Senior Specialist, Finance Business Applications

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Reporting to the Senior Manager, Finance Applications and Support, provides guidance and support to clients by translating business requirements into technical specifications particularly in relations to finance management, such as accounting, grants, endowments, spend, FDM, account payables, accounts receivables and budget management. Configures, maintains, and develops Workday (and similar cloud applications in the Finance application ecosystem) modules on finance management and supports their comprehensive testing. Performs data analytics, develops reporting, and supports process optimization initiatives.

Works closely with units across campus and possesses a solid understanding of business operations, policies, regulatory requirements, systems, and priorities. Possesses a customer-centric mindset and directly supports stakeholders and product owners on their requests. Delivers training, develops user guides, and supports change management initiatives. Its work directly contributes to administrative efficiency and service quality. Supports management with insights conducive to strategic and impactful decision-making. Maintains the effectiveness and efficiency of its systems to meet business objectives and reporting obligations.

In this role, your responsibilities will include:

• Business and technical support: Intimately understands customers’ operational and strategic needs and provides expert advice to improve procedures or system configurations. Offers a simple, seamless, and collaborative stakeholder experience to customers. Reviews system capabilities and workflows and identifies ways to simplify the client’s experience. Addresses inefficiencies or configuration issues and escalates as necessary. Assists clients in the evaluation of their current processes and identifies new techniques to take full advantage of system capabilities. Keeps apprised of evolving industry tools and business processes and recommends improvements.
• Business process & system maintenance: Maintains and modifies business processes, workflows, naming conventions, and data masters in accordance with approved design principles, governance frameworks, and institutional business rules, procedures, and policies. Assigns security roles and develops custom reports. Identifies and resolves quality problems and troubleshoots and fixes bugs. Monitors master data relationships, ensures master data integrity (by addressing record duplications, format inconsistencies, incompleteness, inaccuracies, etc). Its core system will be the ERP (on modules for accounting, asset management, grants management, the foundation data model structure, financial planning, procurement, sourcing, inventory management, and expenses. However, it will also support other Finance applications.
• Change management: Supports continuous improvements and change management efforts across the University and ensures smooth transitions from current to desired business practices.

What you will bring:

• University Degree in Commerce, Administration, Business Technology Management or/and an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum 5 years of experience supporting business units and their system needs.
• Experience supporting Workday (Workday trainings and certifications will be considered an asset).
• Experience in project and change management
• Thorough knowledge and experience of finance business processes, rules, policies, priorities, and regulations.
• Knowledge of the administrative operations of public institutions.
• Experience with Microsoft Excel, Business Intelligence, or other data management tools to manipulate, convert, clean, and present complex data.
• Knowledge of computing principles and the configuration and development of finance technical applications.
• Experience conducting client needs assessments and prioritizing business requirements.
• Experience writing and maintaining business and technical documentation, and providing training.
• Experience coordinating operational services for clients with diverse needs.
• Ability to negotiate and influence clients in accepting solutions that align both the strategic goals of the University and short- and long-term client requirements.
• Strong analytical skills to convert business requirements into functional specifications, as well as the ability to conceptualize individual requirements and create links between different stakeholders’ needs.
• Ability to adapt to ever-changing requirements and processes, challenge ideas, and accept new methods and procedures.
• This position can be called upon working with different teams and projects within the department.
• Professional designation is an asset (HR, CPA, SCMA, or Business Analysis)
• Bilingualism - French and English (spoken and written).

Key Competencies at uOttawa:

Here are the required competencies for all or our employees at uOttawa:

Planning: Organize in time a series of actions or events in order to realize an objective or a project. Plan and organize own work and priorities in regular daily activities.

Initiative: Demonstrate creativity and initiative to suggest improvements and encourage positive results. Is proactive and self-starting. Show availability and willingness to go above and beyond whenever it is possible.

Client Service Orientation: Help or serve others to meet their needs. This implies anticipating and identifying the needs of internal and external clients and finding solutions on how to meet them.

Teamwork and Cooperation: Cooperate and work well with other members of the team to reach common goal(s). Accept and give constructive feedback. Able to adjust own behaviour to reach the goals of the team.

The University of Ottawa embraces diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are passionate about our people and committed to employment equity. We foster a culture of respect, teamwork and inclusion, where collaboration, innovation, and creativity fuel our quest for research and teaching excellence. While all qualified persons are invited to apply, we welcome applications from qualified Indigenous persons, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, women and LGBTQIA2S+ persons. The University is committed to creating and maintaining an accessible, barrier-free work environment. The University is also committed to working with applicants with disabilities requesting accommodation during the recruitment, assessment and selection processes. Applicants with disabilities may contact [email protected] communicate the accommodation need. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Note: if this is a union position: The hiring process will be governed by the current collective agreement related to the union affiliation noted above; you can click here to find out more.

If this is a front-line position with responsibilities to interact with students, selected candidates must be rated at the Low Advanced proficiency level or higher for both oral comprehension and reading comprehension in their second official language. The rating is determined by a proficiency test designed by the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute.

Prior to May 1, 2022, the University required all students, faculty, staff, and visitors (including contractors) to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as defined in Policy 129 - Covid-19 Vaccination. This policy was suspended effective May 1, 2022 but may be reinstated at any point in the future depending on public health guidelines and the recommendations of experts.