Western National Insurance, headquartered in Edina, Minn., is a super-regional group of property-and-casualty insurance companies providing personal and commercial coverage in 19 states across the Midwestern and Western U.S. as well as in Alaska; and surety bonds in 38 states. We distribute our products exclusively through trusted, professional Independent Insurance Agents.

Our insurance products and services allow individuals and businesses throughout our communities to have the peace of mind and financial security to focus on what is most important to them. Whether serving customers directly or working behind the scenes, every role at Western National provides a valuable contribution in which you can take pride.

WHY WESTERN NATIONAL?

At Western National, we attribute our success to the relationships we have built. For our customers, this means providing quality products and exceptional service. For our team members, this means an opportunity to build a meaningful career while maintaining a work/life balance. We encourage staff to take advantage of paid time-off, flexible working schedules, pre-arranged volunteer opportunities, and wellbeing programs that we offer. Our values, and the programs that support them, have resulted in our consistent ranking as a Star Tribune Top Workplace. More importantly, they are the reason that people choose to come to Western National and stay throughout their career.

Western National is seeking a Business Analyst III to join our team!

The individual in this role will have the opportunity to ensure collaborative execution of the entire requirement lifecycle across multiple product workstreams. The individual in this role will effectively influence and lead change with others inside the product team(s) and business analysis center of practice. This candidate will use their IT and commercial lines property-and-casualty insurance industry experience for initiatives that will support our legacy systems as we build out and mature our Guidewire PolicyCenter administration system and policyholder, agent, and customer experience transformation.

What are the responsibilities and opportunities of this role?

• Partners with commercial lines business unit representatives, technology resources, and customer experience colleagues to design impactful customer journeys.
• Collaborates in ticket intake analysis and troubleshooting applications.
• Participates in work refinement and estimation process with commercial lines product team.
• Participates in troubleshooting, issue reporting, resolution, and communication of urgent production issues.
• Works with product and change control teams to ensure quality deliverables that provide customer value.
• Creates and maintains documentation that the product team or company has defined as important (e.g., support processes, team processes, system documentation).
• Flexes to non-core responsibilities as needed to ensure timely work delivery to the customer (e.g., testing, road mapping, directing deployment).
• Collaborates across product team(s) to guide requirements activities for diverse business process and software implementation initiatives of mixed impact and risk.
• Consistently applies, develops, and contributes an extensive toolkit of advanced business analyst skills and techniques.
• Demonstrates business analyst competencies and skill sets aligned with delivering strategic value to existing and new application(s).
• Demonstrates proficient level execution of business analyst best practices as defined in the requirements lifecycle with some guidance from leads or management.
• Applies broad knowledge to identify, troubleshoot root causes, and resolve core problems across multiple domains affecting various business processes or applications.
• Identifies and leads opportunities for improvement of processes and best practices across product teams and guides team and leadership to implement process improvement.
• Plans, completes research, and analyzes tactical business plans, and interprets results to identify requirements and propose solutions across product team(s).
• Analyzes metrics and related reporting tools for evaluating business analyst performance standards and recommending adjustments.
• Identifies, executes, and guides opportunities to improve or add value to cross-team business processes and applications and uses business base, process improvement methodology, and metrics to initiate change.
• Collaboratively guides evolution of team-level development best practices, standards, and policies with consideration from implications in work activities.
• Understands and effectively communicates relationships between problem components.
• Utilizes high level of knowledge, experience, and available resources to find a wide range of solutions and illustrates the pros and cons of all proposed solutions.
• Performs other duties and projects as assigned.

What are the must-have qualifications for a candidate?

• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills when dealing with ambiguity.
• Ability to work independently and carry out assignments to completion.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Good negotiation skills.
• Ability to lead change with positive influence on people and processes.
• Ability to effectively collaborate with others.
• Inquisitive with strong ability and desire for continuous learning.
• Highly organized and able to multitask.
• Proficient in using various computer equipment and Office software applications (e.g., Excel, Word, PowerPoint).
• Proficient in using various communication and collaboration tools (e.g., Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, Teams, Mural).
• Proficient understanding of domain / context-supported technologies, systems, and processes.
• Competent ability to read and understand scripting and coding language with working knowledge and ability to write simple scripts.
• Competent ability to write basic SQL queries and proficient understanding of databases, data models, and related constructs.
• Agile certification and proficiency in other various development methodologies, tools, and frameworks.
• Master’s degree preferred in related field, experience in lieu of degree acceptable.

What will our ideal candidate have?

• Demonstrated advanced organizational and prioritization skills and ability to accomplish multiple priorities of varying degrees of impact and risk (including low and high) within specified timeframe.
• Demonstrated ability to consistently communicate clearly and effectively both verbally and in writing with technical and non-technical audiences with organizational peers in any role.
• At least seven years of experience in an IT or related role.
• Five or more years of business analyst experience across multiple domains, using a wide range of delivery methodologies.
• Advanced Business Analyst training and obtained Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) or equivalent certification.
• Previous experience with the property-and-casualty insurance industry, or with insurance industry applications or tools; commercial lines products and tools experience strongly preferred.
• Previous experience with enterprise policy administration management; experience with systems transformation / replacement initiatives a plus.