Lead Business Analyst (Travel)

SAGA; Folkestone; Hybrid; GBP 40,000 - 45,000; Full time

Job summary

A well-known travel company in Folkestone is seeking a Lead Business Analyst to manage and analyze product and system offerings. The role involves eliciting business requirements, leading project efforts, and ensuring effective collaboration across teams. The ideal candidate brings proven experience in the Travel industry, a Level 4 Business Analyst qualification, and strong communication skills. This position offers a competitive salary and a hybrid working model, with 25 days of holiday plus benefits.

Benefits

25 days holiday + bank holidays

Pension scheme matched up to 10%

Wellbeing programme

Colleague discounts on cruises and holidays

Enhanced maternity and paternity leave

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a business analyst in a lead or senior position.
• Experience within the Travel industry; Air experience is an advantage.
• Ability to manage changing priorities in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Elicit, interpret, and translate business requirements from change owners.
• Manage stakeholder expectations around scope, delivery, and timelines.
• Facilitate workshops to gather and validate requirements.

Skills

Excellent communication

Curiosity and inquisitiveness

Precision

Mentoring and guidance

Process modelling

Microsoft Office proficiency

Education

Level 4 Business Analyst qualification

Tools

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Visio / Draw.io

Job description

Job Introduction

Lead Business Analyst (Travel)

Salary - £40,000 to £45,000

Permanent

Folkestone Hybrid

As our Lead Business Analyst within Saga’s Travel Business you will be responsible for analysing requirements of new / changed product and systems offerings or strategic change to any part of the travel business and undertaking process reviews and re-engineering, including implementation.

You’ll lead as a Business Analyst on a project, planning the business analysis effort, determining how requirements will be managed whilst providing structured, documented requirements that provides a framework to support both the business and technical teams to produce systems that accurately meet the business needs.

This role requires you to be working from our Folkestone office a minimum of 3 times a week. We have designated office space for colleagues in our Travel business, allowing us to collaborate and share success as a function.

Role Responsibility

As our Lead Business Analyst you will be responsible for eliciting, interpreting, and translating business requirements from change owners and subject matters experts and turning that into requirement documentation for use in change delivery through sprint cycles and other change methodologies across the Travel Business.

• Engineering requirements to ensure they are relevant, accurate, validated, and signed off within the business before being passed through to technical analysis, development, and test.
• Assisting with business case development, including solution modelling where appropriate.
• Creating a centre of excellence for requirements.
• Facilitating effective workshops and meetings using smart questioning to draw out requirements, options, and outcomes.
• Identifying system and operational process gaps, pro-actively raising these to the relevant department, support in the creation of their change requests and look for opportunities as part of continuous improvement. Be an advocate for process improvement, learning and business analysis within Travel.
• Maintaining and enhancing key relationships with the Change community, Development Teams, Project, and Change Teams.
• Ensuring swift progress across multiple concurrent projects through organisation and time management skills, whilst being able to adapt quickly to changing priorities and workloads.
• Effectively managing stakeholder expectations around scope, delivery, and timescales.
• Ensuring actions, risks, issues, and decisions are raised for the appropriate documentation to be updated in accordance with the best practice requirements of Change Management.
• Reporting and tracking progress across my assigned projects, identifying and escalating any blockers hindering progress where necessary
• End to end management of change as assigned

The Ideal Candidate

As our new Lead Business Analyst you will have proven experience working as a business analyst in a lead or senior position.

It is essential that you have experience within the wider Travel industry, and having Air experience would be an advantage.

Skills and Experience required include :

• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment with changing priorities.
• Proven experience of excellent communication at various levels
• Shown curiosity and being naturally inquisitive and happy to provide challenge where necessary.
• Proven track record of working with precision.
• Usage of Microsoft applications – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio / Draw.io (or similar)
• Proven experience of being in a position with mentoring, guidance, and support responsibilities.Relevant toolkit and minimum level 4 Business Analyst qualification, Lean Six Sigma experience an advantage
• Proven experience of in gathering and documenting requirements
• Proven experience of process modelling

Saga Values

Make it Happen, Do the Right Thing, Customer First, Excellence Every Day, Our People Make Us Special

Package Description

At Saga we recognise that our people make us special. We believe our colleagues deserve rewards for the excellence they demonstrate every single day, that's why we have put together an amazing benefits package for all colleagues.

BENEFITS AVAILABLE TO ALL COLLEAGUES

• 25 days holiday + bank holidays
• Option to purchase additional leave - 5 extra days
• Pension scheme matched up to 10%
• Company performance related annual bonus - Up to 5%
• Life assurance policy on joining us, 4 x salary
• Wellbeing programme
• Colleague discounts including family discounts on cruises, holidays and insurance
• Range reductions and offers from leading retailers, travel groups and entertainment companies
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Grandparents leaveIncome protection
• Access to Saga Academy, our bespoke learning platform