Specialist, Financial Operations

We are seeking a high-impact Business Analyst / Data Analyst (3–4 years' experience) to join the Rights & Royalties Transformation Group. This role blends business analysis, analytics, and workflow automation to improve royalty accuracy, cycle times, controls, and decision visibility. The ideal candidate is fast, agile, and execution-focused, able to grasp business fundamentals quickly, translate them into data and process requirements, and deliver measurable operational outcomes through dashboards, automation, and standardisation.

Royalties domain experience is a strong advantage (rights, licensing, royalty calculations, statements, author/vendor payments, deductions, reserves, contractual terms).

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Key Objectives (What Success Looks Like)

• Build trusted operational and financial visibility for Rights & Royalties via dashboards and KPIs.
• Drive automation and simplification of recurring operational activities (exceptions, validations, reconciliations, reporting packs).
• Reduce rework, disputes, and leakage risks through improved data quality and process controls.
• Enable faster decision-making through standardised reporting and self-serve insights.

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Core Responsibilities

1) Business Analysis & Transformation Delivery

• Conduct rapid discovery of current processes (as-is), pain points, and root causes across rights, royalties, and related finance operations.
• Translate business needs into clear requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes (cycle time, error reduction, SLA improvement).
• Partner with Operations, Finance, Product/Tech and stakeholders to design to-be processes using the lens: Standardise → Automate → Optimise → Scale.
• Drive execution: prioritise backlog, manage dependencies, support UAT, and ensure adoption with crisp documentation and training aids.

2) Data Analysis, Reporting & Insights

• Define and maintain KPI frameworks for Rights & Royalties (examples below) and convert them into operational dashboards.
• Build and maintain dashboards using Tableau and/or Looker, ensuring performance, data integrity, and stakeholder usability.
• Perform deep-dive analytics to identify trends and anomalies: late statements, high adjustments, dispute drivers, rate/term deviations, missing metadata, revenue-to-royalty variances.
• Develop actionable insights and recommendations; present them in executive-ready formats.

3) Automation & Workflow Enablement

• Identify high-volume manual activities suitable for automation (data validation, exception triage, case routing, notifications, approvals, report refresh workflows).
• Build workflow automations and lightweight tools using Power Automate (and connected services), with appropriate controls and audit trails.
• Support integration patterns and data pipelines in collaboration with engineering/BI teams (e.g., BigQuery datasets, scheduled refresh, data quality checks).

4) Data Governance, Controls & Documentation

• Establish strong data definitions, metric logic, and documentation (data dictionary, KPI definitions, SOPs).
• Implement controls that improve audit readiness: reconciliation checkpoints, exception logs, approval matrices, and traceability.
• Maintain disciplined change control for reporting and automation assets.

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Typical KPIs You May Own (Illustrative)

• Automation savings (hours saved/month), adoption rates, cycle time reduction
• Report refresh reliability, data latency, dashboard usage metrics

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Required Skills & Experience

• 3–4 years' experience in a Business Analyst, Data Analyst, BI Analyst, or Transformation Analyst role.
• Strong analytical capability with hands-on experience in:
  • Tableau and/or Looker (dashboards, calculated fields, data exploration, performance considerations)
  • SQL (joins, aggregations, window functions; ability to investigate data issues)
  • GCP fundamentals (especially BigQuery concepts; datasets, tables, views, basic optimisation awareness)
  • Power Automate (workflow automation, approvals, notifications, connectors; governance mindset)
• Proven ability to convert ambiguous problems into structured work and deliver outcomes with pace.
• Strong stakeholder management: can work with Ops/Finance/Tech, handle competing priorities, and drive closure.
• Excellent communication: concise requirements, clear visuals, executive-ready summaries.
• Artificial Intelligence & Advanced Analytics: Working knowledge of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) concepts with the ability to apply them in operational and financial use cases. Ability to translate business problems into AI/analytics use cases with measurable ROI (cycle time reduction, accuracy improvement, cost efficiency).

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Preferred

• Exposure to royalties, rights, licensing, publishing/media, or revenue share domains.
• Understanding of royalty lifecycle: contract terms, rate structures, deductions, reserves, statements, payments, recoupment, audit/dispute handling.
• Basic scripting (Python) or familiarity with ETL/ELT concepts, dbt, or data quality tooling.
• Experience with process mapping (Blueworks/Lucidchart), Lean basics, or continuous improvement methods.

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Qualifications

Bachelor's in:

• Computer Science / IT / Data Analytics
• Finance / Accounting / Commerce (adds strong advantage in royalties context)

Or Postgraduate (Good Differentiator, not mandatory):

• MBA (Operations / Finance / Analytics)
• PG Diploma in Business Analytics / Data Science

Or Data & Analytics Certifications

• Google Cloud (GCP) – Associate Data Engineer / Data Analytics
• Tableau Certified Data Analyst
• Looker / BI tool certifications

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Behavioural Competencies (Non-Negotiable for Transformation)

• Adaptability, Speed & agility: moves quickly from discovery to deliverables; comfortable iterating.
• Outcome ownership: focuses on measurable improvement, not activity.
• Structured problem-solving: separates symptoms from root cause; prioritises by risk and impact.
• Precision & control mindset: understands financial and contractual sensitivity in royalties.
• Collaboration: earns trust across operations and technology; handles conflict professionally.

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Working Relationships

• Works closely with Rights & Royalties Operations, Finance, BI/Engineering, Product/Tech, and Compliance/Legal (as needed).
• Acts as an analytics and automation partner to operational leaders and transformation owners.

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What We Offer (Optional section you can keep/remove)

• High-visibility transformation scope with measurable business impact
• Opportunity to build modern analytics and automation capabilities in a financially sensitive domain
• Strong cross-functional exposure across Rights, Royalties, Finance, and Technology

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