Vector Logistics
Business Intelligence and Solutions Analyst
Permanent
Westville
Overview
We are a Supply Chain and Sales & Merchandising partner adding value to your business through a fully integrated, temperature-controlled network in Southern Africa.
But we are also more than that. We are people serving people. While we boast the best in tech and infrastructure, our people are our greatest resource. With our skilled, curious, can-do people at the forefront, our assets become your assets, our service your solutions.
Vector’s vehicle fleet includes a food industry first in ‘multi-temperature’ vehicles enabling the company to service business across frozen, chilled and ambient temperature zones on a single delivery.
Job Purpose
The purpose of the role is to manage, maintain and further develop the organisation's BI environment and associated costing and profitability models, ensuring that they provide accurate and reliable information for financial, commercial and operational decision making. The role is primarily responsible for maintaining the Activity-Based Costing model, including the underlying logic and assumptions that underpin the model. The model is used extensively for profitability reporting, new business costings, forecasting and budgeting. The incumbent will manage the end-to-end flow of data through the model and ensure the integrity of the system. The role acts as a key point of support for users of the system.
Coordinate and execute the monthly and routine updating of data into the TM1 models and reconciling back to source systems.
Maintain and develop the organisation's models including its Activity-Based Costing model to ensure that costs are appropriately allocated to activities, business units, customers, products and services.
Maintain the cost drivers, assumptions and allocation methodologies underpinning the model to ensure that costing outputs continue to reflect the operational reality of the business.
Ensure that all models provide accurate and meaningful information for commercial and management decision-making.
Investigate variances and anomalies to identify and resolve potential data, model, allocation or business-process issues.
Identify and incorporate business and masterdata changes into the model.
Administer and maintain the organisation's TM1 environment, including cubes, dimensions, hierarchies, subsets, rules, feeders, processes, security and user access, to ensure the system remains stable, secure and fit for purpose.
Monitor TM1 processes and model performance, investigate system issues, and implement appropriate solutions to maintain reliable and timely outputs.
Maintain appropriate documentation of TM1 models, processes, structures, logic, assumptions and changes to support effective system management and continuity.
Time and Motion Process Management
Manage the collection, validation and maintenance of Time & Motion data, ensuring accurate employee time allocations are reflected in TM1 and appropriately incorporated into costing models and cost drivers.
Perform data validation and reconciliation across source systems, ETL processes and TM1 models to ensure the accuracy and integrity of critical costing and profitability information.
Identify data-quality issues, investigate root causes and implement appropriate corrective actions to prevent recurring errors.
Maintain appropriate controls, validation procedures and audit trails over key data
and model inputs.
Extract, transform and integrate data from SAP ERP, SAP BW, SQL databases and other disparate sources to provide reliable inputs for TM1, semantic models, costing, profitability and reporting solutions.
Use SQL and an understanding of relational databases and data structures to query, manipulate, validate and investigate data.
Develop and maintain production data warehouses in SQL server.
Develop and maintain automated ETL workflows using Alteryx to streamline data preparation, improve data quality and ensure the timely and consistent availability of information.
Apply appropriate business rules to cleanse, transform, join and aggregate data from multiple sources to produce fit-for-purpose datasets.
Monitor automated data processes, investigate failures and data anomalies, and implement corrective actions to maintain reliable data flows.
Document key data flows, transformations, dependencies and controls to support the ongoing management and integrity of the data environment.
Act as a subject-matter expert for TM1-based costing and profitability models and provide guidance and technical support to users on the interpretation and use of system outputs.
Investigate and resolve user queries and discrepancies and provide clear explanations of technical, costing and data-related issues to non-technical stakeholders.
Manage development projects end-to-end from gathering requirements to final delivery keeping scope, timelines and stakeholder expectations on track.
Escalate decisions involving fundamental costing methodologies, material financial assumptions, system architecture or business policy to appropriate.
Share knowledge and provide training to users where required.
Support the ongoing development and enhancement of the models and functionality to meet changing business and reporting requirements.
Develop specification documents for new models and functionality, and manage testing, migration and deployment of changes into production
Engage with Finance, Commercial, Operations, IT and other stakeholders to understand business requirements and translate them into practical solutions.
Identify manual, repetitive or inefficient processes and develop automated solutions to improve efficiency and reduce manual intervention.
Continuously evaluate opportunities to improve the TM1 model performance, data processes, reporting functionality and costing methodologies.
Challenge requirements where appropriate and recommend solutions that improve efficiency, accuracy, automation and sustainability.
Identify and evaluate the impact of business process changes on existing reporting systems and models.
Identify opportunities to integrate systems and improve the flow of information from source systems through to costing, profitability and management reporting.
Coordinate with external service providers or consultants where relevant.
Key Relationships
Internal
Senior Management teams across Vector
Commercial, Engineering and Finance teams
IT and Risk
Operational managers across the Business
Cross functional project teams
Technical teams
External
Service Providers
Consultants
Qualifications, Skills and Experience Required for the Job
Qualifications and Experience
Degree or equivalent in Information Systems, Computer Science, Data Analytics,
Finance, Data Science.
Experience in administering and developing TM1 / IBM Planning Analytics
models.
Relevant SQL, database, data analytics or business analysis certification.
Experience developing and maintaining Powerbi semantic models.
Previous SAP ERP and SAP BW end-user experience is highly advantageous.
Experience in Activity-Based Costing, financial modelling or management
reporting.
Experience in logistics, warehousing, distribution, manufacturing or other
operationally complex environments.
Experience using Alteryx or comparable ETL/data preparation platform.
Skills and Competencies
The incumbent is expected to develop proficiency in Alteryx; a strong foundation
in SQL, data and ETL is essential to achieving this.
Sound understanding of financial statements, systems and accounting principles.
Understanding of OLAP systems, dimensional modelling, semantic models, data
analysis and data modelling.
Understanding of, and experience working with, SQL Server, TSQL, relational
databases and ETL tools.
Understanding of data structures and data integration principles.
Understanding of Activity-Based Costing or management accounting principles.
Business requirements analysis, information gathering and documentation.
Advanced Excel
Knowledge of Power BI report creation and models, DAX, Python, VBA.
We look forward to hearing from you!
We are a Supply Chain and Sales & Merchandising partner adding value to your business through a fully integrated, temperature controlled network in Southern Africa.
But we are also more than that. We are people serving people. While we boast the best in tech and infrastructure, our people are our greatest resource. With our skilled, curious, can-do people at the forefront, our assets become your assets, our services your solutions.
Vector's vehicle fleet includes a food industry first in 'multi-temperature' vehicles enabling the company to service business across frozen, chilled and ambient temperature zones on a single delivery.
