and marketing environment, understanding capabilities and limitations as well as interactions and relationships between business teams and relevant technology platforms.
• Knowledge and experience of working with a successful programme delivery team
  and an understanding of the value they bring to the business.
• Experience of working with Salesforce CRM and a marketing automation platform in a business environment.
• Proven methodologies and techniques for transforming analysis and investigation into recommendations or problems across processes, systems, data and products.
• Experience of working as a BA in an agile delivery environment, with an ability to break down larger initiatives into smaller capabilities that deliver incremental value towards the strategic mission.
• Experience of working with a third party technology partner, and tactics for ensuring the success of the relationship.
• Ability to recognise when analysis and investigations should go wider than initially expected and the experience to focus and prioritise their approach.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement skills and the ability to constructively challenge and play devil's advocate that results in trusted relationships.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills with suitable information at the best level for the audience who may include c-suite.
• A highly collaborative work style and the ability to successfully work in a team environment driving collaborative behaviours and psychological safety.
• A desire to learn and grow in the the Business analysis & Change discipline

The Economist Group values diversity. We are committed to equal opportunities and creating an inclusive environment for all our employees. We welcome applicants regardless of ethnic origin, national origin, gender, gender identity, race, colour, religious beliefs, disability, sexual orientation , age or marital status. See more on our careers page.