An exciting opportunity has risen within the Visa Europe Technology & Processing services (TPS) division for a business consultant. This individual will work within the business consultancy team, partnering directly with the visa business in the early stages of the project and programme lifecycle. The successful candidate will work closely with the business to lead and manage the creation and qualification of potential projects by producing, collating and assessing the relevant information that will allow key stakeholders to determine whether an initiative should progress or not. This involves assessing and understanding business outcomes, drivers and requirements associated with a project and working with business areas and solution suppliers to evaluate the options, determine costs, and make recommendations on the most effective way to proceed. The business consultant may be called upon to lead on other aspects of the end-to-end change lifecycle.
The position is based in Paddington, with the potential for frequent travel to the Reading or Basingstoke office, and on some occasional travel to regional European offices.
Main Responsibilities
• Act as a liaison point between Business and IT.
• Work with all functional areas (e.g. Marketing, Product, Finance, Risk etc) to understand and document their business needs, requirements and desired outcomes. This will involve working with all levels of seniority from ‘on the ground’ users to the Visa Europe leadership team.
• Communicate above business specific outcomes to all supply areas ensuring that they are understood.
• Work with solution architecture and other supply areas to understand and prepare options and recommendations.
• Perform cost/benefit analysis to establish the value of various opportunities.
• Identification of RAIDs that may affect decision to proceed.
• Provide quality assurance of requirements throughout lifecycle of project.
• Ensure compliance to Visa Europe governance standards.
• Provide subject matter expertise and guidance when evaluating and recommending options.
• Ensure that business leads have a clear and honest view of status, issues and any decisions required.
• Mange stakeholder expectations around timelines and complexity of solutions.
• Help develop best practice and knowledge sharing across the business consultancy team.
• Provide input and embed, wherever necessary, relevant behaviours and techniques that need to be in place across the organisation to drive through successful change.
• Take responsibility for building and maintaining relationships across functions.
Knowledge, Skills and Experience
Essential Criteria
• Strong experience in gathering business and functional requirements in complex environments
• Effective written and verbal communication skills to be able to engage with the business and draw out clarity from ambiguity, ensuring that the customer’s need is fully understood
• Stakeholder management
• Process modelling experience
• A flexible and ‘can do’ attitude.
• Knowledge of project and programme management
• Experience of business case development and/or management (e.g. benefits tracking)
• At least 6 years practical experience in a financial services environment ideally within a business/client facing environment.
• Change management experience.
• Excellent interpersonal skills in order to develop and maintain close relationships with departments within and external to TPS (IT)
• Ability to work autonomously and with a strong sense of initiative and of ownership.
• Strong experience of solving complex business problems and translating these into clear ways forward
Desirable Criteria
• Experience of the Card Payments industry
• Consultancy experience
• Educated to degree level (preferably in an IT, business related or analytical subject).
• understanding of the 4 party model
Visa Europe is a membership association - an organisation owned and operated by its 4,600 European member banks. In October 2007, Visa Europe became independent of the new global Visa Inc., with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence in Europe. As a dedicated European payment system it is able to respond quickly to the specific market needs of European banks and their customers – cardholders and retailers, and to meet the European Commission’s objective to create a true internal market for payments. Visa enjoys unsurpassed acceptance around the world. In addition, Visa/Plus is one of the world’s largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in over 170 countries.
