Special Information

• This position is a hybrid position which allows the incumbent to complete their work at both an NAU site, campus, or facility and at a non-centralized site with or without accommodation.

About the Department/College

The Student Affairs Business Intelligence and Operations department at Northern Arizona University serves as the strategic partners in advancing the mission of Student Affairs and its alignment with broader university goals. These teams focus on leveraging data, technology, and process optimization to enhance operational efficiency and support student success initiatives.

About the Position

Develops and maintains an understanding of the strategic alignment of Student Affairs goals with broader University goals, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of division needs. Proactively engage with subject matter experts to extract and synthesize critical business requirements, translate needs into functional requirements, and document requirements in specifications, business process flows, analytical tools, etc. Evaluates past and current department-level business processes and data to drive enhancements for more informed decision-making within the department. Foster collaborative relationships with business stakeholders, cultivating a culture of shared goals and leveraging best practices to comprehensively analyze processes, applications, and data streams. Plays a pivotal role in shaping multifaceted initiatives, working closely within an institutional center of excellence alongside enterprise and divisional business analysts to drive strategic impact. Champion identifying and fulfilling Student Affairs' business intelligence, reporting, and data analysis needs. Drive initiatives in Student Affairs to support the divisions' current contributions and efforts to improve student retention, academic success, wellness, and community.

Responsibilities Include

65% - Business Analysis and Process Improvement

• Drives the strategic gathering of insights from diverse divisional sources, collaborating with cross-functional teams to envision projects, define business use cases, and outline high-level design specifications.
• Independently elicits requirements, partnering with seasoned business analysts to offer strategic recommendations for enhancing prioritized divisional projects with wide-ranging impact across multiple business units and stakeholders.
• Leverages a data-driven approach to create specifications of new data business process designs for review and approval from department management, based on examination of current business data and information gained from systems analysts and other stakeholders. Defines metrics and KPIs to quantify business process efficiencies and effectiveness.
• Identifies and mitigates risk factors associated with business processes and the need for security, continuity of operations plans, and other risk mitigations to ensure consistency, efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness of the unit.
• Proactively addresses end-user inquiries, challenges, and service opportunities, applying strategic thinking to deliver impactful solutions.
• Designs and executes comprehensive test plans, strategically evaluating the systemic impact of business process enhancements on straightforward systems. Collaborates with experienced analysts as needed to ensure thorough evaluation of complex, multi-unit processes.
• Partners with Information Technology Services and administrative business analysts to identify and investigate system challenges, providing strategic recommendations, alternatives, and insights into risks and benefits for system modification to the change request management board.
• Monitors and manages tickets, updates, fixes, and enhancements in advance of the business units.
• Creates documentation, reports, and planning documents on the use of new or enhanced PeopleSoft updates.
• Identifies opportunities for optimizing and streamlining operations within the Student Affairs division, aligning efforts with strategic organizational objectives.

20% - Data Analyst, Business Intelligence, and Reporting

• Develops and utilizes various reporting and metrics to drive strategic decision-making by developing and implementing a range of reporting mechanisms and metrics to measure efficiencies and effectiveness. Tailors custom reports to address specific business requirements and objectives.
• Collaborates cross-functionally with unit members, stakeholders, and other stakeholders to design and refine reporting solutions that drive informed decision-making.
• Gathers and assesses University data to generate reports, recommendations, and communications tailored for division and department leadership. Employs data-driven insights to drive impactful change recommendations.
• Understands and applies knowledge of the appropriate handling of university business intelligence data.
• Develops and uses moderately complex analytical tools and models. May work with other technical and functional experts when necessary to gather information and collaborate on tools and model design.
• Prioritizes equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the conduct of analysis and presentation of reports. Applies strategic thinking to work with diverse, complex student data, extracting meaningful visualizations and recommendations to drive informed decision-making.

5% - Training

• Defines training requirements to deliver comprehensive support to end users within Student Affairs while actively seeking and analyzing feedback to enhance training effectiveness continuously.
• Create and update the internal Student Affairs business analyst training documentation.

5% - Other

• Represent the Student Affairs Business Analyst team on various divisional and University committees.
• Performs other duties as assigned. 

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Management Information Systems, Business Analysis, or a related field.
• 2+ years of relevant experience.

*A combination of related education, experience, and training may be used as an equivalent to the above Minimum Qualifications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Higher Education, Student Affairs, or Social Sciences.
• 3+ years of full-time experience working in higher education.
• Intermediate experience documenting business requirements for improvement.
• Intermediate experience creating training documentation for end users.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

Knowledge

• Intermediate knowledge of tools, processes, and policies of NAU business intelligence and operations.
• Knowledge of institutional business goals and strategies to achieve and maintain growth.
• Intermediate knowledge of software design methodologies and database principles.
• Intermediate knowledge of integrated student information systems.
• Intermediate knowledge within a core business line processes, policies, procedures.

Skills

• Strong customer service skills.
• Advanced facilitation/elicitation skills.
• Professional email and telephone etiquette.
• Interpersonal and networking skills.
• Organizational and project management skills.

Abilities

• Approaches change and new situations as positive opportunities for learning or growth.
• Analyzes and documents intermediate business processes, makes recommendations for streamlining/improving
  processes.
• Balances competing priorities.
• Demonstrates problem solving, organizational, and analytical capabilities.
• Analyzes non-routine situations and anticipates issues.
• Communicates effectively.

Compensation

Budgeted salary is $67,714. Annual salary commensurate with candidate's qualifications and related experience.

Pre-Employment Check

Northern Arizona University requires satisfactory results for the following: a criminal background investigation, an employment history verification and a degree verification (in some cases) prior to employment. You may also be required to complete a fingerprint background check. Also, as an employer in the state of Arizona, NAU is required to participate in the federal E-Verify program that assists employers with verifying new employees' right to work in the United States.

This position has been identified as a safety/security sensitive position. Therefore, per AZ Revised Statute, Northern Arizona University requires satisfactory results for the following: a criminal background investigation, employment history investigation, degree verification (in some cases) and fingerprinting. If you are applying for a job that requires a CDL, you will be required to register with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse and adhere to the clearinghouse requirements.

Notice of Availability of the Annual Fire and Security Report

Each year Northern Arizona University releases an Annual Security Report. The report is a result of a federal law known as the Clery Act. The report includes Clery reportable crime statistics for the three most recent completed calendar years and discloses procedures, practices and programs NAU uses to keep students and employees safe including how to report crimes or other emergencies occurring on campus. In addition, the Fire Safety Report is combined with the Annual Security Report for the NAU Flagstaff Mountain Campus as this campus has on-campus student housing. This report discloses fire safety policies and procedures related to on-campus student housing and statistics for fires that occurred in those facilities. If you would like a free paper copy of the report, please contact the NAUPD Records Department at (928) 523-8884 or by visiting the department at 525 E. Pine Knoll Drive in Flagstaff.

Immigration Support/Sponsorship

Northern Arizona University will not provide any U.S. immigration support or sponsorship for this position.

Submit your Application

To apply for this position, please click on the "Apply" button on this page. You must submit your application by midnight of the application deadline.

If you are an individual with a disability and need reasonable accommodation to participate in the hiring process, please contact the Disability Resources Office at 928-523-8773, DR@nau.edu, or PO Box 5633, Flagstaff AZ 86011.