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Job Description
Function
Information Technology/Enterprise Business Systems/IBP
Position Overview
The Business Systems Analyst (BSA) is responsible for supporting, enhancing, and optimizing enterprise applications and business processes within an assigned functional domain. The BSA serves as a trusted partner to business stakeholders, providing functional expertise, solution analysis, process improvement recommendations, and day-to-day operational support to ensure enterprise systems effectively enable business objectives.
The BSA works closely with business users, the Manager Enterprise Systems, Digital Business Partners, technical teams, and third-party service providers to deliver stable, efficient, and scalable technology solutions. This role is responsible for analyzing business requirements, identifying process improvement opportunities, coordinating solution delivery, supporting system enhancements, and ensuring the successful adoption of new capabilities.
In addition to operational support responsibilities, the BSA contributes to continuous improvement initiatives by identifying opportunities to leverage automation, analytics, AI-enabled capabilities, and process standardization to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and user experience.
Domain Responsibility Summary
Planning Process Ownership
- Serve as the functional owner for SAP IBP Time Series Planning and Demand Planning processes.
- Support mid-term and long-term supply planning processes.
- Facilitate planning activities supporting S&OP and Integrated Business Planning processes.
- Partner with Supply Chain, Operations, Commercial, Procurement, and Finance stakeholders to define planning requirements and drive business value.
- Monitor planning process performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Support planning cycle readiness and issue resolution.
- Ensure planning solutions align with business objectives and industry best practices.
SAP IBP Functional Administration
- Maintain and support SAP IBP planning models and planning structures.
- Manage planning areas, planning levels, key figures, attributes, and master data structures.
- Maintain SAP IBP business roles, security roles, and permission filters.
- Support user provisioning, role assignments, access requests, and security audits.
- Troubleshoot planning book, workbook, and planning view issues.
- Monitor application jobs and planning process execution.
- Support system upgrades, testing activities, and release deployments.
Excel Add-In Support
- Serve as the subject matter expert for the SAP IBP Excel Add-In.
- Resolve workbook, planning view, synchronization, and performance issues.
- Troubleshoot advanced Excel-based planning solutions.
- Develop and maintain standardized planning templates.
- Support user training and adoption activities.
- Identify opportunities to improve planner productivity within Excel-based planning processes.
Data Integration, Extractors & Interface Management
- Serve as the functional owner for SAP IBP inbound and outbound interfaces.
- Support integration between SAP IBP, SAP S/4HANA, and external planning systems.
- Provide functional oversight for standard and custom extractors supporting planning data integration.
- Partner with development teams to define, prioritize, and implement enhancements to existing extractors.
- Analyze business requirements and translate them into extractor enhancements and interface improvements.
- Support testing and validation of custom extractor enhancements and interface changes.
- Evaluate opportunities to improve data extraction, transformation, and load performance.
- Troubleshoot planning data issues and perform root cause analysis across interfaces.
- Monitor master data and transactional data loads into IBP.
- Ensure planning data accuracy, completeness, and availability within required planning timelines.
- Conduct impact assessments related to master data, planning structures, key figures, and integration changes.
- Collaborate with ABAP developers, integration teams, architects, and business stakeholders to improve data integration reliability and scalability.
Supply Planning and Planning Heuristics Expertise
Demonstrated knowledge and practical experience with SAP IBP planning algorithms and supply planning methodologies, including:
- Time Series Supply Planning heuristics.
- Supply Planning operators and execution strategies.
- Finite and infinite capacity planning concepts.
- Inventory replenishment and distribution planning logic.
- Constraint-based planning principles.
- Multi-level supply network planning.
- Demand prioritization and allocation concepts.
- Supply-demand balancing techniques.
- Simulation and scenario planning methodologies.
- Planning run configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
Ability to:
- Understand and explain planning heuristic results to business users.
- Analyze supply planning outcomes and identify root causes of planning exceptions.
- Evaluate planning parameter settings and recommend improvements.
- Support testing and validation of planning operators and heuristics.
- Diagnose issues related to supply propagation, sourcing rules, production planning, transportation planning, and inventory planning.
- Partner with planners and business stakeholders to improve planning effectiveness and solution adoption.
- Assess impacts of master data, planning parameters, and integration changes on planning results.
Integration & Technical Collaboration
- Act as the primary functional liaison between planning teams and technical integration teams.
- Support and guide CI-DS / CPI-DS integration activities.
- Validate data mappings, transformation logic, and interface designs.
- Participate in solution architecture discussions affecting planning processes.
- Support testing, defect resolution, and deployment activities.
- Assist in defining integration requirements for future planning initiatives.
- Provide functional guidance regarding planning-related integrations and data architecture.
Response & Supply Planning (Nice to have, emerging responsibility)
- Support implementation and expansion of SAP IBP Response & Supply Planning capabilities.
- Participate in design discussions related to constrained planning and supply balancing.
- Support business process design for future response planning workflows.
Order-Based Planning (OBP) (Nice to have, emerging responsibility)
- Participate in the evaluation, design, and future implementation of SAP IBP Order-Based Planning.
- Assess business impacts of transitioning from Time Series Planning to Order-Based Planning processes where appropriate.
- Support solution design involving ATP, aATP, and supply-demand balancing capabilities.
Key Responsibilities
Business Partnership & Requirements Management
- Develop a strong understanding of assigned business processes, objectives, and operational challenges.
- Serve as a primary point of contact for business users within supported functional areas.
- Gather, document, and analyze business requirements for enhancements, projects, and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Facilitate requirements workshops, process reviews, and solution discussions.
- Translate business requirements into functional specifications and solution requirements.
- Support the evaluation and recommendation of technology solutions that address business needs.
Application Support & Operational Excellence
- Provide functional support for enterprise applications within the assigned domain.
- Investigate, troubleshoot, and resolve application, process, and data-related issues.
- Coordinate issue resolution with technical teams, AMS providers, and vendors.
- Support incident, problem, and service request management processes.
- Monitor application performance and identify recurring issues and improvement opportunities.
- Ensure business continuity through effective support and knowledge management practices.
Process Improvement & Solution Delivery
- Analyze business processes and identify opportunities for simplification, standardization, and optimization.
- Support implementation of approved enhancements and system changes.
- Participate in project activities, including fit-gap analysis, solution design, configuration reviews, testing, deployment, and hypercare support.
- Identify opportunities to improve user experience and operational efficiency.
- Support adoption of automation, workflow, analytics, and AI-enabled solutions.
Testing & Quality Assurance
- Develop and execute test plans and test scripts.
- Coordinate user acceptance testing activities.
- Validate solution quality and ensure requirements are fully addressed.
- Support regression testing for application releases and upgrades.
- Assist with defect management and issue resolution.
Data, Reporting & Analytics
- Support data quality initiatives and process governance activities.
- Assist in development and enhancement of reporting and analytics capabilities.
- Identify opportunities to improve business insight through data utilization.
- Ensure consistency and integrity of process-related data within supported applications.
Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement
- Partner closely with business stakeholders to understand evolving business needs.
- Collaborate with Manager Enterprise Systems to prioritize work and support operational objectives.
- Support Digital Business Partners in evaluating business capabilities and improvement opportunities.
- Work effectively with project teams, technical resources, AMS providers, and vendors.
- Participate in governance, planning, and continuous improvement activities.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Business Administration, Engineering, Supply Chain, Finance, Human Resources, or a related discipline.
- Minimum of 3 SAP IBP implementation projects, including at least:
- One Demand Planning implementation.
- One Supply Planning or Response & Supply Planning implementation.
- One implementation involving significant integration design, custom extractors, data migration, or interface development activities.
- Experience supporting SAP IBP integration landscapes involving standard and custom extractors.
- Understanding of SAP extractors, custom ABAP-based extraction logic, and planning data integration frameworks.
- Ability to troubleshoot data flow issues across source systems, middleware, and SAP IBP.
- Custom extractor development lifecycle
- Data mapping and transformation
- Master data synchronization
- Incremental and full data loads
- Interface monitoring and error handling
- Time Series Supply Planning heuristics.
- Supply Planning operators and execution strategies.
- Finite and infinite capacity planning concepts.
- Inventory replenishment and distribution planning logic.
- Constraint-based planning principles.
- Multi-level supply network planning.
- Demand prioritization and allocation concepts.
- Supply-demand balancing techniques.
- Simulation and scenario planning methodologies.
- Planning run configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting.
- 7+ years of experience supporting enterprise applications and business processes aligned to the domain area for this position.
- Experience gathering and documenting business requirements.
- Experience supporting system enhancements, projects, or technology implementations.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
Benefits of Joining Albemarle
We are partners to one another in pioneering new ways to be better for ourselves, our teams, and our communities. When you join Albemarle, you become our most essential element and you can anticipate competitive compensation, a comprehensive benefits package, and resources that foster your well-being and fuel your personal growth. Help us shape the future, build with purpose and grow together.