Senior Application Analyst

Position summary

Working in the Application Support team, you’ll be responsible for the provision of application support, management and development services. You will also deputise for the Application Lead.

Essential skills:

Proven experience of supporting line of business applications in complex application support environment is essential

Proven experience of supporting NEC (Northgate) Housing Systems, ideally from both front and backend perspectives

An understanding of Business processes and practices relating to the provision of housing

Strong Technical skills including the ability to write Oracle SQL and implement solutions

Experience of managing interfaces and system integrations is essential.

Being a Good communicator with excellent people skills, being able to deal with conflict and manage challenging situations

Ability to work successfully with key stakeholders including senior managers, suppliers, partner organisations and other public services

Experience of capturing business requirements and designing and developing forms and workflows

The ability to work independently and also as part of a team

DESIRABLE SKILLS:

Experience creating, configuring, and implementing NEC Housing system modules.

In particular, Repairs, Contractor, Scheduler and Mobile business expertise using NEC

Working knowledge of Unix and PL/ SQL

Experience of Business Objects, ideally in conjunction with the NEC Housing database

Previous exposure to Housing environments gained from working for or with Local Authority Housing, ALMO’s or Housing Associations.

Exposure to NEC (Northgate) Revs & Bens, understanding the integration between that system and the Housing system

Role purpose

The role reports directly to an Application Lead and is responsible for the provision of application support, management and development services, either directly to users of the systems or to service delivery functions. Its main purpose is to:

● Support the Application Lead in ensuring that requests for support are properly logged, assigned and responded to in a timely manner and according to agreed standards and procedures

● Investigate potential and actual service problems and recommend solutions

● Resolve incidents and requests for support from service desk, other service delivery staff and/or users

● Work with colleagues to provide responses to requests for support, eg: ○ making modifications to system parameters ○ developing work-arounds or site-specific enhancements ○ reconfiguring systems ○ changing operating procedures ○ training users or operations staff ○ producing additional documentation ○ escalating requests to systems development staff or software suppliers.

● Support Application Lead in reviewing releases, upgrades and fixes available from software suppliers and implement as appropriate. Maintain awareness of existing and emerging software and hardware solutions and contribute to the development of upgrade plans

● Coordinate upgrades and prepare software implementation procedures with fall back contingency plans

● Configure software to ensure that the functionality of the application is fully exploited

● Develop and follow formal procedures to plan and test proposed solutions/Upgrades

● Design test cases and create test scripts and supporting data. Analyse and report test activities and results in a clear and concise manner

● Work with users to specify, design and implement new or changed user interfaces or security profiles such as data capture forms, process workflows, web pages

● Ensure that all documentation is written, maintained and executed to the highest standards and act as a champion of the Quality Management System (QMS)

● Contribute to the Change Advisory Board

● Use application management software and tools to collect performance statistics

● Undertake analytical activities and deliver analysis outputs in accordance with customer needs and conforming to agreed standards

● Take an active role in user meetings and assist in presenting issues and solutions both orally and in writing

● Act as a point of escalation for application queries from other teams in Digital & IT

● Work within the ITIL framework